Mella Jaarsma makes a very interesting social commentary with her piece “Hi Inlander.”
Her choice of materials for the garments she made included frog legs/skin, chicken feet, kangaroo skin, and fish skin. Not your usual go-to materials for cloak-making, is it?
I think Mella chose these specific materials to highlight the differences in the perception of nature among different cultures. For example, some societies see frog legs as food and others see it as something that is unclean. The materials she chose either have a very significant role in different cultures or none at all, which is what I think makes this piece so successful. The viewer is struck by the objects or materials that are most uncommon to them. For example, on the east coast of the US we generally don’t even think about frog legs or kangaroo skin, and that is what may strike us as strange us as dynamic and strange. Someone who comes from Australia, however, may be more interested in another material other than the Kangaroo skin.
This exhibit brings awareness of other cultures and even parts of our own lives that we don’t even notice. I think that a big part of this piece is also the interaction between these cultures. Mella facilitates interaction through the kitchen table component of her exhibit, where she has prepared samples of Kangaroo, Frog, Chicken, and Kangaroo meat for people to sample. This allows people to not only look at her work and wonder about other cultures but to also take part in these cultures and maybe even engage in conversation with others who take part in sampling the meats.
Architecture and Visual Arts 