21 ’til 21: Aliya Rose Bonar

Aliya Rose Bonar’s PowerSuit Boutique performance produces custom, hand-made garments based on personal Life Consultations about dreams, passions, personal histories, bodies, and everyday life patterns. The opportunity is to engage with strangers about innermost passions and dreams, and then realize those ephemeral wishes into wearable art: PowerSuits. The “client” wears their PowerSuit out into their everyday life, physical reminders of their biggest dreams.

In collaboration with Lindsey McCord, Bonar presented the consultation portion of the project – producing personalized talismen based on the consultation – at Water Street POPS. Participants sat 20-minute consultations, which Bonar recorded, along with a photo of the interviewees. Over the week, Bonar and McCord produced personalized talismen based on each interview, which were later presented to the interviewees. An informal installation of the interviewees’ photographs was also presented.

PowerSuit Boutique had never been presented previously. However the project evolved out of a body of “PowerSuit” work Bonar has been developing for the past year. Your PowerSuit is the costume your most powerful self wears, generating courage and self-confidence to pursue your passions. In previous iterations, produced at Flux Factory in February 2013 and at the Eileen Fisher Leadership Institute in Summer 2012, Bonar used PowerSuits as a concept to guide a group through realizing their own passions and steps needed to carry them out. Participants engaged through participating in a set of facilitated curriculum. The emphasis is on the group experience and not the physical product.

Visit the artist’s website: Aliyah Rose Bonar