A modest offering for a woman who had just lost everything.
BY LITAL DOTAN
A profoundly disturbing LABA session discussing the behavioral rules in a state of war and battle, specifically behavior with captive women, instigated my interrogation into the route of the captive towards her new identity.
A WOMAN OF A GOODLY FORM is she who is picked to be taken captive. She is taken as loot, coveted — stolen from her identity, but saved from death and torture, which is the potential fate of the “unpicked.” Her route to the home of her captor would be her path to losing her self.
The phrase “her captivity dress” (Deuteronomy, Chapter 21, 13) inspired me to create a collection of seven garments, as offering of some potential personal choices in a state of complete loss.
The captivity dress is a dress of transition, ephemeral, relevant only for a single path — the walk to the captor’s home. It is her remnants, her ritual, her will to carry on. Once she arrives at her new home she is to shave her head, pare her nails and take her captivity dress off.
Each of the Seven Raiments of Captivity I designed offers a different choreography of movement in an unfamiliar given route. In a situation of complete loss, it is giving the captive the power to choose how she would like to walk towards her unchosen fate.
The collection will be ready for presentation in the coming months.