Cold Comfort

This exhibition transformed the gallery space of the Art Center through the installation of a hand-pieced garment that recreated the original architectural detail of the del Prado Hotel’s ballroom. This project offered a three-fold examination of the conflicted nature of identity: personal, institutional and cultural. The plaster ornamentation of the del Prado Hotel – the former exhibition space of the Art Center – contained an original Beaux-Arts design. In Cold Comfort, the Chicago artists Karen Reimer and Constance Bacon merged double identities of past and present through collaborative action. Their sewn garment provided the space with a third identity, that integrated the grandeur of the ballroom with the pristine white cube of a contemporary exhibition space. Reimer and Bacon used secondhand clothes, sheets and rags to construct their ornamentation and draw on the skills of seamstresses.

  • August 26, 2001 – October 6, 2001
  • The Del Prado

Special funding for this project was provided by the Orbit Fund.

Cold Comfort