{Fireleap} is about taking the biggest leaps.
An ode to our most care free days.

Surface Design/ Garment Construction/
Guide: Amit Sinha

The Inspiration:
Fireleap by Nan Goldin

In 2011, Nan Goldin exhibited "Fire Leap," a collection of images featuring her friends' and family's children from 1972 to the present day. I found myself captivated by Goldin's portrayal of childlike innocence and freedom. The project retained its original title, as I couldn't conceive a more fitting term to encapsulate the spontaneous and warrior-like essence of the children depicted by Goldin. "Fire Leap" it remained!

Needless to say but this is when I thought of photography a little differently :)

This project was a breakthrough - it was the first time I truly felt confident sharing my perspective with the world. There is a mystic force that a young adult encounters within the walls of their college campus: it arrives as an illusion of nostalgia, as a longing for ‘simpler’ times. I had not realized how expanding my worldview had constrained the movement of my body. My attempts to achieve a design degree had, in a sense, made me physically stiff, tying the freedom of thought to a rigidity in form. Which is why the photograph of the young boy really evoked this thought in me “when was the last time evey muscle in my body jumped like that?”

︎︎︎Recognising the Body:

When I was 6-7 years old, I really did not care and I wish I carried that fearlessness with me.

I was not afraid of the dark
I was not afraid of bugs
I was not afraid of being judged
I was not afraid of not knowing

The collection’s design drew inspiration from childhood - our early clothes, the tradition of passing garments from the eldest to the youngest regardless of gender, and the effortless bagginess and playfulness that defined them.

The collection draws inspiration from family albums and the warm tints as seen on film photographs. The exhibition for Fireleap welcomed the audience’s participation by asking them to draw with their non-dominant hand on the fabric. This was an attempt to look at clothing/ textiles as living repositories of memory.