Reconfiguring fashion - Liz Collins

Liz Collins - known for her use of machine knitting in installations and performance - has a new show in Manhattan. "Touching the Void is part structural and part surreal, Collins turns the TAC [Textile Arts Center, 25 West 8th St, NY] into a knitted cave made from post-consumer garments and other textiles. The installation consists of innovative knit constructions that have been inspired by bodily protuberances, growths and sinkages. "

The first phase of her Knitting Nation project took place in 2005. She says: "Knitting Nation is a performance and site-specific installation project. It reconfigures textile fabrication and apparel manufacturing in relation to the human labor behind it, with performance and collectivity as mediating forces. The project functions as a commentary on how humans interact with machines, global manufacturing, trade and labor, brand iconography, and fashion."

Phase Seven (Darkness Descends, 2011), for instance, "was conceived to be a concert of sorts, with a quintet of knitters all stationed under dramatic lighting at their knitting machines. Over the course of six hours, together we knit a giant pile of red cotton fabric. The piece was an endurance test and a show of hard labor; an un-coreographed dance, and a militaristic display of a dark emotional state."

See the video here.

Her projects include use of reflective yarn (photographed in Alaska) -

a body suit that allows the viewer to become a sock monkey -

and the use of veins and wounds on or in garments -