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