This spring, School of Photography welcomes Faculty member Adrienne Pao into the position of Graduate Associate Director. Here, we look at the collaborative project of Pao and artist-teacher Robin Lasser. For more than a decade, Pao and Lasser have been producing Dress Tents, tent-like forms that are worn and photographed as part of a series of performances. The interior of the tents house video and sound that reference the original landscape for which each dress was designed. Pieces from Dress Tents have been exhibited in the U.S., China, Argentina, and Russia.
Say Pao and Lasser:
We are interested in the land and the body as sites of seduction . . .
By referencing modes of female representation such as “bare foot and in the kitchen” in the Picnic Dress Tent, or “mother nature” in the Greenhouse Dress Tent, the dress tents simultaneously utilize and address a history of fantasy associated with women. Through pop-culture humor, the Picnic Dress Tent examines our recreational activities in the landscape though playfully familiar scenarios that leave us to question and reexamine our flow of routine and our relationship to the body as site of cultural desire. A play on green house gasses and what it takes to be “green” in contemporary culture, the Greenhouse Dress Tent becomes a commentary on the current fashion of being “green.”
More Dress Tents can be seen at www.adriennepao.com and www.robinlasser.com. We wish Adrienne continued success with Dress Tents and in her new position!