Vendedora Ambulante with Sheila Klein

Sheila Klein wants to dress the world! Sabbath: The 2017 Dorothy Saxe Invitational artist Sheila Klein will be performing vendedora ambulante or mobile peddler. Klein engages people in conversation about cloth, uses of cloth, how it is made, and the idea of transformation of cloth into clothing. She might ask, what does it mean to create a Chanel-inspired jacket from a cloth that was made for cleaning? What does this tell us about the role of artists, the economy, of selling things slowly and at a small scale? The intimacy and pleasure in the direct exchange is a part of the experience. 

Klein's performance layers meaning about artistic work and our perceptions of public and private space. It nods to the history of Jews as tailors, peddlers, and garment industry workers.