The Things We Wear Remember: Dr Cyana Madsen on Fashion, Archives and the Stories Objects Keep.
For the first of a two-part editorial series on Madsen Sylvester Studio, we meet Dr. Cyana Madsen, a curator, researcher, stylist and archivist whose work has moved between broadcasting, costume, museums, academia and independent exhibition-making.
At first glance, these might seem like quite different territories. Look a little longer and a common fascination emerges: People, the things they leave behind, and the stories that gather around those things.
Fashion has a particularly good memory, although it is not always a reliable one. It keeps its evidence in places that rarely make the official record - in garments, photographs, collections and objects whose importance may only become apparent much later.
Madsen has developed a practice around looking closely at precisely this material world, without insisting that every object arrive with a grand explanation attached.
Her Ramsgate studio is an unusually fitting home for that approach.
Madsen Sylvester Studio is not tucked away behind the architectural solemnity of a museum or gallery. Its window sits directly on the street, where an exhibition might encounter a curious passer-by, a neighbour, a dog, the weather and someone on their way to buy milk. It is a wonderfully democratic arrangement. Nobody has to have decided to be interested in culture before encountering it.
That physical openness seems to inform the spirit of the Studio itself.
Exhibitions can be experimental, ideas can develop in public and the process of putting something together can remain part of the work rather than being tidied away before anyone arrives. There is room for contributors to discover something along the way, which is perhaps one of the more useful things a cultural space can offer.
It also reflects a broader quality in Madsen’s practice, i.e. an unwillingness to accept that there is only one proper way to encounter fashion or its history. Clothing belongs to the body before it belongs to the display case. It moves, ages, absorbs, accompanies and occasionally outlives the person who wore it. To look at it only as an image is to leave quite a lot of its life outside the room.
Madsen’s interests consequently extend well beyond the conventional boundaries of fashion curation. Her work moves between the personal and the institutional, between what is carefully preserved and what happens to survive, between established histories and the less orderly material from which lives are actually made.
There is a generosity to this way of working.
Rather than treating the archive as a finished authority, Madsen approaches it as something capable of being questioned, stretched and looked at from another angle. The aim is not necessarily to resolve every mystery - which would rather defeat the purpose of having one - but to remain sufficiently curious to notice when something does not quite fit.
That curiosity is perhaps the most consistent thread running through her work. It is there in the archive, the exhibition space, the research and the objects themselves: A willingness to stay with something long enough for it to become interesting.
And so, for the first part of our conversation, we enter Madsen’s world through the things that surround it - clothes, collections, exhibitions and the often overlooked evidence of lives lived.
What follows is less a guide to her practice than an invitation to look at familiar things a little differently.
A worn garment is a kind of unofficial archive: A repaired seam, faded collar, shaped pocket or forgotten object can reveal a life without fully explaining it. What can clothing remember that people and institutions forget, and how do you distinguish evidence from simply a trace?
Dr. Cyana Madsen: I’d argue that traces are evidence. Embedded wear in a garment usually isn’t intentionally put there, but it is accrued through our gesture, movement through the world, our interactions with others (human and non-human). This can reveal so much about the original wearer that even they might not have been aware of.
In terms of what clothing 'remembers', it can remember the locations and experiences the wearer moved through in their lifetime long after they are no longer with the garment.
Your concept of “curatorial interruption” recognises that the curator inevitably influences an object’s biography. Does that make neutrality an impossible ambition, or is acknowledging your own intervention the more honest approach?
Dr. Cyana Madsen: I think the latter, objectivity or “neutrality” is impossible when we’re interpreting objects. Human brains are subjective machines, and curators encounter objects with their own lifetime of experiences and associations, that will naturally influence how they perceive, understand, and document an object.
I argue that because there is no objectivity, our best option for mitigation is context: Who was working with this object and when, and how can that context help us understand what aspects of the object were highlighted and which weren’t perceived, understood, or even ignored when they were collected?
Every collection also records what was excluded - objects not acquired, stories not recorded and lives deemed unworthy of preservation. Through A Museum of Uncollected Things, what have those absences revealed that conventional collections cannot?
Dr. Cyana Madsen: As our research team (Prof Ellen Sampson and Dr Andrew Richardson) works through A Museum of Uncollected Things, one of the biggest challenges is how one can identify absence in the first place. It’s an interesting conceptual problem, and highlights how collections are shaped by institutional policies, curatorial bias, and access and availability of objects.
The absences often don’t reveal themselves until somebody goes looking for them, and our interest is not in filling these gaps (which is often difficult if not impossible anyway) but is facilitating dialogues with them. We will be supporting community groups and artists to do this, so these revelations will be in their hands.
Clothing is experienced through movement, scent, touch, sound and memory, yet exhibitions have traditionally asked us simply to look. What becomes possible when the senses are allowed to become part of interpretation?
Dr. Cyana Madsen: Engaging the senses beyond only the visual (ocularcentrism, as a whole body of scholarship discusses, is a very colonial and hierarchical emphasis) opens access and experience for visitors and audiences. Narratives and histories are widened beyond what we can see and encourage emotional and mnemonic (memory) engagement.
In an area such as fashion and clothing, we know that sight is only one part of the experience of being dressed or engaging with clothing. For example, the feeling of being dressed can be even more important, or the way a garment enables or restricts movement, or the smell of certain textiles… there is a whole world of sensation that curators can share with our audience that move beyond “garment on mannequin in glass display case”.
You have explored seemingly insignificant things, such as the contents of pockets, as evidence of a wearer’s life. Why can such fragments be so revealing and what other ordinary traces might we be overlooking?
Dr. Cyana Madsen: I’d refer to the question on embedded biography, and what the day-to-day, mundane, or seemingly “insignificant” reveals about us.
In my research I argue that ephemeral things like pocket contents are a type of life-writing, or “egodocument”: The evidence of the everyday that we might otherwise not think is worth mentioning - but a grocery store receipt can say more about a person’s life (their preferences, finances, geographic location) than a strategically curated social media post, for example.
Madsen Sylvester Studio deliberately operates in Ramsgate, outside a major cultural centre. Has being there changed what you curate, who you imagine the audience to be, or even what you think a cultural space can do?
Dr. Cyana Madsen: The Studio space has advanced my practice so much, because of (and in spite of) how contained a space it is. Every decision about aspects like display attributes, objects, amount of label information, or lighting levels is made knowing that the window is visible 24/7, rain or shine, and to an audience who isn’t necessarily expecting to encounter an exhibition on their way to the corner shop.
I started the exhibition space with the intention of creating an accessible place to explore fashion, and with every contributor and point of visitor feedback my understanding of the matrix of accessibility develops further. One thing I’ve learned is that the interest in and levels of engagement with “fashion” are as diverse in a Kent seaside town as they would be in London - and here your neighbours can knock on the Studio door and share their reactions with you in person.
The Studio makes room for work-in-progress rather than insisting everything arrive resolved. What can an unfinished work reveal that a finished one conceals? Is there value in allowing an audience to witness uncertainty?
Dr. Cyana Madsen: Our contributing curators and artists bring with them varying exhibition experience and ask me for different levels of assistance in delivering their show. Some contributors know exactly what they want to say and how they want to do that and just need our space, other people ask for more of my support in devising a display that will help share their narrative. I am less concerned with polish (as again, the Studio window is specific and has its own limitations) than I am with ambition and concept.
Many of our contributors have said that the focus of the exhibition was found only when they were actually installing in the window, and that changed how they thought about their work or practice going forward.
Being open to the possibility of discovery is part of why I wanted this space - institutions don’t often allow for this flexibility and exploration by the exhibition install stage. From the audience, I’ve heard that it’s exciting not knowing what type of show is coming to the Studio next.
Your work often touches on decay, disappearance, memory and legacy. At what point does preserving someone’s story become rewriting it, and should some things simply be allowed to disappear?
Dr. Cyana Madsen: My research is consumed with the paradox that many stories will not be told without a curator championing them, but that as soon as an external person gets involved, there is a subjective interpretation that may “rewrite” that original history.
To me, curation is not an objective, neutral act but a creative practice rooted in research. I think being honest about that can help dismantle the idea that the narrative told by a curator (or the institutions they work within) is the “one true history”. We are telling one version of a story.
Your journey spans broadcasting and archives, costume and styling, museums, academia and independent exhibition-making. Looking back, do you see a common thread running through those worlds? Is there an object from an earlier chapter that still stays with you?
Dr. Cyana Madsen: The common thread is curiosity about people’s lives and telling their stories. Whether through interviews or scripted film and television, crafting character through costume, or working in collections and exhibitions. All of these involve digging into the available information about people and developing a compelling narrative to share with others.
The only object I find talismanic is from the Francis Golding collection at London Museum, a fortune cookie message found in one of his pockets that reads: “The way to get things done is by yourself”. I have a wonderful community and partner, but ultimately I need to back myself - my interpretation is that Golding felt similarly.
Finally, what makes you stop in front of an object? Not necessarily rarity or value, but perhaps a mark, imperfection, smell, mystery or evidence of a life. What gives an object that inexplicable feeling of being alive?
Dr. Cyana Madsen: There’s an aura. I can’t explain it beyond a feeling - and giving someone else that same feeling is the goal I am chasing in all of my work.
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Words and questions by AW.
Answers courtesy of Dr. Cyana Madsen.
Photo courtesy of H Huntsman and Sons Ltd.
