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Niki Kanagini

Introduction Section 1 Section 2 Section 3 Section 4 Section 5 Section 6 Landscape Movement Column Untitled Manuscript for the Potential Viewer or Reader Domestic Scene (1) Domestic Scene (2) Ode to things Domestic Scene (3) Address Book Manuscripts Aphrodite Manuscripts The Walls Have Their Say Journey. Works and Days Attire Cleanliness – Purification – Fruit Washed Well, Try Some Trilogy – Female Angels

Niki Kanagini

Attire

Niki Kanagini’s systematic engagement with clothing is evinced by a nexus woven from cultural experiences and familial recollections linked to her cosmopolitan place of origin. Fabrics and clothes are approached not just as aesthetic or functional objects but also as conveyors of materiality, historicity, and lived experience that are multi-sensory in nature. The garments – often family heirlooms – that she incorporates into her installations and participatory works function, among other things, as material traces of the transition from a pre-industrial world to urbanised culture. The artist’s love for clothing can already be seen in her early sketches of, and studies for costumes dating to the time of her training in at the École Cantonale de Dessin et d’Art Appliqué in Lausanne (1952–1954), works she signed using the name Niki Koutli.