Opening: Thursday August 17th 7pm
Clothing serves as a second skin to our body. This skin is historically regulated by the conventions of taste and fashion, from which we also adopt the demands of gender and size. Learning to make our own clothes has the potential to be a disruptive act in a world that considers textile production as an object to be disposed of, for few and brief uses, with increasingly shorter periods of innovation for the sake of over-stimulating consumption. In response to this, the São Paulo-based Ateliê Vivo collective proposes, instead, the construction of an open and plural clothing workshop. It is a space for learning, passing on knowledge and connecting artistic, cultural, and social practices to create a path for the autonomy of clothing. This aim also promotes a profound shift in the barriers to learning and employment opportunities. Additionally, it addresses the issue of socio-economic, age, gender, and geographical inequalities.
The artists propose a crossover between the pattern library and the place that houses the municipal sewing workshop in the city of San Juan. These two spaces of textile production temporarily converge to share, exchange, and create new forms of clothing, fostering a dialogue with the community of San Juan. Hence, the museum resembles a flexible and porous body, capable of transforming into a clothing workshop. Sewing machines, fabrics, scraps, threads, hangers, and scissors are among the tools and elements introduced into this space to create a welcoming environment for the community and to act as a vehicle for exchange. In addition to learning, this workshop is a space to discover our bodies and reflect on how to clothe them.
Clarisa Appendino
Image: Ateliê Vivo, Divulgación
