Chase Margaret Hafer

Chase Hafer is a multidisciplinary artist and designer from Philadelphia specializing in a fine art approach to textiles and fashion.

She combines her traditional painting background with an innovative approach to surface development specializing in the creation of intricate surfaces, material ingenuity, and a sophisticated handling of technique and process. A lifelong scholar of material culture, her work is principally concerned with the exploration of color, pattern, illusion, maximalism, and the distinctions between luxury and mass-produced goods.

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 2018 with a dual degree Chase moved to Florence, Italy to study traditional textile handcraft processes. Currently based in London, her practice remains vested in the area where design and fine art overlap.

Awards

Hobson Pittman Prize for Experimental Work, 2017

Robert T. Wickersham Memorial Purchase Prize for Lithography, 2017 

The Thouron Prize, 2017

RESPLENDENT // Counterfeit

“Counterfeit” is a textile collection examining the historic role of imitation and costume in both jewelry and fashion. Through use of slow craft and artisanal techniques the work attempts to disrupt high and low aesthetic hierarchies by embellishing and re-contextualizing its subject matter. The collection pays special attention to the creation of visual effects in order to heighten a sense of simulation.

At the core of Counterfeit is the attempt to introduce to the viewer a tension between perception and reality. I was drawn to the readymade compositions found in the jewelry stalls of Portobello Road wherein the eye struggles to discern one single piece of jewelry as discreet from the next. The visual cacophony of these swirling, shining masses create an experience which is either tantalizingly beautiful or repulsive and tacky from one viewer or minute to the next.

I chose to explore this scintillating condition in my designs, aiming to create a textile that is both resplendent and repellant, illusionistic and utterly contrived.