A Visit to the Research Station
The Endless Garment: Research Station at the X Museum brings together the works of 22 contemporary artists and designers across Southeast Asia and China into a conceptual exhibition situated in Beijing, China
Curated by Poppy Dongxue Wu and Jeppe Ugelvig, the exhibition offers a lens to garment productions as well as the intersection between art and fashion. The Endless Garment: Research Station explores aspects within the fashion’s global supply chain, its cultures, disciplines, and systems, from street, factory and workshop to print publishing and retail. It focuses on the marginal spaces of production, from Ho Chi Minh’s fabric markets to Bali’s independent design scene, from runway shows to artisanal couture brands. Indonesia’s own fashion designer TOTON joins the exhibition as one of the artists from the 10 countries.
In the increasingly digital fashion with opaque supply chains and the cultivation of e-commerce businesses, this exhibition highlights the problems, paradoxes, ironies, and possibilities of the fashion system. Using the South China sea as the conceptual starting point, here Asian fashion is represented as a system and cultural narrative, making the whole exhibition deepens the stories, questions, and sensibilities behind it.
The showcase run physically from March to May and is expected to be the starting point of a project that will continue throughout the year. It takes form as a research station – that is why it is named The Endless Garment: Research Station – comprising publications, films, and fashion objects in a form of installation and workshop. The installation itself presents outfits from contemporary fashion designers, including TOTON.
Aside from TONTON, a London-based photographer Joyce Ng also participates in this exhibition showcasing her photographs as what she loves and has been continuing since her final year studies in Fashion Communication. Then there are Yat Pit 一丿presents the Red Qipao Dress from 2018 and Baby Reni brings Mualan Pants and Bootleg Scarf Top from 2020 along with the other diasporas.
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