Fashion and art have had a longstanding relationship throughout the years. Fashion’s reflectiveness of art trends also applies to African art, which has had a significant impact on fashion. African artists have been finding novel ways to express their creativity, and fashion design is one of the outlets. By incorporating cultural references into their designs, they encourage us to envision a future where Africa is not seen as oppositional to Europe. A few artists are influenced by fashion in their practice
Serge Mouangue
Serge Mouangue is a Tokyo based designer from Cameroon who has developed a unique fashion concept by drawing parallels between African and Japanese traditions. He uses traditional African fabrics to create a new style of Japanese kimonos, which he calls the “African Kimono.” Mouangue through this approach explores what the link between cultural aesthetics and rituals can reveal about our collective identities. His recent performance centered around the Japanese tea ceremony. The event was a transformative experience that created a sense of harmony among the participants. The performance featured people who donned African kimonos while partaking in the tea ceremony, accompanied by the music of a kora player and a masked woman portraying a spiritual presence.
Ghada Amer
New York based multimedia artist Ghada Amer is an Egyptian/American whose work confronts topics surrounding gender, sexuality, and identity. Her work challenges the objectification in portrayal of female nudity in art, which affords women no sexual agency of their own. She makes use of sewing and embroidery techniques to address contemporary women’s issues while recognizing that these crafts are often associated with traditionally feminine domains. Amer draws inspiration from the way Egyptian veils are juxtaposed with Western fashion in magazines. Today, she continues to interrogate the impact of stereotypes and the various ways they can be understood.
Ike Ude
Living and working in New York City, Ike Ude is a photographer of Nigerian and American descent whose photography centers around urban culture. His subjects span a range of topics, from fashion to celebrity, humor to identity. Ude uses photography to delve into topics like representation and identity, and he extends the boundaries of portrait photography with his self-portrait series, Sartorial Anarchy. In this collection, he adorns himself in diverse costumes made to transcend time and place and uses clothing as a marker of culture rather than simply fashion. By merging garments from different cultures, Ude reimagines their meanings.
Yinka Shonibare
Yinka Shonibare is a British-Nigerian artist based in London who explores the intersection of cultural identity and the relationship between Africa and Europe. In his practice, he questions conventional notions of cultural and national identity in a world that is increasingly interconnected. Shonibare uses Victorian clothing constructed from African fabrics to display cultural symbolism. His subjects often range from children to commonplace figures or even headless mannequins, cast in movement poses such as running, flying, dancing, and firing shots. He has also recreated iconic paintings such as The Last Supper, stories from British literature including The Picture of Dorian Gray, and performances from operas such as Un ballo in maschera.
