Practicing Fashion. An evening of talks and presentations with Vava Dudu, Marlie Mul, Shanzhai Lyric, Tenant of Culture and Jeppe Ugelvig

With Vava Dudu, Marlie Mul, Shanzhai Lyric, Tenant of Culture and Jeppe Ugelvig

An evening of talks and presentations bringing together five practitioners who are actively developing new visions and material realities in the expanded field of fashion. The invited guests will share their ideas and experiences around the development of practices that support a complicit, critical and inclusive relation to fashion. The conversation will address creativity, resilience and empowerment beyond the so-called boundaries of a field. It will question how one can transform the usual dynamics operating between the production and consumption of fashion. All together it will consider fashion as a cultural practice, beyond style and clothing.

This event is part of the exhibition IN SITU: Tenant of Culture, currently on view at M HKA.

Practical information
Thursday 30 March 2023, 19:00-21:00
Language: English
Venue: auditorium
Free admission
Reservation is not required, but the number of places is limited.

Guest contributors

Vava Dudu (°1970) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Paris working with fashion, poetry, music and performance. Vava Dudu is an underground icon and a pioneer in upcycling, adapting and activating garments. Since the 90s she has been customizing existing garments, inscribing messages and poems on them. Her creations are worn by superstars such as Lady Gaga as well as anonymous people on the street. In 2001, together with her colleague Fabrice Lorrain, she received the prestigious ANDAM Fashion Award. Dudu is also singer and lyricist of the electro-punk band La Chatte formed in 2002 with Nikolu and Stéphane Argillet. Her creations have been exhibited and performed all over the world. An activist who goes against the dictates of the art and fashion system, she never stops to pursue her own freedom.

Marlie Mul (°1980) is an artist who also works as an educator. Her artistic practice manifests in between sculpture, painting, graphics, fashion, education, distribution, writing, experiments in branding, the social and the virtual. References to the flowing, the liquid, the oozing recur in her work on a formal level and in metaphoric themes. Her work is often made up of intricately fabricated objects, that keep a strong DIY character. She is based in Brussels and in Zeeland, The Netherlands. After studies in Fashion and Textile Design and a degree in Sculpture, Mul studied in the MFA History and Critical Thinking at the Architectural Association School for Architecture in London. Mul is the initiator of several projects, among which an occasional and nomadic exhibition space under the name Hermany; which besides poetry readings, concerts and art exhibitions also presented the one-day event “Fashion Café” a fashion show /group exhibition featuring models, uninvited guests and elegant handbags; and the clothing and accessories label PMS, a project that uses the T-shirt as a tool to visualise the idea of community and circulate its image through branding strategies. Her works have been exhibited internationally, including at WIELS in Brussels, the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, the 33rd Biennale of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana, the Istituto Svizzero in Rome and the FRAC Lorraine in Metz.

Shanzhai Lyric is a project by artists/writers/researchers Ming Lin and Alexandra Tatarsky, both based in New York. Their interest is in the effects of capital flows that characterise and shape the world. Shanzhai Lyric functions as a research body focused on radical logistics and linguistics from the prism of technological aberration and non-official cultures. They are interested in how this non-normative language can challenge certain boundaries and definitions. The project explores the potential to redistribute hegemonic and aesthetic forms by drawing inspiration from the experimental English of Shanzhai T-shirts made in China. Through an ever-growing archive of poetry-garments, Shanzhai Lyric explores the potential of mistranslation and nonsense as utopian world-making (/breaking) and has previously taken the form of poetry-lecture, essays and installation.

Tenant of Culture is the moniker given to the artistic practice of Hendrickje Schimmel. The artist completed a bachelor’s degree in Fashion Design at ArtEZ School of the Arts, Arnhem, NL, followed by a master’s degree in Textiles at the Royal College of Art, London, UK. Tenant of Culture has developed solo exhibitions in several institutions and galleries, including Camden Art Centre, London, Kunstverein Dresden, Fries Museum, Leeuwarden and Outpost Gallery, Norwich. Tenant of Culture’s practice has also been presented in multiple group exhibitions, among which are: Goldsmith Centre for Contemporary Art, London Huset fur Kunst & Design, Copenhagen, National Gallery, Prague, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem and Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris.

Jeppe Ugelvig (°1993) is a curator, historian and cultural critic based in California. He is currently doing a PhD at UC Santa Cruz, researching artistic responses to consumerism and product culture in the 20th century worldwide. Ugelvig regularly writes for Artforum, Frieze and Spike Art Quarterly. He is the founding editor-in-chief of Viscose, a journal of fashion criticism and analysis. His first book, Fashion Work: 25 Years of Art in Fashion, was published by Damiani in 2020. Ugelvig curates exhibitions that explore the boundaries between art, fashion and cultural archives. His exhibitions have taken place in museums and arts centres around the world, most recently at MMCA in Seoul, X Museum in Beijing and Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen.