Dorothy Iannone heads up COS x Serpentine Park Nights 2018

Since the Serpentine Galleries first invited Zaha Hadid in 2000 to dream up a temporary structure, the annual Serpentine Pavilion has grown to become a high-profile showcase of contemporary architecture, set in the middle of Hyde Park, London. Hadid's tent-like steel structure measuring 600sq metres was followed by the creations of Jean Nouvel (2010), Oscar Niemayer (2003) and Rem Koolhaas, who in partnership with Cecil Balmond and London firm Arup built a fantastical amphitheatre, topped with a translucent inflatable canopy, for the 2006 edition.

When Frida Escobedo was tasked with designing this year's Serpentine Pavilion, the young architect looked to her hometown Mexico City for inspiration.

Traditional Mexican homes centre around an inner courtyard, and so Escobedo's Serpentine Pavilion places rectangular shapes finished in British made materials at a quadrangle, to create a courtyard.

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Until the end of September 2018, Escobedo's London structure will be home to the COS x Serpentine Park Nights, an annual programme of cultural events debuted in 2002 commissioned in partnership between the Serpentine Gallery and the London headquartered retailer.

"These collaborations are also a way for us to share our influences with our audience", says creative director Karin Gustafsson, who first joined COS at its launch in 2006. "The Serpentine Galleries are at the forefront of contemporary arts and innovation, areas which provide so much inspiration to COS and myself personally since I was a student at Royal College of Art".

Dorothy Iannone in her Berlin apartment next to the Opera Box (1980), 2002. © Photo Rolf Walter

This year's programme includes an evening hosted by Telfar. To showcase a preview of its new collection, the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund award-winning fashion brand will collaborate with South African band FAKA and a live choir.

In total, COS x Serpentine Park Nights has commissioned eight creative to react to Escobedo's lattice-clad edifice, including American visual artist Dorothy Iannone, whose work forms part of the collections of the French Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien in Austria, among other international institutions.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Iannone moved to New York City in 1958, with her husband Upham. Once installed in Manhattan, Iannone taught herself to paint. At the centre of her often-autobiographical work, which turns to sources as varied as period Japanese woodcuts and scenes depicted on Greek vases for inspiration, sit Iannone's Movie People project. Carved from wood, these miniature sculptures depict well-known characters such as Marlene Dietrich sporting her signature tuxedo.

"For a few years in the 60s, I made my 'People', all kinds of different people, but all of them sporting their sexual identity", says Iannone, explaining a body of work she is returning to for her COS x Serpentine Park Nights.

"After almost fifty years, I return to them but now, with only a few exceptions, these cut-outs, the Movie People, are more demure and in addition they are embellished with texts".