Artist Amy Burrell’s installation work has decorated the walls and tables at I. Fell Gallery throughout January, and the popularity of her first interactive event has inspired another night of creation and photography.
Burrell’s exhibitions will be showcased at an event from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday. During that time attendees can craft faux flowers into crown shapes, model them for photos and hang their coats on a moving art piece.
Burrell, as member of the As Good As Mine collective, said the headdress portion of the exhibition, titled “#YourGoddessIsAsGoodAsMine,” is similar to a past interactive display she did with a photographer friend when she was pursuing an MFA at IU.
“I created garments, people put them on and what we were interested in was how people change how they act, how they feel, when they put certain garments on,” Burrell said.
As a massage therapist, Burrell said she deals a lot with the connections between subconscious and unconscious desires, and that for her those desires often play into how she designs her interactive pieces.
When she was thinking about this exhibition in particular, Burrell said she was drawn to photos of Ukrainian flower headdresses and found a childhood connection.
Though not expressly political in her art, Burrell said she hopes the politics of the weekend with the inauguration inspire women and men to come out and try on the headdresses.
“With all the political stuff, too, there was this desire to kind of empower women and not women that are like men — women that are feminine and bring out this idea of beauty,” Burrell said. “Flowers in the hair belong to so many cultures and have so many different meanings. It’s elevating.”
The other installation Burrell created, called the ”Pendurador,” sits at the front of I. Fell and is comprised of a collection of hangers on hooks and rope that are designed for attendees to hang their coats.
This installation was inspired by Burrell’s time as a fine arts student, when she said she noticed people did not have space to hang up their coats in the gallery before her textile show.
“The idea was that you enter the gallery to take the outside off, and come into this more magical or art space where other things can happen,” Burrell said. “I also had this clear idea that I wanted people to have to look up, to physically move their bodies, find the hanger, lower the hanger.
The two installations come from different areas of inspiration, but connect under a theme of identity.
“People come in, take their outside layer or shell off, then they go into this space and put on this kind of beautiful, different kind of persona and get their photo taken while in the gallery,” Burrell said. “Then, on their way back out, they go back to who they are normally.”
