A little mouse in a house and she was the cat.

Susan and my chessboard before the game.

Last month, July 28th, to be exact, I had the great honor of being one of 49 artists, scholars, and curators to play a chess simul against Grandmaster Susan Polgar at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. The event commemorated two things simultaneously: the Marcel Duchamp exhibition spanning his life’s work, and his birthday. He would be 139 years old today.

The battle was a long thrill ride. Each of her opponents, mostly grown adults, minus an 11-year-old who was the second-to-last eliminated were giddy as school children to be walloped by a former child prodigy in her own right.

I was invited in early January and waited without exhaling, entirely due to my own superstitions about counting my pawns before they promote to queens. Queening! (See what I did there?) As the event was pushed back further and further, I began to chase silver linings: perhaps my daily Sisyphean task of training would at least make me fun at parties, or at parks with strangers.

In 2018, my friend Shannon Bailey, curator at the World Chess Hall of Fame, offered to have my first solo show. At the time, it felt like a story best told through the lens of chess, climate change, fashion, and a science fiction romp. Making pretty clothes for people to gawk at felt flat; I wanted to know what was my role, what could serve beauty but also enlighten myself and hopefully others. It changed my life’s trajectory like nothing I could have ever imagined. It proved to me, in joyous and painful ways, that I was more than just a “Fashion Designer.” I was an artist, dare I say, maybe even a scholar. For a game with so many restrictions and regulations, chess feels to me like a boundless art form within itself, a contact sport of science, strategy, history, and logic. I will forever be grateful to Shannon and WoCHoF for the opportunity.

...Nxe5 Dress made from deadstock bra underwire (2019)

That realization gave me the audacity to keep studying and creating, which ultimately ushered me into MoMA, looking across the board at the world's first female Grandmaster. What a thrill. Chess, like any great passion, has taught me that the more I participate, the less I really know. The older I get, the more I’ve learned to enjoy rejection, “hand me my leather,” I suppose. The act allows for introspection and, hopefully, growth, so that I can roll the boulder up, get it over the hill, and see the next one on the horizon.

My game with Susan also felt like a metaphor for life. I came in with a strategy, but immediately she made the move I least wanted: 1. e4. Ugh. She was three steps ahead of me every time, though at least I was able to castle kingside. Still, to no avail; like everyone else, defeat was imminent. All in all, after a little under three hours, deep breaths, and 38 moves, I shook hands with Susan and sat in the most beautiful surrender.

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