Professor Azra Aksamija, Director of the Art, Culture and Technology Program, is currently exhibiting at the State of Fashion Biennale 2024 from May 17 to June 30, 2024.
Curated by Rachel Dedman and Louise Bennetts, this edition of the Fashion Biennale, titled Ties that Bind, explores the complexities of tradition, the political power of clothing, and alternative approaches to exploitative fashion systems. The Biennale celebrates fashion through critical creative practices from the Global South with a decentralized structure spanning Arnhem, Netherlands, and three sister sites in Nairobi, Kenya; Bengalūru, India; and São Paulo, Brazil. Interlocutor-curators at each sister site develop projects responding to the themes from their local perspectives.
Professor Aksamija’s works are featured in the Arnhem home site, contributing to the Biennale’s aim of amplifying global kinships and sharing the human stories woven into what we wear. Aksamija’s fashion and textile art addresses contemporary urgencies and colonial legacies in clothing, questioning the traditions that have been passed down.
The Biennale has commissioned a new work by Azra Aksamija titled Hallucinating Traditions (2024) – a 5-channel video installation that utilizes AI to envision future iterations of traditional fashion. Aksamija’s speculative designs blur cultural and temporal boundaries, prompting viewers to reconsider the notion of ‘traditional’ as a construct of the imagination. The work also suggests how technology may shape and influence our most deeply rooted traditions. The five digital animations are simultaneously projected onto holographic fan monitors, creating an impression of ever-shifting, ghostly forms that seem to emerge from both the future and the past. Through this immersive audiovisual experience, Aksamija’s work invites the audience to contemplate the evolving relationship between technology, tradition, and cultural identity.
