The Abandoned Project

The project is a concept that arised after discovering an old abandoned building in the centre of Sao Paulo, Brazil. The building reflected a  strong sense of loss, architectural impediment and halted completition.  A grand structure that somehow lost its life after being given so much hard-work and care while being built. Now all that remains is a concrete mess of unfinished plans; a grey ending.

The unfinished building inspired me as a place to connect people who are in a similar grey situation. Those who have lost the attachment to something they always had, and felt the need to hold onto. I wanted to highlight that split second when one realises that they are alone in a grey structure that is detached from their past reality. As drepessing as it sounds it’s a feeling we all experience in our lives.

I thought it would be interesting to dive in more to find out the exact definition of the word abandoned. The dictionary gives us:

1. forsaken or deserted: an abandoned building; an abandoned kitten.

2.unrestrained or uncontrolled; uninhibited: She danced with abandoned enthusiasm.

As we know, abandoned means a loss of something – being deserted, lost. The second meaning is also interesting, it appears that when you are abandoned you are also unrestrained. Are you free? How can a negative feeling have such a powerful alternate? If a mother leaves her child in the street and never comes back, then that child has been abandoned and ‘freed’ from her mother. Of course here in a negative sense. The fact is still that abandonment leads to freedom. Loss is a freedom of some sort.

Beside the nature of the project, I also wanted to communicate with the viewer with the clothes that the models would wear. For this side of things, I am getting in touch with fashion students from Sao Paulo to discuss to potential designs and ideas.

Advertisement