Michaela Stark Can Cut Gaultier’s Storage Pieces at 3537 in Paris – WWD

WORK BODY: “Anything can happen, I can grab a pair of scissors and cut it,” joked artist and decorator Michaela Stark ahead of her “Stark Naked” exhibition at the 3537 Dover cultural center Street Market in Paris until December 19.

But the point of her two-week rollout was not to see the Aussie living in Paris squeezing into model-sized corsets in a replica of her bedroom, or even cropping. into unfinished books on loan from the archives of Jean Paul Gaultier at a gig on her December 7th.

Nor are her flimsy designs, pressed between sheets of plexiglass and hung in front of windows to capture the viewer by the complexity of their textures and asymmetrical shapes.

What she’s really showing are almost graphic images, where she questions beauty standards by showcasing models whose faces are reshaped by her corsets. It was created in collaboration with London-based Norwegian photographer Sølve Sundsbø.

Graduating in 2016 from Queensland University of Technology in Australia, Stark moved to Europe to pursue a career in fashion, working for fashion labels such as Marine Serre and as a costume designer for celebrities and advertising campaigns. The all-denim look, with a corset and knee-length jeans was seen in Beyoncé’s 2020 film “Black Is King.”

After a year of residency at the Sarabande Foundation, founded by the late Lee Alexander McQueen, in London, Stark returned to Paris and began experimenting by creating garments and pushing his body into figures. extreme form, due to her longstanding fascination with parts of the body that are often hidden, either unloved or considered unsightly.

In each photo, the bloated belly, dimpled skin, and wispy hair are surreal when Stark’s engineered bodies are pressed into place. And despite the experimental shape of her pieces, she is adamantly not seen as “a person who creates conceptual fashion without understanding how to do it,” which she says is a misconception. about many designers based in London.

Describing the territory she explores as straddling “beautiful and whimsical”, Stark says this completely negates the still-popular aesthetic of smoothed limbs and artificially toned skin. a power.

“For some reason, I feel that my waistline is too small, the fat is melted and the body is completely released. [On the one hand,] it’s about honoring parts of your body that you feel unsafe or want to hide. It’s not that you’re naked alone and eating pizza in bed while watching Netflix,” she said.

While her work is purely analog, she sees parallels with the digital world. “People often see my work as body positivity, like [showing] natural bodies, but none of that is really natural,” she says, comparing the sculptural lines to extreme contouring or digital retouching trends seen on social media. festival.

“I feel like there is some beauty in real life that can be lost on the Internet”, where her work attracts more than 100,000 followers, “because everyone changes their body, their face. surname. There, anyone can make any outfit look special,” she said.