Africa Fashion Exhibition - Portland Art Museum
Africa Fashion opens at the Portland Art Museum on November 18 after acclaimed runs at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and the Brooklyn Museum. This first-of-its-kind exhibition, making its only West Coast stop at PAM, honors the irresistible creativity, ingenuity, and unstoppable global impact of contemporary African fashions. Garments and textiles dating from the mid-twentieth century to the present day, contextualized by a range of cultural touchstones such as Drum magazines, Fela Kuti and Miriam Makeba record albums, and studio photography from Sanlé Sory, celebrate the transformative and liberatory power of self-fashioning. The New Yorker’s art critic Hilton Als called Africa Fashion a “vital and necessary exhibition.”
The exhibition opens November 18th, 2023 and goes until February 18th, 2024
Learn more about the exhibit and the programs that are included by clicking here
Here are a couple of programs that will be offered below:
OPENING LECTURE
Making Africa Fashion with exhibition curator Christine Checinska
Sunday November 19, 2 – 3:30 p.m., Grand Ballroom
Africa Fashion celebrates the vitality and innovation of key creatives in Africa at the heart of the scene during the 20th century post-independence era and now in this contemporary moment. Join exhibition curator Christine Checinska, the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Senior Curator of African and Diaspora Textiles and Fashion, for a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the exhibition. Tickets are available now.
TOMORROW THEATER
Carte Blanche: Ruth E. Carter
January 11 -14, 2024
In conjunction with Africa Fashion, PAM CUT’s newly opened Tomorrow Theater on Portland’s East side will host living legend and Academy Award–winning costume designer Ruth E. Carter as part of Carte Blanche, PAM CUT’s quarterly series giving polymath artists free rein to do what they want to do and share something new. Carter’s Carte Blanche weekend features her in a rare talk on January 12 moderated by Amy Dotson, Director of PAM CUT and the Portland Art Museum’s Curator of Film & New Media. Carter will reflect on her career as an artist, her influences from Afrofuturism, and more. Her latest book, The Art of Ruth Carter: Costuming Black History and the Afrofuture, from Do the Right Thing to Black Panther, will also be available for sale.
The Carte Blanche weekend also includes screenings of Black Panther 1 and 2, as well as other influential film and media that inspired her career, and a preview screening and Portland premiere of Sundance 2023 sensation Bravo, Burkina! by writer-director and fashion designer Walé Oyéjidé.
Tickets will be available soon!!!
Images: Mbeuk Idourrou collection, Imane Ayissi, Paris, France, Autumn/Winter 2019. Photo: Fabrice Malard / Courtesy of Imane Ayissi; Kofi Ansah 'Indigo' Couture 1997 - Narh & Linda - Photo © 1997 Eric Don-Arthur; ANC Nelson Mandela commemorative cloth, South Africa, 1991 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Shade Thomas-Fahm, bùbá, ìró, ipele and gèlè in aso-òkè, Lagos, Nigeria, 1970s, Given by Shade Thomas-Fahm © Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Dr. Christine Checinska photo by Philippa Gedge Photography; Ruth E. Carter photo by Jaxon PhotoGroup; ‘Intsinzi’ collection, Moshions, Rwanda, Spring/Summer 2018 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
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