I met Gabriel Dawe at Kendall, in the lobby of the Federal building and we went into the gallery where he’s installing his piece, Plexus 18, a site-specific work made of sewing thread. He’s been doing the Plexus series for two and a half years.
Gabriel describes his work as “Architectural structures composed of the main component of clothing, which is sewing thread. That refers to ideas of shelter, protection, architecture and clothing protect us from the elements, but what I’m doing is reversing the material of clothing into an architectural scale. That quality of sheltering sublimates or becomes transformed, and instead of sheltering the body I have a structure that shelters the human spirit, in a way. They become soothing structures that are very comforting, and they protect us. Not in a physical way, but in a metaphorical way.”
I had the chance to walk inside this installation, which will be closed off when it is completed. The only way I can think of to describe it is quiet. When you’re between the wall and the lines of string, it feels like nothing can touch you, like you’re separate from the outside world.
I asked Gabriel why he used the theme of shelter in his work. He said it was “Probably just happenstance. It all started because I was working with textiles and working with clothing. I was doing small sculptures with clothing and pins, I was doing embroidery, and because of that I was invited to be a part of a show and collaborate with an architect, and the aim was to explore the overlap between fashion and architecture. So that’s what put me on that path of exploring, and that exploration led to these installations…It was just like, thinking about what I was doing that led me to realize, well clothing, it has many functions, but one of the functions is to protect us, and architecture is the same thing. They have many functions, but one of them is to protect us. There’s something there. I realized that by changing the material of one into the scale of the other one, it kept that sheltering quality but it’s transformed and it just becomes more metaphorical.”
I thought it was interesting that he had worked with embroidery as a media for sculpture. He said, “You know, I used to be a graphic designer, and I got really tired of it. That’s when I decided I wanted more creative freedom, so I started doing painting and collage, exploring that avenue. Then I recalled that when I was growing up, I really wanted to learn how to embroider. I grew up in Mexico, so it’s a very macho oriented society. Because I was a boy, I wouldn’t even dare to ask my grandmother to teach me, because that’s not what boys are supposed to do. I was remembering that and I was like “well, I could start exploring that.” so I just started on my own, trying to see what that was about…It was very frustrating in the beginning. It’s a very slow process, and I had this designer mentality that you have to produce and be fast and you know, if I wanted to have a certain commercial viability to it and be able to live off my artwork, but I came to terms with that, that it was a slow process that was going to take time…I went back to school to do my MFA and that pushed me to creating sculptures. I started working with textiles and I started introducing pins, that’s how I started the Pain series…It’s pieces of clothing with pins. I would have a collar with pins all around. They become this little fetishistic object, and those pieces led me to be invited to be a part of that show to collaborate with the architect that led me to the installations.
“All of my work, because I’m a man and I’m dealing with textiles, it deals with gender politics in a way, and gender identity, and questioning social structures that we’re used to and don’t nessecarially question…I still try to do that, but it’s in a much more subtle way. It’s not an overt political statement.”
Gabriel also mentioned something that I don’t hear very often, about external rewards. For him, people reacting to his installations is an external reward. He said that he received an email from a parent, with his child’s drawing of his work, and another email saying that his work gave someone escape and hope. I think that kind of thing is fantastic.
Thanks to Gabriel for taking the time to talk to me about his work!
The vote code for Plexus No. 18 is 52805, and I think that you should probably vote for it.