Sunday, June 5, 2016

Exhibit - The history of shoes!

Copyright  Françoise Herrmann

... and not necessarily the most comfortable ones... 

@ The Musée des Confluences, in Lyon France, from June 7, 2016 to April 30, 2017.

The exhibit is titled À vos pieds and it covers the history of shoes across all continents from the 16th century to the 21st! There will be about 100 pairs of shoes exhibited. 

Lotus foot © Kristeva 
The exhibit poster (left) highlights the Lotus shoe, the purported delicacy of which masks the darkest history of shoes and fetishism for women. 

The drawing to the right shows the deformity of the Lotus "foot", resulting from the excruciating, and now outlawed, practice of binding the feet of little girls to prevent them from ever reaching their adult size. In turn, this deformity also prevented the women from walking -- on their feet.
References
Musée des Confluences
http://www.museedesconfluences.fr/  
Musée des confluences - À vos pieds!
http://www.museedesconfluences.fr/fr/evenements/%C3%A0-vos-pieds 
Les chaussures se racontent à travers l'histoire au Musée des Confluences à Lyon. 
http://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2016/05/22/2349572-chaussures-racontent-travers-histoire-musee-confluences-lyon.htm
Herrmann, F. (2015) Patented torture - Lotus shoes
http://patentsonthesolesofyourshoes.blogspot.com/2015/09/patented-torture-lotus-shoes.html
Kristeva, J. (1974) About Chinese women Translated from French by Anita Barrows. New York, NY: Urizen books

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