At the end of 2022, I won an art object competition organized by HSE Art and Design School & Befree. It was supposed to consist of four parts and be created using the assemblage technique, incorporating the brand's flagship products.
I chose to base my concept on the idea of Befree since its name implies "Be free". However, what does this mean for the company's employees? For some, freedom comes through dance, for others in an oversized t-shirt, and for some, it's the aimless walk through the city. I decided to form the word "free" using clothing items. I aimed for each employee to participate in creating the object by immortalizing on pieces of paper what holds value to them. This would allow the brand to gain deeper insights about itself and make the object genuinely unique.
I attempted to lay out the letters using clothing items I had:
I chose to base my concept on the idea of Befree since its name implies "Be free". However, what does this mean for the company's employees? For some, freedom comes through dance, for others in an oversized t-shirt, and for some, it's the aimless walk through the city. I decided to form the word "free" using clothing items. I aimed for each employee to participate in creating the object by immortalizing on pieces of paper what holds value to them. This would allow the brand to gain deeper insights about itself and make the object genuinely unique.
I attempted to lay out the letters using clothing items I had:
Here's how the sketch looked like, the one that eventually won:
I created a Google Form and asked employees to answer what 'being free' means to them. I printed out the responses using the company's brand font
I decided to use a plaster solution to fixate the fabric. I did a preliminary test of the method on an old t-shirt, but I was still anxious. Plaster behaved very differently with each type of fabric—some absorbed two to three times more solution, while others solidified within minutes
The plaster reduced the fabric's original volume, resulting in the letters being slimmer than anticipated.
It was decided to take additional material and build up the letters because the Befree office is very spacious, and the art object shouldn't get lost. Luckily, I had an assistant to help me with that :)
Now the letters looked substantial, each measuring about half a meter in dimensions
