L’habit comme réceptacle brings together various projects created between 2018 and 2024 by stylist, fashion and costume designer Josiane Martinho. She is interested in the multiple status of a garment when it is not worn: not just an object, but also a ghostly presence of an absent body, a sculpture or a flat installation. Her work, at once poetic and absurd, blends methodology and chance, seeking to create symbolism around gestures and elements that activate a garment. 

Borrowing from wardrobe codes and everyday aesthetics, Josiane experiments with clothing as if she knew nothing of its function or even the right way to put it on. She tests its resistance by pulling on it, cuts it to play with its structure, has it worn by a plant or a piece of furniture to see how it takes shape, tries to wear it in different ways to create tension. 

Josiane sees each of these garments, created for commissions or personal projects, as a continuation of her work, forming an overall body of work dealing with constantly evolving research and aesthetics.