By Apurva Mahajan
DMV artists HH Hiaasen and Elliot Doughtie, who are both part of the Stamp Gallery’s “UNFOLD” exhibition, shared the thought processes and meanings behind their respective works at a virtual artist talk hosted by the Stamp Gallery on Tuesday.
Originally from Dallas, Texas, Doughtie is now based in Baltimore, Maryland. Through his work — drawings, sculptures and installations — he aims to create personal relationships between everyday objects and the human body.
“A lot of the work leading up to this… that had a lot to do with bathroom spaces and specifically bathroom spaces,” Doughtie said. “I counted my sculpture through my queer and transgender identity, and so these spaces were always kind of intense, in different ways, full of fear, but also desire, and just really, really vulnerable and intimate with your body.”
Doughtie’s work in “UNFOLD,” titled “Sock Pile,” consists of a pile of athletic socks intricately stacked on top of each other to create a multidimensional sculpture.
“I was myself, but now I’m recreating myself to be myself. So the sock is my little trans sculpture doing that going from sock to sock,” said Doughtie. “I use the red stripe just to automatically bring you to this kind of air… of pubescence in a certain way.”
To create the sculpture, Doughtie filled socks with plaster to retain their original bent shape. The final product is solely plaster with remnants of the original sock still there, like small fibers and the signature red dye at the top of each sock.
“I always [am] telling people how just what a feat of engineering [the socks] kind of are in also art handling,” said Maura Callahan, a Ph.D. candidate in the art history department and the curator of “UNFOLD.” “They’re incredibly fragile and people can’t believe that they are just solid plaster.”
Hiaasen is a nonbinary artist based in Richmond, Virginia, whose work consists of installation, sculpture, performance, textiles and writing. Their work often tackles the labor, grief and desire that goes hand-in-hand with their identity.
“Ventilated Workwear,” Hiaasen’s work in the gallery, consists of various pieces of coveralls and workwear that have meticulously hand-cut holes in them, reminiscent of a ventilation or air conditioning system. They started the anti-uniform collection in 2016 when they moved to New York City from Baltimore and felt like they needed to constantly be working.
“At the time [when] I had first started making them I was working in a terrible retail job for like a high-end fashion boutique, and I could just sense that I was going to be fired,” Hiaasen said. “So I started wearing them to work and would sell them from my body and it was pretty great.”
The holes in the clothing are hand-cut using scissors and X-Acto knives. According to Hiaasen, cutting fabric by hand rather than by machine not only makes the fibers look different but also allows them to daydream and process their thoughts while working with their hands.
“I left the edges … all unprotected. They’re not like free checked or anything. So the more the performer or the worker is wearing them, the more exposed they’d become,” Hiaasen said.
“Ventilated Workwear” is not limited to clothes, either. Hiaasen also wanted to incorporate different kinds of labor beyond the traditional sense, and their collection includes things like foam earplugs and a sponge hand-cut in the same ventilated way.
Both artists’ work was tied to their gender identities and the various layers that come with being LGBTQ+.
“I really wanted to kind of … see how I can bring out the vulnerability to make it universal and to see if it’s not just you know, my body in the space, but it’s everybody’s vulnerabilities,” Doughtie said.
Featured image: UMD community members met over Zoom to discuss the Stamp Gallery’s “UNFOLD” exhibition with featured artists HH Hiaasen and Elliot Doughtie on Tuesday. Photo by Apurva Mahajan.