Anastasia Lukomskaya

 
 

Clothes are a part of our fake identity.

We are born without them, other people tell us the names of the objects, what is possible and what is not, what to have for breakfast and how to dress for a walk. Then we start to choose: music school or karate, Zenit or Spartak, rock or electronic music, tight jeans or a dress with a white collar. We  build our identity as a constructor, assigning attributes and artifacts to ourselves, taking selfies to be sure that the void is filled with something. We follow the trends in a huge supermarket and choose the opinions, tastes and habits to put on.

 

Clothes are the first thing you notice when you look at a stranger. How do the witnesses usually describe the perpetrator: a man in a blue jacket, black trousers, with a large backpack, probably gray, etc. How can we be sure that these are his clothes, and before the murder he did not remove them from another person?

 

I was always wondering what is the point when clothes become a part of my identity. I go into the store, see a dress and think: “Wow! It looks so stylish!” I buy it, wear only a couple of times and after a year I leave it on the freemarket as something unnecessary. But I wear another dress so often that it begins to be strongly associated with my visual image. But if I put it on another person, will it remain a part of me, or it will be instantly integrated into their identity? After all, many things in my wardrobe just got me from my friends.

 

This project is a kind of test drive of your own perception. What will happen if I dress different people in my clothes, give them my attributes? Will I still identify them as mine? Could someone else play me in a movie about so good that I would recognize myself? Will our identities intersect for a brief moment of a shutter click?