BRANKOPOPOVICBLOG: State of Fashion


Amidst the threads, our names become, 2022 Eunice Pais, Anabel Poh and Tra My Nguyen

Second edition of State of Fashion biennial opened on 3 June 2022 and welcomed visitors until July 10 at various locations in Arnhem. With Ways of Caring as its central theme, the biennial highlighted the urgent need to restore broken threads and disrupted relationships within the realm of fashion.

Traditionally, fashion is a networked system of relationships through which we communicate about who we are, how we feel, and how we relate to each other, to other animal species and to nature. Over time, the industrial fashion system, with growth and profit as its main objectives, has gained a dominant position and resulted in an industry that is caught up in a cycle of overproduction, feeding a culture of over consumption. To keep this system alive, people and animals are being exploited and suppressed, and nature is being poisoned.

In close collaboration with its curator-team, consisting of Fashion Open Studio and NOT____ENOUGH collective, State of Fashion looked to find alternatives for this system, which perpetuates inequality by choosing one specific perspective and interest over many others. There are countless ways of practicing fashion that are not yet recognized in the mainstream. How do we create space for different fashion systems to co-exist? What can we learn from these diverse fashion systems? And, how can we encourage the fashion world to rethink, revalue, reconnect and care?

Promenade on slow street at Rozet by Clara Chu

During State of Fashion 2022 | Ways of Caring, everyone – from fashion designer to industry tycoon to textile worker and consumer – was invited to participate and to practice fashion in various meaningful ways. Part of the programme was a reflective and experiential exhibition, in which NOT____ENOUGH collective invited to see differently what has been left out, suppressed or removed in fashion. In their words: ‘Only by recognizing and acknowledging what's missing, and understanding the consequences of these omissions, plural and unexpected forms of fashion can coexist’.

In and around Arnhem’s high street, Fashion Open Studio hosted a programme of activities that reconnects fashion with people in a playful yet revolutionary way. ‘A society that cares is a society prepared for repairs,’ states the team. They invited everyone to take part in their interventions: from repairing clothing to redesigning dysfunctional systems together.

With Ways of Caring, the co-curators did not only chose a theme, but also a working method. Inspired by the original meaning of the word 'curator' – a derivative of the Latin cura, which means 'to take care of’ – they developed the programme of the biennial by listening, creating space for new people, and by being open to new kinds of knowledge. The curator team invited the audience of State of Fashion to participate and think along with them. One of the first steps in this process was an Open Call for Contributors. The curator team called for fashion enthusiasts, creative and original contributors from all over the world to join them in co-creating an exhibition.

spatial design

Spatial and graphic design

The impressive and effective spatial design of the exhibition 'Fashion as Encounters' at Eusebius church in Arnhem as part of State of Fashion biennal is created by L A Studio (Lorien Beijaert, Arna Mačkić & Christiaan Bakker) , the graphic design by Team Thursday.

Studio L A has designed a temporary ceiling in this church that effectively reduces the large space of the church and highlights each work in its own way.The exhibition design shines light on untold stories and unseen bodies through a suspended ceiling in the church, in which holes have been made to illuminate the work. The ceiling also creates a human dimension in the impressive large space of the church. Each hole in the ceiling is custom designed for the work it hangs in, or can be seen below on a designed 'support'.

More information: stateoffashion.org

Fashion as Encounters exhibition at Eusebius Church

In the exhibition Fashion as Encounters, co-curators NOT____ENOUGH Collective invited the audience to actively redefine the meanings of fashion. Dominant views on being, making, and valuing are challenged within the industrial fashion system, making space for untold stories, unseen feelings and existing knowledges that have been historically erased.

However, also this story will never be complete: there will always be missing content. The active engagement of the visitors will make the exhibition come alive and grow. Besides existing works of guests selected by NOT____ENOUGH Collective, new collective work per theme will be presented, especially co-created for the exhibition through an open-call.

NOT____ENOUGH collective consists of Andrea Chehade Barroux, Mari Cortez and Marina Sasseron de Oliveira Cabral, three South American women based in the Netherlands. With their work, they want to transform the dynamics of oppressors and oppressed imposed by inherited colonial structures. From a personal to a systemic sphere, they collectively exercise non-colonial practices. Their aim is to take up the challenge of forming a plural world together and to initiate change within fashion, design and education.

Themes

EXERCISING COMPASSION enables sensing otherwise by stepping away from individual actions and focusing on the collective practices. Fashion often privileges individual needs and instant gratification over long-lasting relationships. By confronting our sufferings caused by the effects of this self-centred industry, this encounter embraces collective practices and provokes sensibilities. It touches beyond surfaces to stimulate different emotional responses and experiences. Fashion then becomes a tool and a medium that connects us with each other through sharing and making. To exercise compassion, we invite you to openly embrace feelings of confrontation and discomfort, and to embody different realities.

TRANSFORMING NARRATIVES is a place to encounter the untold stories, unseen bodies and existing beauties that have been historically erased. For decades, fashion has been promoting aesthetic standards based on dominant discourses. Therefore, this encounter looks into our social structures, to question the Eurocentric beauty ideals that have often exoticized other's identities. To transform social narratives, it is essential to make practices visible in which the body is reclaimed as a territory of resistance. Here, you are invited to challenge the notions of gender, identity and vulnerability. Feel free to engage with transformative narratives.

COEXISTING KNOWLEDGES rethinks formal ways of production and distribution of knowledge. We invite you to question the hegemonic view on western science and start comprehending the multiple and incommensurable ways of knowing. It is an encounter to decentralise education and experiment with educational practices, creating space for diversity and enabling plural worldviews to coexist. There are many ways of understanding, teaching and researching that deserve recognition. Within fashion, clothes carry pieces of information that are not always on the surface. We would like to shed a light on the ways of making threads, colouring, and weaving this fabric of knowledge together.

MISSING CONTENT provided room for active contribution of visitors during five different workshops. For the exhibition Fashion as Encounters, visitors were invited to work on their own, by participating in workshops, conversations, exercises and performances that took place in the empty spaces in the exhibition. The green spaces in the exhibition made room for the unknown visions and unexpected results.

www.stateoffashion.org/en/news/the-missing-content-is-complete/

Does it have an end?, 2022.
Wei-Chi Su, Ateliê Vivo, Danayi Madondo

Eunice Pais

Najla Said

Amidst the threads, our names become, 2022

Eunice Pais, Anabel Poh and Tra My Nguyen


bodies that make, bodies that consume, 2022 Santiago Útima, Siviwe James, Widi Asari and Riyadhus Shalihin

bodies that make, bodies that consume, 2022
Santiago Útima, Siviwe James, Widi Asari and Riyadhus Shalihin

Santiago Útima

Anabel Poh

Molly Jae Vaughan

Tra My Nguyen

Ateliê Vivo

Wei-Chu Su

River Claure


Gustavo Caboco & Lucilene Wapichana

Gustavo Caboco & Lucilene Wapichana

Amy Suo Wu

Widi Asari & Riyadhus Shalihin

Cholita Chic

Dorian Ulises López Macías

Inti-mates workshop, Circus Andersom & Denise Bernts

Woman Cave Collective

Join Clothes Collective

Walk-in Wardrobes at Rozet

"Through Walk-in Wardrobes we aimed to research systems of civic ownership using existing swap, exchange and clothing library methodologies to test different methods of non-monetary exchange of clothing. We start with the question: What if we see clothing not as something that we buy and own but as something we look after until the next wearer? These wardrobes celebrate clothing as markers of lives lived and place them in transition from one wearer to another, each elaborating on their ongoing story.
We invite not only an exchange of clothes but an exchange of skills from repair and mending to laundering, care and alteration in order to build an alternative fashion economy where clothing stays in circulation for as long as possible. By the end of the biennial all these contributions will inform a proposal for a permanent clothing library for the city."

Participants: Soup Archive, Garcia Bello, Cedric Mizero, Outfit Library LESS, 2Switch

www.stateoffashion.org/en/programme/walk-in-wardrobes/

Garcia Bello

Cedric Misero

Garcia Bello

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Thursday 21 July 2022

State of Fashion | Ways of Caring

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