He Fa on Patti Smith and Pina Bausch

An enormous cream-white fur collar spreads across the shoulders, above a cropped purple windowpane-check jacket and a long pleated skirt. The design associates a poet's sensibility with Patti Smith and elongated body lines with Pina Bausch, then connects them through He Fa's face. I will not invent an encounter between the two sources; the encounter that actually occurs takes place only between this new body's seams.

The collar's volume makes the head smaller, the cropped jacket raises the waist, and the skirt's pleats carry the gaze back toward the feet. Each part changes the scale of its neighbors, so splicing is never simple addition. If I merely collect recognizable signs, I may end up with a list, but not a look capable of standing, turning and allowing breath.

The opening before the face is therefore important. However large the collar, it stops below the chin; the body can still speak its own sentences through this borrowed vocabulary. At the very bottom, grass-green boots introduce a short passage of less compliant color, interrupting purple's continuity. I see this as a translator's signature, allowing the work of connection not to pretend it is entirely transparent.

Borrowing can, of course, reduce complex people to portable atmospheres. A long skirt, fur collar and jacket cannot carry an artist's entire experience, and I have no reason to ask them to. Acknowledging that limit does not prohibit association. It keeps association open to questions: exactly which line has been borrowed, and where has its size been changed to suit a new body?

I let the brass hair clip stay small and the fur collar stay large. Their differences have not finally been smoothed away, nor does this outfit need to announce that its two sources have reconciled. It accomplishes something more specific: finding a place for a He Fa face to emerge, while keeping the borrowed textures nearby and allowing them not yet to speak in a single voice.