Opening: Saturday September 23th 7pm
Clothing serves as a second skin to our body. This skin has been 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 collaboration between their pattern library and the Pura Pampa Cooperative of Los Toldos, as part of a joint project with the Museo Provincial Casa Evita.
These textile spaces temporarily merge to share, exchange, and create innovative clothing designs, inspired by Evita’s historical mass distribution of sewing machines during the early days of Peronism. This initiative represents not only the potential for self-sufficiency in clothing production. but also economic empowerment. As a result of these gatherings, sewing machines, fabrics, scraps, threads, hangers, scissors, and tools are made available to the community, serving as a platform for exchange. In addition to promoting learning, this workshop is a space to discover our bodies and reflect on how to clothe them.
Clarisa Appendino
