Urban Camouflage: Taking Shelter

Filed under Block Party Event, Ongoing Event, Installation, projects

Event Information

Artist: Katherine Behar

When the city rubs you raw, let the city rub off on you. Take shelter by taking a shelter apart and decorating yourself with a scrap of the city’s fabric: a piece of urban camouflage.

Over three days at three sites, three temporary felt tents provide passers-by with short-term shelter, a place to pause and blend in — in a literal way — to the “fabric” of the city. Each structure is made out of lacy, hand-cut felt, patterned to camouflage a familiar “hard” urban texture (a chain-link fence, a brick wall, asphalt, etc.) at the site. Once inside, participants are encouraged to physically “take shelter” by using scissors, safety pins, and sewing materials to cut away pieces of the tent and apply urban camouflage to themselves. The felt shelters call temporary attention to the city’s background textures and the urban materials they camouflage. Eventually, the original site reappears as the structure is dismantled and dispersed among participants.