David Siepert is a German artist living in Switzerland, whose works deal with human behavior within environments marked by processes of change and tension. The concept for his latest work originates from the artist’s time spent in the Middle East, performing research in places such as Lebanon, Egypt, Bahrain, and Dubai. It was here that he first encountered the censorship of advertisements in women’s fashion magazines. These are not cases of straightforward censorship, where the magazines themselves are prevented from being published because of their content. The magazines appear for public purchase via translational processes between cultural conventions of dress — painstakingly applied to individual images. With magazines that are produced in these Middle Eastern countries, or specifically for them, these adjustments are created pre-press. However, in the case of imported Western magazines, which are available uncensored, it is usually the shop owner who takes responsibility for the images. Often whole pages will be removed from magazines, because too much of woman’s skin is shown. But some shopkeepers take it upon themselves to cover these exposed areas by hand, using felt-tip pens or markers. These cases of self-censorship, as the images themselves are not prohibited, can be seen as acts of translating cultural conventions. By covering areas that are shown unclothed, fashion is adjusted and transformed into the image of something that does not exist in reality. Chosen from a collection put together over several years, several of these aesthetically and culturally sensitive alterations formed the starting point for the ‟Censored Dresses” project. Working with the concept of fashion producing fashion, Siepert took the hand-censored fashion advertisements to professional dressmakers in Cairo’s Islamic quarter and asked them to recreate the clothing as depicted. Adding another dimension to the translational process, these instructions left the practical parameters of the design open to the women’s interpretation. The finished dresses are a product of a complex relationship between different cultural conventions, which are simultaneously mediated through individual interpretations. The final phase of the project consisted of a performance in the form of a fashion show with the dresses at Zurich’s historic Cabaret Voltaire in May of 2012, followed by exhibitions both in Zurich and Beirut. Photographs of models wearing the dresses, referencing the conventions of fashion photography, were part of the exhibits. Translating the work back into the arena of publishing, an editorial fashion shoot with the dresses was done, thus treading on the mixed territory between fashion, advertising, copyrights, and art.
