What to Wear
2003
Danielle lived with a different statement on her face per day for the first half of 2003.
Before this project, Freakley wore a lot of "creative" clothes which might be classed as eccentric and people would comment on her clothes saying (maybe mockingly) "that's a statement" to which she would respond with seriousness questioning what is that "statement"? In 2003, in response to years of people calling her style of clothing "a statement" she decided instead of letting the clothing make the "statement" she would make a direct written statement over her face each day as part of her outfit, for clarity.
At the same time as choosing an outfit for the day, she would print out a statement phrase in the morning, depending on the honest statement she and her clothing might be saying, some self reflections and cut eyeholes out of lettering where her eyes met the text from behind the makeshift billboard mask.
She would wear one statement per outfit which was usually one per day. She would wear this statement for the rest of the day except at home, in her studio, in banks or airports. As she was doing her masters degree at this time, she was in classes and around the city attending different events (that she would normally attend) often. The statements masked her face most of the day and evening. With the exception of the few people who saw her at home and in the studio, people who met her in the first half of 2004 did not see her face, only the statement.
Sometimes people would take offence to the statement assuming the statement was targeted towards them personally, or a group nearby. In the image with the statement "I am a loser that smells bad" Freakley is in a Social Alliance meeting, people at that meeting became upset and assumed Freakley was targeting them specifically, even though she wore that mask all day in a variety of contexts in the city and forgot about the meeting that evening, had no plans to wear it there, even so, people would often read the statement as a comment on the environment and others around Freakley's statement over her face. Slowly her clothing became more and more plain, and her identity became more anonymous and became seen as overwriting an external and internal mood of the changing environments and people.