M (current issue)

MONDAY
ARTPOST
2025-0310
ISSN1918-6991
MONDAYARTPOST.COM
Columns by Artists and Writers: Bob Black / bq / Cem Turgay / David Clarke / Fiona
Smyth / Edwin Kwan / Gary Michael Dault / Kai Chan / Kamelia Pezeshki / Lee Ka-sing
/ Malgorzata Wolak Dault / Shelley Savor / Tamara Chatterjee / Tomio Nitto / Yam Lau
Archive
• Diptych 2014-2023
(M) MONDAY ARTPOST published on Mondays. Columns by Artists and Writers. All Right Reserved. Published since 2002.
Edit: Lee Ka-sing and Holly Lee Archive. Design: DOUBLE DOUBLE studio. Publisher: Ocean and Pounds.
Contact: mail@oceanpounds.com Free Subscription: subscribe.mondayartpost.com, ISSN 1918-6991.

OCEANPOUNDS
BOOKS
M Column Contributors
Cem Turgay lives and works as a photographer in Turkey. David Clarke lives in Hong Kong. He makes visual
art in a variety of mediums, and produces both scholarly and creative writing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
David_J._Clarke Edwin Kwan a photographer lives in Toronto Fiona Smyth is a painter, illustrator, cartoonist and
instructor in OCAD University's Illustration Program. For more than three decades, Smyth has made a name for
herself in the local Toronto comic scene as well as internationally. http://fiona-smyth.blogspot.com. Gary Michael
Dault lives in Canada and is noted for his art critics and writings. He paints and writes poetry extensively. In 2022,
OCEAN POUNDS published two of his art notebooks in facsimile editions. Kai Chan immigrated to Canada from
Hong Kong in the sixties. He’s a notable multi-disciplinary artist who has exhibited widely in Canada and abroad.
www.kaichan.art Kamelia Pezeshki is a photographer living in Toronto. She continues to use film and alternative
processes to make photographs. www.kamelia-pezeshki.com Ken Lee is a poet and an architectural designer based
in Toronto. He has been composing poetry in Chinese, and is only recently starting to experiment with writing
English poetry under the pen name, “bq”. Lee Ka-sing, founder of OCEAN POUNDS, lives in Toronto. He writes
with images, recent work mostly photographs in sequence, some of them were presented in the format of a book.
www.leekasing.com Robert Black, born in California, is an award-winning poet and photographer currently based
in Toronto. His work often deals with themes related to language, transformation, and disappearance. Shelley Savor
lives in Toronto. She paints and draws with passion, focusing her theme on city life and urban living experiences.
Tamara Chatterjee is a Toronto photographer who travels extensively to many parts of the world. Tomio Nitto is
a noted illustrator lives in Toronto. The sketchbook is the camera, he said.Yam Lau, born in British Hong Kong, is
an artist and writer based in Toronto; he is currently an Associate Professor at York University. Lau’s creative work
explores new expressions and qualities of space, time and the image. He is represented by Christie Contemporary.
Little By Little
Tomio Nitto
8x10 inch, 116 pages, Published by OCEAN POUNDS, 2023
Print-on-demand edition available from BLURB (CAN$50.00)
https://www.blurb.ca/b/11741982-little-by-little

Holly Lee
(1953-2024)
Hot Waves, Cold Waves
Cibachrome photograph, triptych
mounted on wood, 32 x 24 inch
Year of creation: 1991
The Works of Holly Lee, edited by the Lee Ka-sing and Holly Lee Archive, is a
multi-volume book project comprising over 20 volumes. The series is currently
being compiled and will be published by Ocean and Pounds. Each issue of M
will feature a selected piece from this project.

Gary Michael Dault
Poem a Week
Animal Sleep
to wake
from an animal sleep
how ancient
the first wave feels
on the fur
of the cave
the world stretch
is tawny and gilded
how old
have you been
in grass and straw?
how old
do you plan to be
now that you’re
on two legs?
March 4, 2025

Yam Lau
The following are my thoughts on Margiela’s work.
Notes: on Martin Margiela
Few fashion designers reflect on clothing, and even fewer are interested in the conceptual and ethical
implications of their craft. Perhaps this is not required. The fashion industry operates under different
objectives: to capitalize on revenue by producing the same variations of the “new”.
If fashion were driven by banal slogans, empty spectacles, mindless branding to engineer consumption,
the questions of our identity and relationship with clothes would seem as unreal and irrelevant as when
consumers are faced with the parade of endlessly recycled styles. None of these requires reflection
and engagement. Is it that the fashion paradigm has entirely dominated our relationship with clothing,
rendering us incapable of authentically regarding and living with our clothes?
Since the beginning of his career, I have found Martin Margiela important because his work proposes
a more fundamental and critical relationship with clothing than that promoted by the fashion industry.
Margiela’s production critically reflects on the fashion industry, the craft and the studio of the dressmaker,
and the architecture of clothing. In short, the various aspects of experimentation, production, and
dissemination of the fashion industry are framed and internalized as the “content” of his practice. This
sustained criticality and production program distinguishes Margiela’s clothes from being merely a stylistic
variation among many. Above all, his work invites us to recognize a life alongside it. It speaks to how
clothing concerns us and how we live and endure in the world with our clothes as companions.
1. blank label
Pointing at “Fashion”
Margiela does not give interviews except by fax and does not allow photographs of him to be published
in the media. This could be recognized as an “anti-fashion” attitude, a label generally applied to several
designers from Belgium, Margiela included. Margiela’s reticence, I believe, creates an image of the fashion
star that is also simultaneously absent from within the fashion system. His blank white label- an indexing
device, a place holder of sort- points to where the designer’s brand is usually marked (fig.1). Instead, the
brand has been evacuated with the blank label. This declared absenteeism is not merely an act of erasure
or negation. It is also a framing device: it points to those familiar signposts of fashion, such as the brand
name, spectacle, and fashion star, and liquidating them with a non-descript proxy. And by the same
stroke, this gesture of pointing is also a gesture of distancing. It installs an opening, an interruption, from
within fashion where the designer can operate critically. I will choose one example from his production to
elaborate on my point.
Margiela’s critical perspective on fashion can be both humorous and charming. The scale-to-human Barbie
Dolls’ clothes are striking and beautiful examples(figure 2). This “reproduction” of Barbie’s garments
scaled up for humans is a consistent element in his seasonal collections. Suppose Barbie’s clothes can be
perceived as a superficial endorsement of the fashion industry, a simulated, abstracted, scaled down and
generic replication of stylistic codes. In that case, Margiela’s reimagining, enlarging, and reintegrating
Barbie’s generic garments into the fashion system becomes a playful and subversive act. They simulate a
simulated image of fashion and install it back into the fashion landscape. This operation serves as a form of
conceptual framing and satire.

I am not inclined to characterize Margiela’s interpretation of Barbie’s clothes as a form of resistance to
fashion; the term feels too loaded. His Barbie pieces are appreciated as charming, beautifully crafted,
and thoughtful constructions. As is characteristic of Margiela’s work, the essence of these pieces lies in
the spirit of experimentation. Since pursuing the latest style is irrelevant to these stylistically stereotypical
pieces, the designer is thus freed from this obligation or pretense. Here, experimentation focuses on
creating and translating fashion codes through a deliberately absurd act of scaling.
For example, the stitching, zipper and buttons on the actual Barbie’s clothes are not scaled down for the
doll, as this would have been too difficult to sew and expensive to manufacture. Hence, they appear too
large, and the clothing is ill-fitting for the doll. Margiela further explored this incongruity by scaling up
the already misfitting elements, i.e. stitching, zipper, etc. on the doll’s clothes for humans (figures 3, 4).
As a result, the scaled-up garments retain and amplify the original sartorial failures. They remain visually
disproportionate and ill-fitting on the human body, thus intensifying the incongruity of their miniature
originals. Although I have only seen these pieces in reproduction, judging from the photographs, Margiela’s
generic Barbie clothes seem to “hover” over the body due to this deliberate act of misfitting. The clothes
are “abstract”. Yet, I believe this reflects precisely the fashion ethos: the consumer subscribes to a style,
an artificial simulacrum bereft of temporality that excludes the participation of the lived body. Yet, despite
its demonstrated conceptual rigor, Margiela’s human-scale Barbie clothes are toy-like and charming.
They declare their anomaly in the “world of style and glamour”, an abstraction of the already generic and
simulated fashion codes embodied by the miniature Barbie clothes.
3. Barbie holding a Margiela Barbie scaled-up jacket of the one she is wearing.
4. Military sock-sweater on Barbie. Collage
2. Barbie jeans Margiela’s Barbie Jeans
5. Slip dress with exposed seams

6. Bacterial garment
Wrinkles, creases and washes: The living image of one’s self
Fashion presents an image perpetually encapsulated in the spectacle’s present moment. It embodies
the unreality of an eternal present devoid of duration and affection. Consequently, fashion inherently
prevents our finitude from being inscribed onto the garment. There is no time for time. A fashion piece is
destined to become outdated before it can age, while our emotional connection to it has long been severed
in anticipation of the next fashion cycle. In this bleak state of clothing that denies the temporality of
cohabitation, fashion effectively alienates the lived body, perceiving it as merely a mannequin of received
styles. The tender, frail, vulnerable, and communicative body often struggles to find expression and
companionship in fashion.
However, one cannot specifically name the sensations evoked by
experiences and memories inscribed in Margiela’s clothing. The treated
materials are sourced from various unidentified origins. They trace an
unknown, itinerant life, invoking the feeling of an assemblage of fragmented
stories that one experiences in a second-hand clothing store. When I think
of his clothes, the image of the immigrant comes to mind. On one occasion,
while in a neighborhood populated by immigrants in Paris, I distinctly
felt the essence of Margiela’s work. The blend of cultures and secondhand
stores infused the area with a uniquely layered emotional quality.
Undoubtedly, it is not coincidental that his workshop is located in such a
neighborhood. This clothing practice tends to lean towards a world thick
with experiences rather than the rarified fashion industry.
The image of the immigrant serves as a paradigm for our time- an immigrant
whose identity is shaped by memories of the past and a desire to adapt to
and transform the present. They have not yet acquired the usual signs of
wealth and belonging. The immigrant dwells in transition, not yet settled in
a milieu but in time. This poignant image, paradigmatic of our era, signifies
the entangled passage between time, place, and experience. The immigrant
is an image of transience, worn and polished by time. Wearing Margiela
aligns with this image - to live anonymously in the thick of the world.
Margiela is an exception to all this. He deposits, or sometimes tailors, time onto his garments. His clothes
grant the body time. Before being sold and worn, a lot of his clothes already possess a lived history. A
life, a habit, and a nascent personality have been inscribed onto the garments, sometimes from the found
and used pieces that receive special treatment in Maison Margiela, his studio. Old jeans and army socks
are constantly reinvented into something new (fig.4). Shoes and old jeans are coated with paint that is
anticipated to crack and fall off. Deadstock army sneakers are reproduced with information about their
origins. Aging and experience have already been installed in his clothes before they are worn.
Common features of his construction techniques include built-in creases, exposed seams, and the use of
refurbished garments and textiles. I believe this reflects Margiela’s philosophy of creating clothing that
mirrors life, embracing all its vicissitudes and contingencies (fig.5). During a museum exhibit, he once
collaborated with a chemist to cultivate bacteria on the garment’s surface(fig.4). For Margiela, the garment
serves as a surface upon which duration is registered and embodied. They assume an emotional depth that
renders them credible, existing in harmony with the living body and sharing its fate. These garments are
works of inscribed experiences in time.
7. Mannequin jacket 8. Oversized men’s jacket

Artisanal, the studio and the trade
The evidence of construction distinguishes Margiela’s clothing. Components such as sleeves and pockets
often remain detachable and loosely attached. The entirety is perceived as a temporary assembly of various
elements. At times, these components are transformed into something new. For example, a collection of
sleeves is sewn and rearranged into a shirt. Generally, the provisional nature of some of his work appears
as an interrupted experiment that could continue indefinitely. This unique trait embodies the daily
activities of the dressmaker’s studio/lab, where experiments take place. However, Margiela has developed
a technique and sensibility that preserves this tenuous stage and quality of the dressmaker’s practice. I am
reminded of the jackets made from mannequin shells (Julie) with detachable sleeves(fig.7) and the unique
white kimono lab coat worn by his assistants. Frequently, his work resembles a one-to-one scale prototype.
There seems to be no sense of finality in his construction. The work references the studio, its ethos, tools,
and activities. Margiela represents the only genuinely self-reflexive practice in fashion.
In this way, the ethics of work and the site of experimentation take precedence over the usual unscrupulous
desire to conform to market rules. The markings, procedures, and trials and errors developed at Maison
Margiela are made visible and integrated into the spirit of the clothes. This is particularly evident in the
artisanal collection (line 0), where pieces are handcrafted or remodeled. Additionally, the designation of
different production lines by numbers is notable: the men’s line is 10, while the women’s lines are 0 and
6. These numbers are then variously incorporated into the clothing label, serving as print patterns and
graphic decorations. This self-referentiality, combined with the secluded, quasi-monastic studio ethos,
imparts an undeniable autonomy to the practice.
Afterthought
It has been over twenty years since I wrote this
text. Margiela’s studio has been sold in the
meantime, and its spirit of independence and
experimentation has largely been co-opted.
What remains, ironically, are the signs that
reflect its former essence; for example, the white
label endures. However, there is no heart in the
clothes. This indicates that what Margiela did was
definitively unique in the history of fashion. He
created a different fashion paradigm and infused
a new meaning of living with clothes into this
industry. After twenty years, aside from minor
changes in wording, I see no need to revise the
text.
This commitment to creating clothing that reflects an acceptance and awareness of life’s vicissitudes shapes
the emotional quality of Margiela’s work. Margiela grounds his clothing constructions in the craft and ethics
of the dressmaker within a pre-industrial, artisanal context. His studio culture fosters a quasi cult-like
affiliation. I argue that Margiela’s garments embody the ethos of the studio, its tools and procedures, and its
cult-like camaraderie as the foundation of his practice. Upon reexamining his blank label, I suggest that
Margiela does not merely turn his back on the spectacle of fashion; rather, his energy is devoted to building
an autonomous practice from within the industry. This practice is motivated by a love and profound trust in
clothing - believing that despite the pervasive nature of the fashion industry, clothing can still offer genuine
possibilities for living.
Yam Lau
2004-2024

David Clarke
11 February 2025 seemed to be a day for spotting women with unusual things on their
heads. These performers visiting from China’s Guizhou province were encountered near the
Cultural Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong. More unexpectedly I came across a Filipina
walking down Nathan Road with a bottle of water balanced on her head. I was worried that
it might fall off when I stopped her to ask for a photograph, but that didn’t happen.

Tamara Chatterjee
Travelling Palm Snapshots
India (March, 2025) - I arrived at the old house,
which had transformed significantly since my
last visit many moons ago. It’s always a nostalgic
experience, visiting with family, surrounded by
photographs of the ancestors. I was reminded that
having a large family means learned experiences
of generational love, support and nurturing from a
foundational perspective. It wasn’t lost on me that
the family altar, continues to serve out of a place
of respect and perhaps a little fear.

Fiona Smyth
CHEEZ

The Photograph Selected by
Kamelia Pezeshki
Fight for water by Negar Pooya

Edwin Kwan

Gary Michael Dault
From the Photographs, 2010-2025
Number 68: Diadem or Droplet

Cem Turgay
ProTesT

Tomio Nitto
Sketchbook

Shelley Savor
Caffeine Reveries
Rescue Mission

Kai Chan
Greenwood
Drawing
20 x 16 cm, watercolour on rice paper

Archive
Number 10
2025-03-09
Edited by: LEE KA-SING AND HOLLY LEE ARCHIVE
kasingholly.com kasingholly@gmail.com
Diptych (2014–2023), a series of over
1,500 diptychs created over ten years, is currently
being reformatted for publication in book volumes.
You’re welcome to follow the frequently updated
book-in-progress edition at:
http://diptych.leekasing.com
The series is also shared on Facebook and Instagram
several times a week.
(below) I Once Promised You a Rose Garden, 2020
Lee Ka-sing and Holly Lee Archive EST. 2024

White Roses and the Black General, 2020
(above) A Four-Line Poem for the City, 2019

(above) Two Interpretations of Time, 2020
(below) Beyond the Horizon, Waves Unfold, 2019
(above) Sundays of Different Generations, 2019
(below) Racing Through Parallel Realities, 2019

(above) Small Aircraft and Architectural Structures, 2020

(above) A Classicist’s Soliloquy, 2019
(below) Sunlight in a Darkroom, Like Shadows Reaching In, 2020
(above) How to Interpret the Winding Roots of a Tree, 2020
(below) A Photo Collector’s Midnight, 2019

(above) Giant Curtain with Two Large Trees in Front, 2020

(above) Whispers in Ripples, Far Away a Waterfall Cascades from the Stream, 2020
(below) Birdsong Written on Stone, 2020
(above) Floral Whispers, 2020
(below) Associations of a Hanging Object, 2020

(above) Dance, Dance! Dance Back to the Dance of 1856, 2020

(above) Round Glasses and the Far Horizon, 2020
(below) The Sorrow of Two Exquisite Objects, 2020
(above) A Trap Designed for Hanging Objects, 2020
(below) Urban Planning in Imagination, 2020

(above) Listening and Writing, 2020
(below) Conjecture of a Round Staircase, 2020
kasingholly.com

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