ALEXINE CHANEL
THE CALLING
Project "The Calling" seeks to correlate the arbitrariness of my peregrinations and the "bumping into" signboards that spell out the names of persons of my acquaintance, friends, families. Each time I come across such a name, a generic first name that could apply to a thousand persons, the huge letters summon up a particular individual.
"The Calling" connects each large, flashing signboard name with a written portrait of one singular person belonging to my personal network.
Still, how does “everybody” fit into my wedding dress?
Fitting Berliners and my family into my dress did not seem enough of an answer, how did other cultures fit?
I decided to take my wedding dress to the other side of the world, to China. Studying their wedding culture, I became fascinated with their obsession for wedding photography and their elaborate, lavish use of decors. I fabricated two portable decors, featuring reproductions of the Sans-Soucis gardens and offered this new wedding photo opportunity to the Shanghai dwellers.
Following is a selection from around 12 photographs, all untitled and shot in Shanghai in 2014.
The next setting for the Fitting in the Fitting is Dhaka, Bangladesh. What most caught my attention in this particular wedding culture is the tradition of “arranged marriages”.
It seemed fitting to fit the Fitting in the Fitting in a new fitting, creating a further syncopated space around the central figure, smaller and smaller in the decor.
Following is a selection from around 12 photographs, all untitled and shot in Dhaka in 2016.