Crafting Fashion for Possible Futures

24.06.2022 - 30.09.2022

Austrian Cultural Forum, New York / United States

Design holds the potential for change and possible, better futures. In a time of chronic political, environmental, health, and social struggles with a lingering fear of an imminent crisis, an intrinsic question arises: What can design really do, right now?

With the exhibition “Crafting Fashion for Possible Futures”, curated by Camille Boyer and Miriam Kathrein, the Austrian Cultural Forum New York presents for the first time a comprehensive overview of contemporary Austrian fashion design.

The exhibition focuses on the working methods of professional fashion design practitioners, concerned with their responsibility in the socio-political, sociocultural, and socio-economical realm.... Their fashion design practice explores and investigates fields of identity politics, activism, sustainability, or the interdependency of traditional production processes and new technology.

In the exhibition objects such as garments, shoes, accessories, textiles, images and films are shown to ask one question:

HOW CAN THE ACT OF CRAFTING FASHION DRIVE POSITIVE AND SYSTEMIC CHANGE?

This is the question the fashion practitioners try to answer through finding possibilities within their designs to work on societal transitions. They do this by giving visibilities to those often not represented in society, by challenging large fashion-corporations through championing community and identity and by – quite literally – de-seaming masculinity and interlacing the demand of feminism into the wearable. Every single designer whose works are shown trigger these changes in one or more ways. Their designs stand for optimism, solidarity and hope.

[Quelle: https://web.archive.org/web/20220000000000*/https://acfny.org/exhibition/crafting-fashion-for-possible-futures/]