In a society where authenticity is held in high esteem, an intolerance of ambiguity has emerged. The authenticity of the individual is the prevailing trend that seeks to situate man as an unambiguous being. With this collection I want to express the necessity of ambiguity. In the ancient cult of Dionysus, man is celebrated as an opposite being. In honor of the god of wine, his followers entered ecstasy. Intoxicated by wine, the Dionysian ensemble became the antithesis of itself. Through the gift of wine, the Dionysian dancers became half divine. With the dehumanization into the animalistic, the splitting into an opposition in itself took place in ecstasy. Not only the opposition in itself but being opposed in itself is the construct of ambiguity on which Dionysus and his occult entourage are functioning. Through the complexity of ambiguities, unambiguity is undermined and can be seen as a critique of a conventional perception of reality.
In the conceptual phase of my collection, I have elaborated a visual construct of ambiguities, which is especially evident in the prints, through the tension between sensual and destructive elements. In the surface design, I visualized duality on organza, lycra and silk, as well as elements of ecstasy and metamorphosis. Through ornamental collaging in Photoshop, I was able to create an ecstatic look through opposing elements. With the complexity in layering and prints I want to represent a state of excessive metamorphosis.
