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Keyword

SHAPE – Body, Fashion, Identity

Start Date 15 November 2024
End Date 29 March 2025
Venue TextielMuseum
Location Tilburg, Netherlands
Curator Henrik Vibskov, Marlou Breuls and Elmo Mistiaen
Designer Studio Harm Rensink and AI designer Elmo Mistiaen
Two mannequins (left) is a white outfit that is shaped in circles. There is a moon shaped headpiece on the mannequin's head. (Right) wearing a green puffer jacket and pink high waisted shorts.
Female mannequin wearing a purple one- piece complete with purple leopard print facemask and purple ribcage.
White dress shaped like an underwater stingray with white spikey fringing.
Mannequin wearing a one-piece that is inspired by a sea creature; hues in white, red and orange.
Mannequin wearing a two piece puffer coat that is wrapped into a hood and the bottom part of the coat fans out into a shell shape. The coat is set in hues of blue, grey, red, black and white.

SHAPE – body, fashion, identity

15 November 2024 T/M 29 March 2025
Enter the breath-taking world of SHAPE! In this fashion exhibition, you will wander past surreal, futuristic and seductive looks inspired by the human body, and question ideals of beauty. Through these designs, explore the malleability of the body and the creation of identity through textiles and fashion.

About the exhibition
A lot has changed in a short time. Online, we are not only continuously shown the ideal beauty image, we can also create it ourselves with avatars, filters or AI. Medical and cosmetic procedures are increasingly accessible. The conversation about cultural identity, sexuality and gender roles is more open but is also met with fierce resistance. How does all this affect our self-image? And how hybrid is the human body?

In SHAPE, we present conceptual, sculptural fashion and body-related art through which the designer addresses the malleability of the body. The exhibition combines well-known fashion designs, such as those by Iris van Herpen or the puffer coat worn by TV character Carrie Bradshaw, as well as digital fashion and intriguing installations created especially for this exhibition in the TextielLab.

For this exhibition, leading Danish designer Henrik Vibskov, Dutch fashion designer Marlou Breuls and Belgian digital designer Elmo Mistiaen developed fascinating installations. We invited them to the TextielLab as part of the Reasearch & Development (R&D) knitting programme. From ‘SHAPE’, you’ll naturally enter this impressive workshop and where you’ll get a sneak peek.

Images courtesy of Branko Popovic and  TextielMuseum.