Fashioning the male: on collecting, curating, displaying masculine attire
Saturday, May 14th 2022
Cyana Madsen presented the paper Minutiae Men: methods for exploring worn biography in exhibitions, considering “curatorial interruption”, pocket contents as integral worn biography, and sensory museology as a method of displaying biography in an exhibition.
The paper was presented as part of Fashioning the male: on collecting, curating, displaying masculine attire, a symposium co-hosted by Centre for Fashion Curation and Masculinities Hub, London College of Fashion, UAL. The symposium explored collecting, curating and exhibiting masculine dress in the context of both private and institutional collections.
The Absent Muse
The Absent Muse was Cyana Madsen’s contribution to the group show ode to MEATYARD, a group exhibition at The Horse Hospital (April 2nd - 30th, 2022) exploring Surrealism and fashion.
This work meditated on those absent bodies in the archive through interpretation of the later years of the Surrealist muse and art patron Marchesa Luisa Casati using an enclosed bespoke scentscape.
Inspired by the dispersal and disappearance of the clothing which Casati had worn and had helped establish her as a embodied piece of art in her lifetime and Peter Stallybrass’ writing on scent and memory, The Absent Muse explored the potential for olfactory engagement to act as a representation of worn biography.
The great architect of her own immortal image, the Marchesa Luisa Casati trailed in her wake one thousand artists’ impressions of her life: that confected phantasmagoria of palazzos and panthers and poets. But now Casati is gone, her riches long ago pawned and sold, her fortune dust.
A pack of faithful taxidermied Pekingese dogs were her last audience in a cheap and incense-choked caliginous rented room. Here she made her final communion with eternity, her belladonna-wide eyes rimmed in boot-polish kohl and framed with tattered black veils.
Casati is gone, no tangible relics left behind to worship: only the animalistic, anodyne scent of the absent muse.
Reflections on multisensorial engagement with clothing, alternative exhibition methods, and my curatorial practice as part of the the digital seminar series Sartorial Society.
Cyana Madsen presented her paper Collecting on the Periphery: Pocket Contents and Biography in the Clothing of Francis Golding as part of Chicago Fashion Lyceum’s Fashion at the Periphery Conference in October 2020.
An audio visual walk through the 2019 exhibition Reqiuem: Material/Memory at The Horse Hospital, London.
Curator: Cyana Madsen
Clothing: The Contemporary Wardrobe Collection
Photography: Ellen Sampson
Soundscape Design: Jonah Falco and Cyana Madsen
Exhibition curated by Cyana Madsen in May 2019 at The Horse Hospital in London.
Torn. Moth-eaten. Tarnished. Degraded. Discarded. From the infinite potential of a pair of unworn shoes to a tweed jacket crumbling from years of use, our clothing resonates with memories of our lives.
Among the billions of human experiences of the world, it is the common ritual of dressing that captures our individuality. Not just by what we choose to wear, but through the intimate contact of skin to garment, leaving behind the detritus of our bodies on our clothes. These stains, holes and frays are evidence of our existence imbedded in fabric which will likely outlive the wearer.
When we are separated from our clothing, what happens to these abandoned documents of human experience? What could be known about our lives from what hangs in our closets? Sifting through the coffee stains and mended knees of worn clothing, we become archaeologists of memory, with our garments the monument to untold histories.
Displaying garments from The Contemporary Wardrobe Collection spanning the last two centuries, Requiem: Material/Memory explores the intimacies and contradictions of memory as embedded in fabric. From the Berserkers of Viking lore to modern fashion criticism, this exhibition considers the truth and tangibility of recollection, nostalgia, and what remains of “us” once we are gone.
Presented by curator and archivist Cyana Madsen with support from The Horse Hospital, Requiem: Material/Memory featured works by artist and material culture researcher Ellen Sampson and sound designer and composer Jonah Falco.
Opening label from the exhibition Requiem: Material/Memory.
Curated by Cyana Madsen, 2019 at The Horse Hospital, London.
Cyana Madsen presented her paper A Pocket History: Exploring Object Biography in the Francis Golding Collections at the University of Huddersfield and University of Leeds conference, Everyday Fashion: Extraordinary Stories of Ordinary Clothes in June 2019.
A series of video and journal projects in collaboration with Savile Row tailoring house Huntsman, exploring the house archives to share the biography of clients throughout Huntsman history.
What’s In Your Pockets, a workshop presented by Cyana Madsen and photographer Kasia Wozniak examining pocket contents, biography and cyanotypes. Part of London College of Fashion’s Fashioned Worlds, MA_19 (March 2019)
The Sacred Profane: Reliquary of Francis Golding, a touring of the exhibit as part of London College of Fashion’s Fashioned Worlds, MA_19 Graduate Show (March 2019)
Wills, Wishes & Dispersal: Collectors, Collections and Their Legacies workshop at King’s College, hosted by The Wildgoose Memorial Library. Cyana Madsen presented on the role of collectors’ legacy in the Francis Golding Collections (February 2019)
The Sacred Profane: Reliquary of Francis Golding, an exhibition questioning object biography and curatorial interruption, curated by Cyana Madsen (September - December 2018)
A Taxonomy Of Identity: Shapeshifting in Three Parts, an exhibition of rare materials from London College of Fashion Library’s Special Collections curated by Cyana Madsen (May - June 2018)
Francis Golding: A Sartorial Biography, an exhibition of garments and pocket contents from the Francis Golding Collection at the Museum of London (May 2017)