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Lanzavecchia + Wai Designers

Tattoo Back Brace, 2008

Now On View

Description

Maker

  • Lanzavecchia + Wai Designers
  • Francesca Lanzavecchia, b. 1983, Italian
  • Hunn Wai, Singaporean

Title

Tattoo Back Brace

Year

2008

Medium

Polycaprolactone

Dimensions

Center back length: 29.2 cm (11 1/2 inches)

Type

  • Fashion,
  • Costume

Credit

Georgianna Sayles Aldrich Fund

Object Number

2012.57

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Variance

February 1 - October 9, 2022

This plastic back brace, embellished with a red koi fish as if it were a tattoo, reimagines what assistive technology devices might look like. Medical devices are often perceived to be necessarily sterile and functional, leaving aside the possibility that they could reflect an individual’s aesthetics. (As a counterpoint, consider eyeglasses, which are also assistive technology devices, and the wide variety of styles available.) Lanzavecchia + Wai’s responds to this absence with a variety of devices including braces, canes, and crutches. “Here disability aids become a stage to discuss, understand, and cope with disability, illness, and human frailty. . . . [M]oulded and tailor-made around the body, [back braces] are a cumbersome second skin. They are reinterpreted with the aim of transforming them into objects of desire and representative skins.”

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in Copyright. This object is Tattoo Back Brace with the accession number of 2012.57. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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