Territory Dress

Territory Dress is concerned with claiming female territory, mapping the body, social and colonial histories and their ongoing impacts. The piece, commissioned by the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam and Museum Wereldeculturen, references Dutch colonial history by displaying the much-coveted Dutch colonies that spanned the globe within its frills and folds (which are made of paper maps and printed map cloth). The train creates a kind of movement, as if passing through time, pulling the weight of a brutal past whilst the hollow of the stomach questions the origins of bodily and national proprietary.

Territory Dress is in the series of Sculptural Garments that Stockwell has been making since 2000. These works cross the boundaries between the discuplines of art, fashion, design & craft questioning our need to seperate and catagorise. Their finely crafted detail draws the viewer in so they can see the deeper, layered conceptual questioning and meanings in the works.

Exhibitions:

Our Colonial Inheritance an exhibition of artworks and collection objects that will be permenantly on show at the Tropenmuseum from 24th June 2022 -

New Additions at the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam Dec 2019 - March 2020 

Publications:

Our Colonial Inheritance  W. Modest & W. Flores, Lannoo publishers  

ISBN: 9789401477512 English & Dutch, chapter in Object Lesson by Daan van Dartel

Provenance 1 - p. 75 - Susan Stockwell’s Territory Dress: Contemporary Art and Fashion in a Dutch Ethnographic Museum by Daan van Dartel

Video:

Territory Dress (6 min's 11 secs) by Susan Stockwell & Bevis Bowden

And on Bloasblog a German University Blog dedicated to Anthropolgical science and questions.