foundation year project
am i a fool?
My project 'Am I A Fool?' explores mistakes, misjudgement, and holistic human error. I analysed the witty 'Feste' from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, a deceptively insightful jester who uses his convenient comedic role to mock the errors of higher-class characters, exploring how I could similarly critique wider human behaviour and error. I dissected Feste's dialogue, inspecting the line 'when that I was and a tiny little boy / A foolish thing was but a toy.'
Interpreting Feste's riddle, I explored how we teach non-foolery at a young age through moral lessons in folk stories, such as The Secret Garden, which teaches to enrich the surroundings that help enrich you. As I interpreted this into contemporary human errors such as climate change, I questioned: do we ever truly learn, or is foolery just our nature? I watched Fool's Fire (1992) to source inspiration for designs later to come.
I examined and extracted another passage from Twelfth Night, presenting themes of mortality and inevitable downfall, which haunts the play and humankind alike. Feste could not critique his higher class counterparts without his court costume, so I decided that the colour blocking and frilly features of the historical jester's costumes would be a major influence for my final outcome.
I collaged my drapes of drooping fabric with Mitch Epstein’s photograph, ‘Biloxi, mississippi’, which captures the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. I wanted to express the dramatic, tragic repercussions that humankind’s selfishness continually causes, with an image of sinister fools parading beside.
an observational ink drawing of a harlequin puppet from the v&a’s theatre and performance collection ‘holding’ a dried sunflower, symbolising the fragility of our warming climate, with a hand-knitted sample extending out from it.
Design development, collaging drapes and historical research imagery, including distorted harlequin prints made from a tangerine net.
final Design development with sustainable fabric suggestions.
Responding costume and costume illustration. My garments are made purely from second-hand fabrics and embellishments.
Photography, styling and outcome by me.