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Lanzavecchia + Wai Designers

Tattoo Back Brace

Maker

Lanzavecchia + Wai Designers
Francesca Lanzavecchia (Italian, b. 1983)
Hunn Wai (Singaporean, b. 1980)

Title

Tattoo Back Brace

Year

2008

Medium

  • Polycaprolactone

Materials/Techniques

Techniques

  • Polycaprolactone

Dimensions

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

Credit / Object Number

Credit

Georgianna Sayles Aldrich Fund

Object Number

2012.57

Type

  • Costume

Publications

  • Journal

Manual / Issue 17: Variance

This issue complements the RISD Museum exhibition Variance: Making, Unmaking, and Remaking Disability, on view through October 9, 2022.

Exhibition History

Variance
Making, Unmaking, and Remaking Disability
Feb 01, 2022 – Oct 09, 2022

Label copy

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.”

Image use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use.

In copyright This object is in copyright

Tombstone

Lanzavecchia + Wai Designers
Francesca Lanzavecchia (Italian, b. 1983)
Hunn Wai (Singaporean, b. 1980)
Tattoo Back Brace, 2008
Polycaprolactone
Center back length: 29.2 cm (11 1/2 inches)
Georgianna Sayles Aldrich Fund 2012.57

To request 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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