Nadine Ouellet


Headdress Design, 2021



The lockdown – a period of physical absence from society, but of conscious individual presence. We inhabited our heads, bodies and homes like never before. The typographic headdresses emulate the rawness of our continuous thoughts, the cacophony of words in our heads, the non-sense, the new awareness and the visceral need to connect with others
and be seen.

The typeface in this photographic series has been generated by extracting forms from the famous Jean Dubuffet’s Hourloupe pictorial works. Named “Type Brut”, it was created during an interdisciplinary residency at Dubuffet’s former atelier in France in June 2019. The headdresses and masks were designed subsequently as a means to experiment with the letterforms – in space and in relationship to the body. The pieces were supposed to be showcased at LASALLE's Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore in April 2020, but the exhibition was cancelled due to COVID-19 and Nadine continued to work on them during the lockdown. They were imagined, not as fashion objects, but as visual elements of composed images. Timothy pursued the work and created the photographic images you are seeing – typographic head-dresses staged into visual narratives.



The works in order of display are:
bah, scramble, yo, hug, and mmm.
Photography by Timothy Stuart Wee

@timothystuartwee








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