Nail Her highlights the combination of fashion and art
Collaboration between artist and designer highlights 'armour' women wear to express themselves.
Nail Her, a provocative exhibition that focuses on the various ways women express themselves using beauty products, opened at the Goodman gallery on 6 May.
The exhibition, a collaboration between renowned artist Frances Goodman and Suzaan Heyns, focused on the ‘armour’ women wear in beautifying themselves.
In a bold and daring move, the exhibition made use of acrylic nails and fake eyelashes to present drawings, resulting in intricate and provoking pieces.
According to Heyns, a fashion designer, her collaboration with Goodman came after the artist approached her and asked her to contribute as a designer to the exhibition.
“I jumped at the opportunity because I’ve always wanted to study and do sculptures, so this particular dress in the exhibition allowed me to explore that,” Heyns said.
The designer added that with her sculptural dress, titled Melusina and made entirely of fake nails, she wanted to construct it in such a way that it showed movement. The dress made use of a real-life model who was fitted into the dress itself.
This is Heyns’s and Goodman’s first collaboration, and Goodman said she approached Heyns because she knew her work as a fashion designer and wanted to feature a fashion element in the exhibition.
“Initially, I was going to do the exhibition by myself but thought it would be interesting to work with Heyns because I knew together we could make it much better,” the artist said.
Goodman added that her interest in doing the exhibition came from her passion for women and their desires and this was her way of depicting these elements.
“I’ve always been interested in works that focus on women because of the issues around them and the way the media depicts them,” she said.
Heyns worked on the performative sculptural dress whilst Goodman did the rest of the pieces on display.
Also included in the series is a variety of drawings labelled Lash Drawings, which is a series of drawings made entirely from fake eyelashes. The drawings were a compilation of works done by Goodman herself. The exhibition will run until 31 May.
