ON DISPLAY is an installation by renowned choreographer Heidi Latsky that serves a deconstructed art exhibit/fashion show and commentary on the body as spectacle and society's obsession with body image. It turns a cast of diverse and extreme bodies into a sculpture court where the performers are the sculptures. ON DISPLAY began as a simple human sculpture court and is now a movement, a growing portfolio of works that explore and demonstrate inclusion through art.

As part of International Day of Persons with Disabilities, NYU Tisch School of the Arts hosted On Display Global: Impact through installations on December 2nd and 3rd in New York City.

Working in collaboration with Heidi Latsky, NuVu students designed wearables for four of her performers for On Display Global. On Display uses fashion as a tool of social justice aiming to celebrate the beauty of difference. Each performer has a disability and teams of NuVu students worked closely with each of the performers to design individualized wearables that highlight a passion, experience or personality trait.

http://heidilatskydance.com/introduction/

The intention of this project is to create a wearable sculpture for Anita that embodies her personality and physical differences.

Our project has the intention of bringing Anita’s love of mermaids, the parts of her body that are missing, and asymmetry.

This dress has two main components. First, the wooden kites are made to be the structure of the dress. Each one of them has a piece cut out of the middle, each different cut has a different size, this is so that as the dress goes from her left top right side the holes close showing less of her leg. The next piece is a string that connects each of the columns to each other. This string is able to stretch which allows the dress to curve to Anita’s body and in the future servos would be used to make the dress move like the tail of a mermaid.

The main design challenge we faced was finding the right shape to make the pieces that form the main dress. We went through multiple different iterations that all worked in some ways but also had disadvantages in other ways.  

The first iteration of our project was made out of cardboard pieces shaped like lemons. For this iteration we used 12 pieces and connected them vertically, using screws horizontally using rubber bands. The reason we used a combination of screws and rubber bands was that it allows the dress to have structure while conforming to Anita’s body.

Our second iteration completely changed the shape of the pieces. Instead of a lemon shape, we decided to change them to a kite-like shape. Another thing that we added into this iteration was the addition of cut outs in the pieces. We deiced to have 12 different sized cut outs, we did this because it decreases weight and allows us to emphasize the positive and negative space on her body. We put the most open pieces of wood to the left side of Anita’s body because it shows the openness of her missing leg. We then put the most closed pieces on the right side of her body to add positive space. We decided to make an asymmetrical hem to completely cover her right leg.

The show On Display draws attention to the disability of the performers and the beauty in their movement. We created a wearable sculpture to accompany the show that represents Anita Hollander.

Anita Hollander is an actress, singer, songwriter, director, and teacher who lost her leg to cancer. Anita will wear this sculpture during a 30-minute performance in a storefront in New York. The reason we made this sculpture is to show the viewer that Anita is whole and beautiful as she is and to challenge preconceived notions of disability. The idea behind our design is an abstraction of a mermaid which is inspired by one of Anita's songs, Mommy Is a Mermaid. This song is about addressing people's reactions to her disability when she is swimming with her daughter. Anita feels a strong connection to mermaids, so we knew we wanted to show this strength and beauty in our piece.

It was for these reasons that we designed the sculpture to cover up Anita’s right leg and have each of the pieces be an abstraction of a mermaid scale abstracted in all three dimensions. Each of the pieces is 3D printed out of clear resin so that the angular holes inside the piece can be seen from the outside. Each of the pieces will be sewed onto a piece of fabric with the geometry of the shape cut into it to show the negative space on her body. The finished product will be a striking visual that sends a clear message to the viewer.

The intention of this project is to create a wearable sculpture for Anita that embodies her personality and physical differences.

Our project has the intention of bringing Anita’s love of mermaids, the parts of her body that are missing, and asymmetry.

This dress has two main components. First, the wooden kites are made to be the structure of the dress. Each one of them has a piece cut out of the middle, each different cut has a different size, this is so that as the dress goes from her left top right side the holes close showing less of her leg. The next piece is a string that connects each of the columns to each other. This string is able to stretch which allows the dress to curve to Anita’s body and in the future servos would be used to make the dress move like the tail of a mermaid.

The main design challenge we faced was finding the right shape to make the pieces that form the main dress. We went through multiple different iterations that all worked in some ways but also had disadvantages in other ways.  

The first iteration of our project was made out of cardboard pieces shaped like lemons. For this iteration we used 12 pieces and connected them vertically, using screws horizontally using rubber bands. The reason we used a combination of screws and rubber bands was that it allows the dress to have structure while conforming to Anita’s body.

Our second iteration completely changed the shape of the pieces. Instead of a lemon shape, we decided to change them to a kite-like shape. Another thing that we added into this iteration was the addition of cut outs in the pieces. We deiced to have 12 different sized cut outs, we did this because it decreases weight and allows us to emphasize the positive and negative space on her body. We put the most open pieces of wood to the left side of Anita’s body because it shows the openness of her missing leg. We then put the most closed pieces on the right side of her body to add positive space. We decided to make an asymmetrical hem to completely cover her right leg.