Fifth Floor is pleased to announce HEDVA | the first collection, a new body of work by HEDVA, an interdisciplinary design studio founded by Johanna Reed. Inspired by the intimate relationship one has with clothing, HEDVA strives to instill interactive, personal connections between fine art and the human body. The studio creates handmade, unique artworks that function as a kind of fashion-meets-fine-art, wherein the life and body of the wearer become the exhibition space for the work. The pieces are laboriously crafted by hand out of unusual materials, imbued with emotional, aesthetic, and intellectual concepts, so that the end result is a provocative combination of sculpture, fashion, design, and artisanal craft.

The first collection, a collaboration with artist Emma Garr, is structured around the aesthetic notion of what one’s thoughts could look like if worn on the body.  It is an exercise in creating wearable fine art garments that are transformed via thoughts and thus function collaboratively with their wearer. They are made of unexpected materials; in this case ranging from book pages to film negatives to squid-ink-dyed pasta. The pieces begin their lives as artworks once they’re worn, at which time the wearer begins an intimate and interactive relationship with the work. For instance, a dress made of knotted bed sheets can be untied and reshaped to the wearer’s desire; the bed sheets themselves having sentimental value are dusted with perfume so as to evoke the psychology of memories attached to the material and scent. A skirt made of hand-sewn book pages can be irrevocably and intentionally altered if worn on a rainy day. A heavy cloak with enlarged, lambent head piece becomes an enclosed space, a lighted world unto itself, enveloping the wearer in a psychological and physical shelter. Here, the body is the exhibition space for the work, and the wearer is the artist. The work becomes alive the moment it interacts with the body, changing it from a static piece of art into something with multiple functions, as it records  and displays the actions and thereby thoughts of its wearer.