Smego marries industrial materials (lumber, screws, staples)
and Fast Fashion products—cheap, mass-produced clothing—to create angular
sculptures that examine the economic and gender implications of fashion through
a visual vocabulary reminiscent of modernist sculpture. For her contribution to
Stumble Chicago, Smego adorns child-scaled sculptures with winter
wear thrifted from consignment stores which she scatters along the snow-covered
606, an elevated running trail on Chicago’s NW side. Fascinated by how bulky,
unflattering winter attire acts as a unifying aesthetic by rendering all bodies
“marshmallow shaped,” Smego’s mannequin-like sculptures consider the false
promises of Fast Fashion by tracing the life cycle of its products. Retailers
like H&M and Zara claim to offer of-the-moment high fashion looks at
affordable price points yet the cost of the insatiable desire for novelty is
disposable products and dependency on unethical, sweat shop labor. These sculptures
remind us of the economies and networks surrounding clothing while considering
if the Fast Fashion model of production shares uncomfortable parallels in how
we make and consume art.
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