jennifer crupi's "unguarded gestures"

By sarahendren

Mar 19, 2013

Jennifer Crupi is externalizing body language cues—some iconic, some more insidious—with wearable armature. Largely made with sleek aluminum parts, these tools recall a medical grammar of the early 20th century: braces, stirrups, or dentistry tools. So the emotionality of their gestures comes as a gorgeous surprise:

A woman wears a metal "necklace" with a measuring stick attached to a cup for her chin. The vertical measure marks the extroversion level by its distance from the relative elevation of the chin.

Her “Posture__ Gauge—Chin“ measures chin placement and its associated degrees of extroversion or introversion—higher, up to + 3, for the more social among you, and lower, to - 3, for more solo types.

A model wears an aluminum cuff bracelet, from which five metal "marionette" strings hang, with a ring for each finger. When the wearer's hand is braced by these rings and cuff, the just-so arranged hand evokes the poses of classical paintings.

Her Ornamental Hand is made to position palm and fingers in the precise classical gestures of western figurative painting—an acquired repose.

And Crupi tackles some of the iconic body gestures and postures of guarded and unguarded moments. Even when we know these gestures as types, even when we modulate our faces and voices, these arrangements of limbs persist in universally betraying our emotions:

A model wears a metal wire vestment, hung from the neck. Braces mount each side of the wearer's wait, and extensions with cups for the elbows extend to each side. The posture is an open-handed, "unguarded" one.

Unguarded Gestures—3.

A model wears a "crossed arms" necklace—wiring hangs from the neck, and two half-cupping splints support crossed overlapping arms.

Guarded Gestures—2.

A hand-patterned metal tool, to be pressed between two palms and with dotted-indentations for placing each fingertip.

A model using the "power gesture" hand tool described above.

This _Power Gesture _is ”an implement that requires the user to assume the authoritative ‘steepled fingers.’”

Another wire-framed "necklace" armature, ending with half-hand shaped "pockets" for each downward facing palm. This wearable places each hand, face down, at the wearer's waist—an at-rest, "unguarded" posture.

Unguarded Gestures—1.

A warm-colored acrylic backboard for the unguarded gesture described above—with an etched surface that semi-reflects the wearer.

And these posture-performers come with their own architecture, a home where they live when they’re not worn. But they’re never passive. Crupi writes that, at rest, “the pieces hang on frosted acrylic displays that resemble mirrors and have on their surface the dotted outline of a person assuming the same posture. The slightly reflective surface of the acrylic allows viewers to see their own posture, as they ‘fill in’ the outline form with their reflection. The warm tones of the frameless displays seek to evoke the character of the gestures as well.”

More at Jennifer’s web site. Thanks to Duane McLemore.