Furniture Bondage

Melanie Bonajo

2009

Published by Kodoji Press (Baden)

52 pages

21.5 x 28 cm

I don’t think anyone has considered Melanie Bonajo’s work around bondage to be “fashion”. Maybe someone has. In any case, I think it is interesting for it to be part of a themed library that compels us, through context, to approach this series from the perspective of the fashion industry. It does not cease to be an exercise in both proximity and distance, where the model’s body is taken to the limit, subjected to the whims of the artist that is working on it as if a dehumanised sculpture, creating an image which is both attractive and of a certain cruelty. I think it is precisely by leaving to one side the central element of fashion (the clothes, the brands, design) and substituting it for an almost random pile of found objects that we can fully reflect on the medium and also understand with greater clarity details such as the light, the background or the body, nearly always reduced to their crudest and simplest expression. All in all, it is a book that, almost by omission or antagonism, is an ideal starting point for re-thinking fashion.

Luis Cerveró