Open Call: Troy Michie

Foreground as Background, inspired by the artist’s research into the zoot suit and the history of camouflage, includes two large-scale paper weaving collages and a work of sculptural suit jackets made from deconstructed garments and handmade paper. The works are inspired by photography’s role in the 19th-century development of camouflage and reference Homer Saint-Gaudens’s invention of transforming recycled papers into material for camouflage blankets which allowed soldiers or civilians to disappear into a photograph. In Foreground as Background, Michie combines this interest in the history of camouflage with the zoot suit’s history as a style and a gesture of resistance against racial prejudice and discrimination. To complete this set of suits, Michie worked with Dieu Donné, a nonprofit cultural institution that serves artists interested in the collaborative process of hand papermaking.