Graduation exhibition: Fray; Unpicking Fashion

Starting from a fraying at the ankle, we get our hands on the thread to unpick its every stitch. The fabric puckers and resists, until suddenly it gives. We work up and up, seam by seam, until its construction comes undone and each piece lies flat on the table. Arriving at the top of the leg, we find every pocket filled with hidden scraps and frayed ends of stories left untold. And so we continue pulling.

Fray; Unpicking Fashion brings together eight artists in a single unraveling: not of a garment, but of the fashion system itself, the myths it produces, and the speed at which it fables them. Presented by MA Critical Fashion Practices at ArtEZ University of the Arts, this exhibition traces the final projects of Generation 34 alongside the development of the graduates’ practices, each spun over the past two years. Born from the industry’s own fabric, Fray turns its tools against its seams. Eight pairs of hands, eight threads, each with different instruments, all tugging and pulling at the same structure.

In Fray, we invite you to follow along the fibres that are left after the fashion industry’s unraveling. The symbol of the hermaphrodite jellyfish meets that of the gendered cyborg, of which aesthetics are rooted the long history of women made witches, of the body becoming one with the sewing machine, a tool itself weaponised against women through the coursing of the word ‘craft’, now reappropriated, reprinted on the body anew; a body that is collective, a body that is shared.

In our body of work, through the weight of material, the immediacy of image, and the precision of the word, we untangle the stories fashion tells to hide its design.

Not in unison, but in chorus, we mark what comes undone.

On behalf of Generation #34: 
Gaia Cesarin, Jeanne Roest, Ramy Toma, Anna Trevisan, Maya Gawel, Inez Carmen van Kessel, Mathilda Thiarks, Charlie Dröge

galla studios. 
Tweede Hugo de Grootstraat 27, Amsterdam

Opening reception
3 July 18:00-21:00

Open 
4-5 July 12:00-17:00

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