UNBAGS
graduate collection and MA thesis, 2020
The borderlands where Mexico and the U.S. meet are not only a geographical and political location, but an active and hybrid space where two cultures collide and a third culture emerges. The people living in this in-between of nations, cultures, histories, and languages have come to embody both sides of the border, and yet belong to neither.
It was in this space where the Pachuco subculture first started, a youth group using their cultural multiplicity to subvert the conventional and transgress through their over-sized suits, style and secret language. It was the women of the subculture however —Pachucas— who took it a step further to go not only against the perceived American conventions, but also broke away from the Mexican archetype of the woman, leaving their domesticity to occupy a space in between gender norms and establishing their own.
Unbags is a leather bag collection that mirrors the in-betweenness of the borderlands, composed of pieces that are in a limbo between done and undone, bag and adornment, in a permanent state of becoming. Using the Pachucas as a starting point and source of inspiration, it seeks to deconstruct signifiers and fuse material elements from Mexico and Finland to create a new borderland, an active space of hybridity where diasporic identities can be formed through artistic practices.
The notion of finding one’s identity in diaspora is not foreign to any immigrant. There’s an enhancement and a craving for cultural or national identity as soon as one is removed from their place of origin. This collection aims to build a bridge between theory and creative production to make sense of the real and imaginary borderlands we come to inhabit.
Shortlisted project for the ARTSTHREAD x i-D Global Graduate Show competition, 2020
Editorial photography by Jenni Holma
The artistic process behind the collection focused on mirroring the nuances and in-betweenness of the Borderlands into materials and shapes, ultimately resulting in eight unbags that are hybrids of accessory and adornment, draping around the body in revealing and sometimes provocative ways.
I established material binaries— leather and metallic hardware— that became physical and symbolic borderlines that limited and framed my practice. Working in the borderlands between them, I prototyped directly on a mannequin with found objects and leftover materials to challenge the relationship between body and bag, and find innovative and unconventional ways to put the materials together.
All the final pieces are made of deer leather and an assortment of metallic hardware, found objects that include horse-riding equipment, boating clasps, and religious mementos.
The collection presents a bricolage aesthetic, where all the constructed (and deconstructed) details and elements are enhanced and laid bare: visible seams, fake tape and coarse top stitching give the unbags the feeling of still being under construction, of being in limbo.
