keys to my city 2022

In keys to my city, Italian-born dancer and choreographer Alice Gosti and her collaborators Lorraine Lau and Alyza DelPan-Monley perform movements wearing a dress made of keys. keys to my city was first conceived of by Gosti in 2016, as she was considering ways to create art out of ordinary objects. “I was looking at objects that are around us constantly. The image of the keys was coming back to me,” she says.

Obsessed with the idea of creating a dress made of keys, Gosti set to work creating the first iteration of the dress, collecting thousands of broken, discarded, and unfinished keys from locksmiths in Seattle, Washington. The dress is composed of more than 1,500 keys, and weighs approximately 30 pounds (13.6 kilograms).

keys to my city was filmed at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.