Artists and designers 

Manora Auersperg, Linnea Bågander, Naomi Bailey Cooper, Sonja Bäumel, Christina Dörfler Raab, Naomi Filmer, Barbara Graf, Shan He, Milena Heussler, Afra Kirchdorfer, Saina Koohnavard, Kate Langrish Smith, Ulrik Martin Larsen, Maximilian Mauracher, Wojciech Małolepszy & Robert Pludra, Ana Rajčević, Clemens Thornquist, Lara Torres, Aliki van der Kruijs

Curated by

Dobrila Denegri

27.10.19 –

06.01.20

Opening

26.10.19

18:00

City Museum of Rimini

Modern Hall

Artists and designers 

Manora Auersperg, Linnea Bågander, Naomi Bailey Cooper, Sonja Bäumel, Christina Dörfler Raab, Naomi Filmer, Barbara Graf, Shan He, Milena Heussler, Afra Kirchdorfer, Saina Koohnavard, Kate Langrish Smith, Ulrik Martin Larsen, Maximilian Mauracher, Wojciech Małolepszy & Robert Pludra, Ana Rajčević, Clemens Thornquist, Lara Torres, Aliki van der Kruijs

Curated by

Dobrila Denegri

“Transfashional” was conceived as an exhibition-in-progress which began with a series of discursive sessions which included renowned names such as Hussein Chalayan, Naomi Filmer, Lucy Orta, Clemens Thornquist, and José Teunissen, as well as creatives whose practice is situated between fashion and art, such as Anna-Sophie Berger, Martin Bergström, Minna Palmqvist, Ana Rajčević, and Lara Torres. Fostering collaborative and experimental work in each of the previous exhibitions in London, Warsaw, Vienna and Kalmar, “Transfashional” evolved through a series of new productions which aim to re-define fashion beyond its conventional notions. This same direction is further explored through the exhibition at the Rimini City Museum which, especially for this occasion, presents several daring fashion artists and designers: Aliki van der Kruijs, Sonja Bäumel, Barbara Graf, Saina Koohnavard, Ulrik Martin Larsen and more. 

As this up-and-coming generation of artists and designers reflect on the world around them, they highlight the need for a profound revision of the processes of production and social relations that derive from them. They turn away from the fashion industry and its super-accelerated rhythms of production. Their quest for alternatives drives and inspires new productions − not of goods but of ideas. Indeed, many of these works are critical, engaged and conceptual rather than wearable and functional, and can be seen as symbols and symptoms of the present ‘zeitgeist'. 

They are a result of the gradual dissolution of disciplinary boundaries which led us to the present post-(inter)disciplinary condition, which requires a new set of terms capable of defining and describing these hybrid productions. They demand denomination and categorisation in order to be rightly analysed, academically defined and thus legitimised, as well as supported. From the need for wider affirmation, legitimisation and support of practices which are predominantly experimental, research-based, speculative and artistic, comes the call for formulating a new, more adequate vocabulary. The second edition of “Transfashional” is an attempt to initiate an imaginative new lexicon which is closely related to the educational and teaching methods of the partnering institutions which encourage experimentation, stimulate freedom and unconventional thinking, and highlighting process over product. 

UK based artist Lara Torres asks the viewer to stop and reflect about how we make fashion in the future in her video-essay Unmaking. The visual narrative is composed of a series of performative gestures, such as un-weaving, un-sewing and tearing apart in order to become aware of the symbolic meaning of the thread, of the fragment, and of all what remains behind as a material trace of human existence. In a similar way Anna Sophie Berger’s work She Vanished 1 evokes absence, loss, and generally the state of moving away while Ana Rajčević’s work questions possible new beginnings: her wearable sculptures in the form of long horns invoke both ancestral and futuristic dimensions. Kate Langrish-Smith pushes the notion of wearability and functionality even further. Her body-related-sculptures function as enigmatic performative devices which create a specific choreography of the movement and body-posture, inviting and teasing spectators to interact with them. By means of an artistic analysis Manora Auersperg reflects on the exhibition itself. She traces the spacial context in situ whilst transforming a textile surface by pulling out threads. Whereas the given structure of the fabric dissolves, notes materialize in a different medium.

Several artists focus on the potential of materials. For her collection Excuse My Dust Christina Dörfler-Raab together with artist and performer Jasmin Schaitl experiments with different dying processes using destructive and corrosive substances, while Afra Kirchdorfer creates modular systems composed of ribbons and geometrically cut pieces of cloth which can be endlessly combined and recombined around the body. Assembling the work becomes a playful action of re-designing as well as rethinking the very notion of ready-to-wear. Graphic designer Maximilian Mauracher will work with translation of graphic signs/textures to textiles, realizing a new site-specific installation. 

The second edition of “Transfashional” was realised in collaboration with University of Applied Arts Vienna, London College of Fashion, UAL, The Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, The Swedish School of Textiles - University of Borås, Master of Fashion Studies, University of Bologna, Rimini Campus. It was organised with additional support of the Federal Ministry for Arts and Culture, Constitution and Media, Austria, Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Austria, Austrian Cultural Forum Milan as well as of the Netherlands embassy in Rome and Netherlands consulate-general in Milan. 

Thank to curatorial assistants: Amal El Asri, Golshan Bahrami, Mengran Zhang, Flavia Piancazzo, Yingntao Zhong (Tessa) and Szymon Owsiański.