Diasporic Fashion

Focusing on the work of fashion designer and thinker Grace Wales Bonner, we looked into the influences, forms of self representation, struggles and work that artists, designers and taste makers need to go through to showcase, or even fashion, other forms of culture making and design. Radical designer Grace Wales Bonner's work is rooted in academic histories and critical theories of the colonial portrayals of blackness as both the ‘other’, as regressive, and as brutish.  Bonner’s design and artistic work is critically acclaimed and rooted in activism, cinematic and cinematic and literary narratives from (queer) artists of colour.

Diasporic Fashion is part of a series of events that aim offer a framework for artists, fashion designers, students, writers and academics to rethink, (re-) interpret existing narratives of material culture (specifically textiles) within the collection of the Museum of World Cultures. This framework looks at the historicization of textiles, meaning of style and craftsmanship by inviting experts, academics and fashion designers to question notions of authenticity, appropriation and how it is interweaved in the collection and knowledge production at ethnographic museums. By highlighting the questions and objects surrounding fashion, representation, materiality and identity the museum aims to foster a relationship between audiences and makers and its collection.

Guests:

• Grace Wales Bonner
• Majid Karrouch
• Anoma Whittaker (moderator)