“ALABAMA-MAMA-JAMA”
Concept | Encapsulating traditional and contemporary values, the deep south finds itself immobile at the turning point of the country. Through reiterative performances of conservative social norms, thorough religious understanding, and southern conventionality, the American dream manifests through normative structures of family, marriage, industry, and institution. Alabama-Mama-Jama is a mockery of this homogenized ideology and narrates a metamorphosis of the queer southern abject into the utopian rhinestone cowgirl.
Bio | SARAH FORÊT is currently studying for a BFA in Fashion Design and Construction at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her forte is in wearable sculptures and unconventional garments dealing with themes of body, beauty, mortality, society, and subversion manifesting in maximalist form, color, texture, and movement. She thrives in the synthesis of fashion, art, music, literature, theater, and installation often looking to drag performances and avant-garde expressions of self to the likes of Leigh Bowery, Björk, and Prince as her guide. Born and raised in a small town in Alabama, she draws most of her inspiration from the duality she experiences between country and metropolitan lifestyles. Exploring various cultural and social climates, she has developed an eye for finding satire in common objects and exaggerating mundane situations into surreal performances of camp and absurdity. Combining research in fashion theory, media-enforced standards of beauty, and artists, designers, and performers who have made history by treading against the grain, she attempts to hold a critical mirror up to a society that shamelessly takes a #selfie in its reflection.