MA Fashion Curation and Cultural Programming student Madison Hough reports on her UAL Global Pathways Grant funded study trip to the State of Fashion Biennale in Arnhem. Offering a platform for designers, makers, and curators to come together outside the museum's institutional restraints, the Biennale provided an opportunity to evaluate the current state and future possibilities of the fashion industry.
The 2024 rendition, Ties that Bind, took a unique curatorial approach, unfolding across Arnhem and sister sites in Nairobi, Bengaluru, and São Paulo, in April. This decentralised structure was realised by curators Louise Bennetts and Rachel Dedman, who oversaw the main site, and interlocutor curators Sunny Dolat, Kallol Datta, and Hanayrá Negreiros. Madi uses this event as a case study to explore possible ways in which the role fashion exhibition-making can play in altering our relationship to the modern colonial order. Drawing on her background in socio-cultural anthropology, she examines fashion from a global perspective, using fashion curation as a tool to challenge dominant narratives and act as a catalyst for change.
After spending an immersive four days in Arnhem, she has compiled her account below.
From the moment you arrive at the train station, you are met with the branded imprint of State of Fashion, which determined to leave its mark on the city of Arnhem. And it certainly did. With local volunteers making up the workforce, Ties that Bind was - andtruly felt like - a community-led event, taking root in the main site of the Rembrandt Theater – a disused cinema converted to quasi-gallery space – as well as two interlocutor sites: Rozet and Museum Arnhem. Despite its international reputation, Arnhem had few tourists, making my foreign presence feel conspicuous.
For an exhibition challenging the centrality of Western Fashion, this was the first shock I had to contend with. Why were all the signs still leading to the Western metropole? And, why were the visitor demographics in alignment? This question remained central as I immersed myself in the Biennale. Throughout the week, I took part in numerous cultural programming events, which represent only a tiny sample of the events on the Biennale calendar, including an informal lecture with Bobby Kolade, the founder and creative director of BUZIGAHILL, a brand which redesigns second-hand clothing inherited from trade routes of waste colonialism in Uganda and redistributes them to the ‘Global North’ where they originated.
The main site at the Rembrandt Theater unfolded across four themes – Dismantling Tradition, Political Bodies, Designing Integrity and The Fabric of Shelter – in their respective gallery spaces as well as a cinema, a gallery for interlocutor exhibitions, and a café gallery showcasing the community collaborative projects that unfolded in Arnhem in conjunction with the Biennale. After a pitstop in the cinema room – which included a cycle of four short films, including a poignant video of intimate interviews with Palestinian women who keep the practice of Tatreez embroidery alive and thriving with a passion that will bring tears to your eyes – the viewer is ushered into the room dedicated to Dismantling Tradition.
The success of this room lies in the exhibition design. The space challenges naive notions of tradition as situated in the past by confronting the visitor with the spectacle of display. When you enter, mannequins on mirrored plinths built into the theatre seats peer down upon you, confronting you with their gaze as you are swept up in the theatricality of the space. The gallery is complete with a reverberating soundscape and red lights casting shadows on the surfaces of the room, flirting with the idea of a haunting of the past reenacted through the works of designers, such as Nous Étudions and Christopher Raxxy, who draw on their heritage and make it anew, asserting themselves as players in the global Fashion system. Maison ARTC’s series of photographs, commissioned specifically for State of Fashion and which make up much of the marketing material for the event, are situated at the center back of the room, distilling the notion of the gaze. However, this time, it is not the West gazing upon the East, but rather the East peering back in an act of colonial defiance. The series is centre-stage yet almost hidden behind the more striking mannequins in front, making them easy to overlook at first glance. This careful placement renders them rather like a fly on the wall where they see all, but only when you get closer do you realise you have been watched the whole time. This unsettling feeling of being watched is enhanced by the fierce gaze of the model, whose eyes seemingly follow you as you move. She looks at you as if to say, ‘I see you, and I know what you have done’. Her penetrating force makes moves to unsettle the predominantly Netherlands audience. Reproducing her image throughout the public-facing material for the Biennale extends the reach of her gaze and confronts the public beyond the confines of the exhibition space.
After climbing the theatre steps to the top, the visitor enters into a space that is less confrontational in design but not in content. The theme Political Bodies explores the role of clothing as a form of resistance against exploitation and historical injustices. Fara Fayyad, a Lebanese graphic designer, showcases her installation ‘Screen-Printing the Uprising’, inspired by the 2019 Beirut protests. In the short film ‘What Are We Celebrating?’ (2019), visitors witness Fayyad’s spontaneous act of using a manual screen-printing press during the protests to print political slogans on protester’s clothing. At the State of Fashion Biennale, she continues her activism by reactivating her press at Rozet in Arnhem, printing new slogans and designs in response to the exhibition themes and the ongoing genocide in Palestine.
A break in the progression of the themed rooms is met on the next level of the theatre in a room with a panoramic view of Arnhem. This room houses a mini version of each of the interlocutor exhibitions. Dolat’s ‘Tradition(al)’, which took place in Nairobi, corresponds with the theme of Dismantling Tradition, as it highlights designers and artists from the African continent who acknowledge the systems of knowledge, materials, and modes of dress that have persisted against the violence of imperialism. Datta’s exhibition, titled ‘Of involution, of languor’, which came to life in Bengaluru, gave space to the political nature of dress in India, where water is a conduit to spiritual cleanliness, yet water scarcity is a daily battle. Lastly, Negreiros’ ‘Through the Waters We Sew Other Brazilian Stories’ delves into the significance of water in Brazilian Indigenous and Afro-diasporic histories, using memory to weave together stories of the past, present and future. The interlocutors from the Global South, peering out at the Western metropole of Arnhem sparks an interesting dialogue, but is it effective? I am undecided. Unlike the confrontational gaze in the first gallery, the underlying dialogue permeating through the panoramic window of this gallery is less direct. However, there is a subtle shift. With the interlocutors overlooking the Western metropole, their stories have been momentarily centered. Yet this platform may over-idealise the potential for representation to drive real change. This positioning may inadvertently reinforce the Western metropole as the focal point of the global Fashion system, with the interlocutors as transient figures. Subliminal messaging is reinforced through the choice to situate the interlocutors with a panoramic view of Arnhem, but I am left pondering what message the visitors will take with them. Perhaps this room has just visualised my main concern with the Biennale: its inability to decenter the Western metropole consequentially and tangibly challenge the global Fashion system. The emphasis on representation and the illusion of decentering the West falls short of real change, appearing more as a superficial gesture than a meaningful critique.
Accompanying the sister site exhibit, the rooms dedicated to the final two themes are also housed upstairs. In Designing Integrity, we are introduced to an array of designers and collectives seeking to address the inequities of our current global Fashion system, such as About a Worker, a design studio that fosters dialogue regarding the unequal power relations between design and manufacture, giving agency and visibility to workers in the garment industry. The Fabric of Shelter gallery envelopes you in a warm atmosphere as soon as you enter, with art installations that invoke childhood forts and homemade quilts with the faint sound of nursery rhymes playing on loop. This atmosphere reflects the theme, which compares the material nature of clothing –the building block of our social and material lives – to an ephemeral home that we use to navigate the world, providing an effectively emotional and beautiful note to end the exhibition.
My trip to Arnhem was only complete with pitstops at Rozet and Museum Arnhem. While at Rozet, I indulged in souvenirs from Favvad’s screen-printing press before exploring the Fashion and Design Festival Arnhem (FDFA)’s responses to the Biennale’s themes. Five projects proposed by Arnhem-based makers, selected through an open call, contributed to this exhibition. Among them, Ülkühan Akgül and Batuhan Demir, multidisciplinary designers of Turkish descent, interviewed immigrants from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen who now reside in the Netherlands, designing accompanying garments that encompass the interviewee’s migration.
The projects at this site meaningfully showcased engagement with the Arnhem design community, offering a platform for makers and designers to highlight their work. At Museum Arnhem, Indonesian performance artist Melati Suryodarmo integrated Biennale themes into the existing galleries with her installation Kleidungsaffe – translated as ‘Clothes Ape’ – which commented on our society’s excessive consumption patterns and the universal desire to belong. Constructed from clothes donated by Arnhem residents and local banks, the installation featured a tree-like structure where performers sat for a durational performance, symbolising the social and economic hurdles migrants face in seeking acceptance.
While obstacles remain in decentralising the Biennale and fundamentally challenging the Western-centric fashion system, State of Fashion stands out as a bold attempt to introduce alternatives and dismantle our current global Fashion system. By integrating various modes of community engagement, State of Fashion offers a salient example of an exhibition taking strides towards grassroots curating, using its platform as a catalyst for broader change.
Photos by Madi Hough, 2024