As part of the Soft Series I made a hand-sewn replica of the Heckler&Koch P7 gun. The gun is made out of satin and filled with sesame seeds and dried lavender, just to add some scent. The photos above and below are available as prints on aluminum.
About the Soft Series in general:
The soft series are a series of weapons made of fabric, which I started in 2015 with a scale 1:1 replica of a Kalashnikov rifle. With these objects I want to search for the contrast between the original and current state of each weapon: harmful and deadly versus soft and totally useless, except for its visual beauty. All weapons are hand-sewn, this way I want to create a parallel between the designers and makers of the original weapons and the ones I am making now. It’s extremely difficult to design and create a well-functioning weapon and therefore it takes a lot of time, care and dedication to complete it. I also find it very interesting to see what kind of love-hate relationship some weapon designers had with their creations: Mikhail Kalashnikov, for example, felt extremely guilty for the last decades of his life because his deadly invention was just too successful. For him it was a continuous struggle with his conscience of what he had done.
For the P7, I found the relation between the German government and the weapon manufacturer Heckler&Koch to be very interesting. The German government does not want the economy to be too involved in the manufacturing of weapons (also because of image problems in memory of WWII), but at the same time H&K is one of their main export products…
Special thanks goes to Anne Fruytier for modelling the gun on the photo below.
This work is made possible with the support of the Mondriaan Fund.
