Forget bootstraps, bra straps (and cups) are where it’s at! Malaysian artist Louise Low Seok Loo fights cultural taboos with her eye-popping bra cup art. 
Louise Low Seok Loo doesn’t always fight entrenched cultural taboos with her art, but when she does she employs upcycled bras by the thousands. On the one hand its a great way to keep bras – a difficult clothing item to recycle – out of landfills and on the other hand, well, making bras your medium of artistic expression is one sure way to grab the media spotlight!
Low Seok Loo has become somewhat of a fixture on the Malaysian art scene but her bra cup art just might be her ticket to international recognition. Her breakout exhibit would have to be last year’s show in George Town, a city of roughly a half-million on Malaysia’s island of Penang. The show’s highlight piece, titled “Fatal Attraction”, takes the form of a shark whose jaws are connected by dozens of re-worked bra straps.
Though many will find Low Seok Loo’s medium a tad titillating (for want of a better word), her intention is as serious as can be: combating deeply-held superstitions revolving around women’s underwear and in the process, making a statement about domestic violence. “This sculpture of the shark is a narrative of how victims are lured into believing that their love partner is the protective gender of the weak.,” explains the artist. “I constructed a heart shape in the shark’s mouth as a love bait to trap the unsuspecting fishes. It is similar to domestic violence where the love partner still believes and trusts their abuser.”
