Artist Camilla Huey’s exhibition of corset portraits.
Encompassing the creation of personified portraits of nine women of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. An elegant meshing of fashion, art, American history and feminism from atelier to exhibition.
The exhibit The Loves of Aaron Burr: Portraits in Corsetry & Binding paid homage to the women who surrounded and influenced the controversial founding father will soon embark on a new western adventure to Ashland, Henry Clay Memorial Home in Lexington, Kentucky starting May 3, - July 3, 2016.
Friday, June 24, 6-8 PM 21c Museum Hotel will host a Panel Discussion "Costume in Contemporary Art" led by 21c Curator, Alice Stites and Ashland Museum Director, James Clark with artists Camilla Huey and Gaela Erwin to discuss the interface of art, fashion and historical points of view, in contemporary art with a screening of The Loves of Aaron Burr: Portraits in Corsetry & Binding Film to follow.
Saturday, June 25, 6-9PM Ashland: The Henry Clay Estate is throwing Lexington's best party! The Annual Fund Raising Lawn Party. Have Dinner on the Lawn, Music, Auctions! www.henryclay.org
Drawing connections between her own interpretive work and the historic corsets, artist Camilla Huey incorporated years of couture experience and expertise with a love of history to create works of historic personification as a form of portraiture. Using the changing architectural, structural, and functional forms of corsets, corset-making and bookbinding materials, and methodologies, Huey employs these forms in her own unique approach to creating portraits of 18th and 19th century women, through ephemera, fetishism, material culture, and letters. The artist invites the viewer to follow both design and historic research as she explores biographical narrative.
The Loves of Aaron Burr: Portraits in Corsetry & Binding Documentary Film
offers a close view into the process used to create the corset portraits of nine women in the social network surrounding Founding Father, Aaron Burr. In 1792, Burr was near solitary among the founders in his belief along side that of Mary Wollstonecraft’s writing in the Vindication of the Rights of Women, to contend that not only were women as intelligent as men, and to be educated as such, but that they have "souls.” The narrative of the film follows the design process from the atelier to exhibition. Appropriately staged at the Morris-Jumel Mansion, each portrait was created within a period appropriate corset binding hand transcribed letters, symbolizing each woman's "body of work" in sheer volume. Through this film the viewer as voyeur is invited to peer indiscreetly into the private life of each woman The film encapsulates the artist's process, truly fulfilling the project's vision.
Camilla Huey is an artist and couturier that lives and works in New York City creating works of historic personification as a form of portraiture. Huey has exhibited at The Morris-Jumel Mansion, Wave Hill, The Bard Graduate Center, Brooks Museum and The Historic New Orleans Collection’s Brulatour Mansion in Prospect.2. Her current exhibitions are The Loves of Aaron Burr: Portraits in Corsetry & Binding at Ashland: The Henry Clay Memorial, Lexington, Kentucky and Dig Dyckman at The Dyckman Farmhouse Museum. Her film, also entitled The Loves of Aaron Burr: Portraits in Corsetry & Binding, was screened at the Women & Fashion Film Fest, The Miami Independent Film Festival, The New York International Film Festival, received an Award of Merit from the Best Shorts Film Festival and at the NICE International Film Festival.