Sandra Chirico is an artist, costume maker based in Montreal, Quebec. She has a Diploma in Fashion Design from LaSalle College and is currently working towards her BFA in Fibers at Concordia University. She often works with a variety of different mediums including sewn or knitted structures and elements of time-lapse video installation. The main themes explored in her work revolve around labor concerns, craft history and exploring the relationship between dress culture, gender and subversion. She has several years experience working as a designer in the garment trade and as a couturier specializing in corsetry under her own label Ritual Designs. Currently, in her art she is conducting several experiments investigating our direct relationship between clothing and skin.

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Extended statement


Born in Montréal, Québec to a seamstress mother and steel worker father, raised by parents who made a lot of what they used by hand had a profound effect on my creative upbringing. I am interested in the personal history and daily experiences that we have with clothing as well as the ethical process of production. We all have a unique relationship to clothing whether it is aesthetic, professional, anti establishment or purely utilitarian. Intrigued with common links between people’s daily lives and the total divide found in social structures due to class and gender.  

In exploring these ideas, I also seek to examine the boundary between clothing and our bodies. Ephemeral memories are left behind on our skin from the textures of our clothing. In time the skin shifts and repairs it’s self. With these etchings, we can follow this skins’ mapping that becomes the evidence of what we do in our daily lives. This can also be seen within a garments construction in the memory of how it was made, where it was made and who made them. There is anonymity in mass produced clothing and by exposing those invisible marks within an industry makes the craftsman or woman visible. This becomes a unique collaborative moment between wearer and the laborer. 

Respect for the handmade is a concept that we risk to lose and by investigating the complications found in the industrialized world I believe we must bring the body back into play. This is a major pursuit in my artwork.