Property Of
This project builds on my colleague Pin Sangkaeo’s thesis and ongoing exhibition work “Temples of Consumerism: Bangkok Shopping Malls” which investigates the role of architecture as a physical tool of control, used by those who hold political powers in order to superimpose their ideologies to the collective public and perpetuate the systems. Through this project, I hope to add to this discussion on how articles of clothing, particularly school uniforms are used in a similar way to hold power and control over others. The information gathered from research on school uniforms in Thailand, Japan, and the United States will be compared and contrasted to analyze the beliefs embedded in the uniforms and the gender manipulations that come from the different designs for the female and male students in each of these countries. The argument that the choices we can or cannot make about what we wear and the deliberate designs of the articles of clothing result in the enforcement of power over another and inequalities between genders will be portrayed through the redesigning of the school uniforms by overexaggerating and pushing the rules to an extreme or denying the constraints given by the school rules.
