Eko-Lab and Jennifer Wen Ma’s Dark Blossom Garden

by: Abigail Doan

Eko-Lab has been artfully navigating the cool rivulets of art and fashion since their early days as members of the House of Organic aka “Ekovaruhuset” collective on the Lower East Side. Designers Xing-Zhen Chung Hilyard and Melissa Kirgan are true pioneers on the ethical/sustainable fashion frontier, and their recent collaborations with artist Jennifer Wen-Ma is further proof that creative overlays and free expression can bring even more meaning to fashion when all of the various elements are beautifully aligned.

Fusing hand-painted designs, eco-friendly materials, and slow design methodologies (rituals) has been part of the Eko-Lab studio practice for many a season, so it seems fitting that they woud join forces with artist, Wen Ma, and her hands-on approach to identifying deeper, conceptual connections to nature while also referencing the landscapes of her homeland and the narrative power of myth.

Eko-Lab’s latest ‘Dark Blossom’ pieces are wild (wearable) creations that are a call and response to Jennifer Wen Ma’s recent installation, “Hanging Garden in Ink” at the The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing. The use of traditional ink and the range of dark-to-light is described as follows on the art center’s website:

“The installation is … an extension of the Beijing-born, New York-based artist’s exploration of a contemporary approach to mo, Chinese ink – an organic material that has been the main medium of expression and communication for centuries in East Asia. It embodies all colors, emulates all forms, and gives meaning to brush strokes and aesthetic achievements. Concurrently, black is the absence of all colors of light, or an exhaustive combination of multiple colors of pigment. It is a powerful symbol of void and muteness.”

Wen-Ma’s site-specific installation in Beijing references the historic Hanging Gardens of Babylon in a manner that leapfrogs over conventions of traditional ink painting on scrolls and formal storytelling strategies. The lush hanging form creates a dark pool of reflection that is also suggestive of a three-dimensional Rorschach test drawing. Suspended live plants were painted with Chinese black ink – creating layers of botanical illusion and immersive eco-mystery.

“Wearable art” is sometimes a bone of contention for fashion editors and buyers who do not see the viability (“marketability”) of one-of-a-kind fashion creations and slow production garments. But in a world where yet another piece of clothing can easily be tossed onto the garbage heap or forgotten like a neglected specimen in one’s backyard garden, it seems as if labels like Eko-Lab are gracefully imploring us to move beyond such wastefulness and stylistic bias. Fashion creations that might instead be jointly cultivated, creatively altered, and consequently aerated in our conscience, are working to better define ideas are about self in relation to the environment. With this in mind, we should celebrate those fashion initiatives bold enough to explore putting a bit more art and earth into shared plots of transformative style and resourceful alchemy.