SPOTTED: NOT____ENOUGH collective in curatorial team State of Fashion biennial 2022
- Fashion
The 2022 edition of the State of Fashion biennial, taking place in the spring, will be curated by Fashion Revolution’s showcasing initiative ‘Fashion Open Studio’ in collaboration with ‘NOT____ENOUGH collective’, three South-American critical fashion practitioners and ArtEZ alumni who explore the roles of oppressor and oppressed in fashion. The two teams will create a common curatorial framework for the biennial and will organize coinciding programs, that include exhibitions and public events.
Coexistence, Exercising, Reparation, Healing, Journey and Change are some of the keywords that the new curatorial team used to introduce their vision to the world in an online press event. “These words are the start of an active exchange, between us ánd between us and the audience. Our aim is to move away from the biennial as an isolated event, and to approach it as an ongoing public exercise in which everyone should have a role,” says the team of Fashion Open Studio. "How can we subvert the practices of exhibiting, curating and selecting in this biennial? How do we go beyond talking about it to practicing it? What does it look like, what does it feel like? We are opening up our process from the start, as we want people to experience this with us,” the members of NOT____ENOUGH collective add.
NOT____ENOUGH collective: fresh perspectives on the future of fashion
NOT___ENOUGH is a collective of South American women exploring the tensions of the systemic asymmetry persisting in our society. Design, fashion and art practices have for long contributed to perpetuate colonialism by spreading particular ways of thinking, doing and learning. To disrupt these asymmetries and cease the reproduction of colonial power, they encourage people to rethink, revalue and reimagine practices of design and education at its roots. All three members of the collective are alumni of the MA Fashion Strategy progamme. Their ideas on systemic asymmetry, colonialism, and its role in education partly orginated from their expriences in our programme as international students in the context of Western art and design education.
State of Fashion selected the new curatorial team through an Open Call that resulted in a staggering 118 applications from 31 different countries. The selection was made with the support of an international Creative Advisory Council, consisting of Omoyemi Akerele, Otto von Busch, Carla Fernández, Hakan Karaosman, Aditi Mayer and Amanda Pinatih. ‘As we aim for a biennial that represents a multitude of voices, it felt natural to invite two teams to work together,’ says Steven van Teeseling, general director of the Sonsbeek & State of Fashion Foundation. ‘With Fashion Open Studio, we connect with a strong global network, as well as an experienced team of change-makers. With NOT____ENOUGH collective, we invite three visionary ArtEZ alumni back to Arnhem to share fresh perspectives on the future of fashion. We strongly feel that this will lead to synergy and that the collaboration will tie together a multitude of insights and networks.’
The new curatorial team takes over State of Fashion's platform after ‘This is an Intervention’, the online program that culminates in an online exhibition this Friday. The team follows in the footsteps of José Teunissen, who curated State of Fashion’s first biennial in 2018. The next State of Fashion biennial will take place in the spring of 2022 and aims to reach an audience of 40.000 visitors, with an online and an offline program. The theme of the biennial will be announced in June 2021, during the annual Fashion + Design Festival Arnhem.
State of Fashion 2022: Ways of Caring
With Ways of Caring as the central theme of its next biennial, State of Fashion once again calls our attention to the challenges that fashion is facing today. For this second edition in 2022, the focus is on the need to restore broken threads and disrupted relationships in the fashion world. Click here to read more. At the moment, State of Fashion is looking for makers and practitioners with radical ideas and perspectives, to co-create a collectively commissioned work for the exhibition “Fashion as Encounters” curated by NOT_____ENOUGH Collective. Check the website for more information and apply as a contributor!
About State of Fashion
State of Fashion is an international fashion platform that connects pioneers in fashion design, research and business, and shares their ideas and innovations with the world. The platform stands for critical reflection on common positions and models in the fashion industry. Together with designers, companies, scientists, educators, consumers and other stakeholders in fashion, State of Fashion actively explores an urgently needed new fashion system.
State of Fashion builds on the Arnhem Fashion Biennial (2005-2013), as well as on the profile built up by the City of Arnhem as a hub for renewal, research and innovation in fashion. The platform works in close collaboration with Arnhem-based fashion partners ArtEZ University of the Arts, Museum Arnhem and Fashion + Design Festival Arnhem. It also plays a pivotal role in the national programmes Taskforce Fashion and Culture.Fashion. State of Fashion is part of the Sonsbeek & State of Fashion Foundation, which also organizes the ongoing sonsbeek 20-24 program for visual arts. The Foundation is structurally supported by the Municipality of Arnhem and the Province of Gelderland. From 2021 onwards, State of Fashion is supported by the Dutch Ministry of Culture, Education and Science within their national cultural infrastructure scheme for 2021-2024.
Discover more
View the website of NOT____ENOUGH collective.
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