Lora Nikolova

What's Controlling You?

This assignment was inspired by the works of Hazel Meyer, who our class had the pleasure of working with throughout the semester. Her work is centred around queer aesthetics, bodies, feminism, and politics (Meyer, 2011). We were briefed to create our own jean jackets as an independent project and we had to think of a theme that was important to us. The theme I chose was mental health, specifically relationships with anxiety.This jacket was inspired by a one-page comic I made about a rat taking over a person - evil Ratatouille if you will. The rat symbolizes anxiety and how sometimes it can be difficult not to succumb to ones worries and fears. For the back panel, I took an illustration from the comic and made it a back patch. I embroidered a representation of anxiety (the rat; top left) and what it may feel like to deal with anxiety (person transforming into rat;bottom right). I asked my followers on Instagram “what controls you? what makes you anxious?”. I drew their responses and made them into small pins. The illustrations are very doodle-like and may seem insignificant or disconnected, but to different people they mean a lot more. A common answer I received was the feeling of being judged and perceived by many people in different way. From afar, the eye pattern printed around the perimeter of the jacket may not be instantly recognized, but the closer you get and realize what the imagery is depicting, the more daunting it will feel.