BELLA CARDIM

It's All About The Number (2023)

It’s All About the Number was developed in response to an open call commemorating 150 years of American denim. In Brazil, during my adolescence, Levi’s 501 jeans represented the height of what was considered cool. Wearing them was not simply a matter of style, but a way of belonging to a cultural image shaped by youth, desire, and American identity.

The size was printed on a leather label sewn onto the outside of the waistband, turning a private measurement into something publicly visible. For me, that number was always 28. It became the highest number I allowed myself to wear. When my body no longer fit into it, I did not choose another number. I stopped wearing jeans.

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Using the same visual principle explored in Dysmorphia, I photographed the label through a magnifying lens and enlarged the image. The photograph is installed beside the original label, creating a contrast between the small scale of the object and the disproportionate space the number came to occupy.

Associated with freedom and individuality, the jeans also became a condition of belonging. The work examines how an object of desire can simultaneously offer access and impose a limit, and how a number meant to describe a garment can begin to regulate the body that wears it.