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<\/p>\n\u201cOne should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art\u201d \u2013 Oscar Wilde<\/p>\n
On the ground floor of the Victoria and Albert museum, in London\u2019s Kensington, adjacent to a long gallery filled with classical sculptures, busts and sketching students, is the Toshiba Gallery, housing the museum\u2019s Japanese art collection. There you can see, among other artefacts and treasures, what it probably London\u2019s best collection of both modern and historic kimonos.<\/p>\n
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There\u2019s also a candy pink Hello Kitty rice cooker, and an Alice in Wonderland themed Lolita outfit \u2013 but we can leave those for another discussion. The Toshiba gallery reopened in 2015, after months of conservation work, and the refurbishment of the gallery, and marks a point in a long history of Western fascination with, and fetishisation of, Japanese art and culture.<\/p>\n
Oscar Wilde famously wrote that, \u201cin fact the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country.\u201d His point was that people understand culture, history, travel in an idealised and stylised way \u2013 we view it through art<\/em>. He meant that, when we tell stories \u2013 even stories that are told in history books \u2013 we are always, in some sense, artists designing the way we are to be seen. Before him, the Impressionists \u2013 Van Gogh, Degas, Manet, Whistler, Pissaro \u2013 had also fixated on Japanese art, and before that, it played an important role in 18th<\/sup> Century European interiors, and dressmaking, symbolising empire, power, travel and expansion. Maybe Wilde chose Japan as his example because it is art that fascinates artists.<\/p>\n When I think about this idea that we learn about foreign places and different periods of history through design and artifice, I always wonder how some historian would look at times now? In an age of social media, it seems more relevant than ever. Everyone has access to a high quality camera, everyone can art direct and window dress their lives to the nth degree. What would cultural commentators a hundred years from now do to understand and define our current social patterns and behaviours? Would they unearth Instagram accounts saved in digital archives, and study the way people self-present and aestheticise their digital selves? Study the photographs in magazines, and the way they\u2019re emulated by readers themselves? It\u2019s the first time in history that every individual has their own personal media channels, and I can\u2019t help but wonder what this means for someone in the future looking back at our strange days \u2013 millions of individual records of the way people aspire and design their lives.<\/p>\n Clothes obviously play a hugely important part of that \u2013 they always have done. From the symbols of power embedded into historical portraits, to the way a pair of boots is styled and posed on Instagram today, what we wear has always been a place where this kind of artistic performance of identity happens. It\u2019s almost like the kimonos in the V&A, highly crafted, designed and valued pieces of art in themselves, function like metaphors for the way we treat what we wear today. The concept of Arena Martinez began with the art works, the pieces themselves, but the decision to use the kimono as a canvas came immediately after, like a natural progression. All the craft and painting and embroidery, as well as the tradition and social symbolism, working like the self-presentation and artistic work that we do on ourselves, to align ourselves with one group, or another, or to highlight our creativity and difference.<\/p>\n
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