Wardrobe
Isabella Manfredi

Opens Friday, November 22, 6 - 9 pm
November 22 – December 21
 

1599fdT is very excited to announce the opening of Wardrobe, Isabella Manfredi's first solo exhibition with the gallery. 

Featuring a series of 25 garments made and worn by the artist in the summer of 2024, Wardrobe is a display of a life lived through the clothing and objects it is stored in. Focusing on the modern-day challenge of drafting and sewing a body of clothing that functioned as the artist’s sole wardrobe for 94 days, Manfredi looks to labor, ephemera, and consumption as driving themes behind the pieces. 

The dual definition of wardrobe as both a collection of someone’s clothing and the cabinet the collection resides in indicates the swinging movement between where we decide materials operate and what they are purposed into. Using old-growth redwood torn down from farmhouses and homes in San Jose and Stanford and journaling the experience of creating and wearing the project, Manfredi looks to what is imbued and necessary in the substances of daily life. Reminiscing of Anne Carson’s conversational poem Ghost Q & A, the exhibition explores the wavering legibility in our talks with the familiar. 

What do garments think about us? Where do they keep their root  – the materials closest to people? How do we metabolize clothes and how can we speak with them more clearly? 

– Ani Ahlberg