The T-shaped jumpsuit known as the tuta was invented in 1919 by Futurist artist Thayaht (pseudonym of Ernesto Michahelles) with the goal of designing attire that would function in natural relation to the body. Over the last century, the jumpsuit has become a symbolic item of clothing: flexible in its gender neutrality, practical as a uniform for trade workers, and infamous as the attire of prisoners. Adding to the rich history and iconography of the jumpsuit is artist Sara Enrico’s sculptural installation series The Jumpsuit Theme (2017–ongoing). Enrico began to draw a comparison between clothing and sculpture – how they both physically interact with the world around them and evoke new ways of communicating, oftentimes more intimate and personal than other forms of language. Enrico is interested in respite, in inactivity, when the body refuses to operate on hyperfunctional levels, and instead collapses into blissful non-use. In this installation, her sculptures, made by pouring pigmented concrete into a soft formwork of laboratory-made technical fabric, are installed on the floor, sprawled out as if napping. Shaped by used clothes that give them an approximate anthropomorphism, the sculptures are long and limby, with a skin-like texture that results from Enrico’s lengthy casting process. The artist and her suite of collaborators worked the materials – and concepts – through many layers of transformation, until at last they rest, completely still.
Isabella Achenbach
