A Cut Above the Rest — Exquisite Fabric Carcasses

Tamara Kostianovsky’s fabric-based sculptures convey all the passions and emotions of a mainstream marble masterpiece and then some, befitting her colorful specialty in the medium of the flesh, dead carcasses, and natural rejuvenation. Kostianovsky, an Argentine-American artist who has presented many solo exhibitions across the United States and Europe, continues to use her formal training from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in her work. Twenty years into a successful artistic career, she maintains that sculpting with fabric is a skill she constantly works to improve. “There isn’t really a difference between fabric sculpture and more traditional techniques like marble or bronze,” she says. “The laws of visual arts are still the same: to create forms agreeable to the eye, to bring a sense of harmony in a visual format.” 

Kostianovsky’s process usually takes about two months per sculpture, in which a large chunk of time is spent reviewing and reflecting upon an almost-finished piece. “Sometimes in the desire to actualize the initial vision which prompted the work, a few ‘mistakes’ are made that get corrected over time.” Kostianovsky primarily sews with tough polyester-based threads and curved needles used in upholstery and surgery. She typically starts with a hollow structure made from armature wire, producing a base that is tough and easy to shape. Only the top layer is made from fabric, and her primary source of material is women’s clothing — often directly cannibalized from her own closet. The choice was deliberate, drawing parallels between the open and raw carcasses made from female clothing and violence against the female body.

While those elements still remain in her work, Kostianovsky has begun filling the gaps in her cloth carcasses with plant growth and natural beauty. “I was prompted by the desire to create images of regeneration that rendered a positive response to the crisis — a type of visual future, even if utopian,” she says. “My recent works with carcasses feature outgrowths of vegetation populated by birds, in vivid scenes where the flesh literally transitions from carnage to renaissance.”

Learn more at tamarakostianovsky.com

Featured image: Installation View 2. Courtesy of Musee de la Chasse et de la Nature, RX&SLAG Gallery, and the Artist

This article appeared in Make: Vol. 90.