To question fashion’s exhibitionist nature and selective methods, the programme was created through an international Open Call for Contributers and open dialogues to ensure a multi-voiced and participative perspective. More than 150 fashion practitioners from almost 50 countries responded.
To come to a final selection of 9 co-creators, we counted on the support and dedication of an international selection panel formed by:
— Ratna Ho and Muhammed of Arnhem based Fraenck,
— Country Coördinator Fashion Revolution Thailand Kamonnart Ongwandee,
— Critical fashion practitioner Mukhtara Ayọ̀ tẹ́jú Adékúnbi Yusuf from indigenous Yoruba (now Southwestern Nigeria),
— Nao and Nessa, from Wearers Festival based in London, UK.
The selected co-creators were commissioned to work together on a piece specifically created for the exhibition in a 4-month period. Together they overcame the difficulties of collaborating within an online context, battling time zones and language barriers. Despite many challenges, the co-creators found common ground and developed three amazing works. Next to the co-created work the exhibition also showed personal work of the co-creators.
Eunice Pais, Anabel Poh & Tra My Nguyen
amidst the threads, our names become.
2022
Eunice Pais, Anabel Poh and Tra My Nguyen met after being selected through the Open Call for Contributors to collectively co-create a commissioned work specifically for Transforming Narratives. During 4 months of co creation, the group began its work from a common ground: their diaspora perspective. They focus on reclaiming women’s narratives, identities and memories through speculative narratives.
By connecting different diasporic perspectives, the interdisciplinary installation reveals the emotional, cultural, and feminist labour behind garments and textiles. Within the installation, the structure reclaims space with textiles informing the displaced identities. The deconstructed fabrics infer the creation of space through fragmentation, moving imagery narrates memories, and the photos envisage the hereafter. The work engages the plurality of existence and possibilities — not as a singular thread, but rather the ever-intertwined dynamics of understanding the past, participating in the present, co-creating equitable futures.
Santiago Útima, Siviwe James, Widi Asari & Riyadhus Shalihin
bodies that make, bodies that consume
2022
Santiago Útima, Siviwe James, Widi Asari and Riyadhus Shalihin, met after being selected through the Open Call for Contributors to co-create a commissioned work specifically for the theme Exercising Compassion. Their work is the result of 4 months of co-creation in a digital environment. Through this process, they have experienced the challenges of battling time zones, language barriers and finding common ground between practice and theory.
bodies that make, bodies that consume reflects on material residues as workers’ truth, the deep-rooted voids of erasure of textile and clothing manufacture workers’ conditions. Residue becomes displaced memory, traces of evidence and ruins connected to the process of industrialization of countries of the global south: Colombia, South Africa and Indonesia. This is evidence that industrialization and excessive (if not inhumane) labour conditions on local people has acted as a form of colonisation of land, bodies, environments and experiences. The co-creators hope to bridge the gap between ‘the hands that make’ and the ‘bodies that consume’ with a desire of addressing the various emotional and physical situations labourers endure.
Wei-Chi Su, Ateliê Vivo, Danayi Madondo
Does it have an end?
2022
Wei-Chi Su, Ateliê Vivo and Danayi Madondo met after being selected through the Open Call for Contributors to co-create a commissioned work specifically for Coexisting Knowledges during four months. During the process, they intensely questioned how to foster autonomy, sensorial experiences and freedom within education through an online co-creation environment.
Using textile waste, raw materials and deconstructed secondhand apparel fused with multi-traditional handcraft skills, the co-creators made an unfinished organic sensory sculpture. The installation diverts from traditional fashion norms, by putting emphasis on environment, community and relationships during the making experience instead on the finished product. It reshapes ways of learning and producing by decolonising our senses through reflective solidarity.