Telling Tremors: Sheep Have Good Memories

In the fashion world, there is increasing discussion about the ‘life cycle’ of clothing, yet the stories of the animals behind those materials remain invisible. Within Western, human-centered thinking, animals are often seen merely as usable objects—whether for their material or symbolic value. The fashion industry contributes to this by reducing animals to clothing and stereotypical imagery.

Telling Tremors by Femke de Vries brings these hidden stories to light. Through ‘garment vivisection’ (the dissection of a ‘living’ garment) and the assembly of image and text fragments from diverse sources, this work gives voice to the animals behind clothing made from animal materials. The project presents them not as objects, but as beings with lives and histories of their own.

The video installation Telling Tremors: Sheep Have Good Memories is on view in the exhibition No place for mannequins: Remaking the fashion archive at UTS Gallery, Sydney, Australia. The work takes a woolen sweater as its starting point and tells the story of sheep. The video runs approximately 23 minutes and is the result of a close collaboration between Femke de Vries and Youngeun Sohn.