Co-Curated & Co-Organized
Team Players:
Dawn Ertl
Marty Knop
Dr. Karen Kleinfelder
and the rest of the fashion seminar class
This was a group exhibition put on by Dr. Karen Kleinfelder’s seminar class.
“Because of fashion’s rapid change and mutability, it could be argued that fashion is a privileged site for doing cultural studies. Fashion not only reflects current trends; it also produces cultural meanings and shapes subjectivities. We are interested in how art uses fashion, how fashion uses art, and how anti-fashion operates subversively within both realms. Because fashion is so close to the body, it raises questions of beauty, ideals, desire, and anxiety. The body connection quickly leads to issues of gender and how fashion codes both regulate and scramble gender inscriptions and sexed identities. Drag and femininity as masquerade point to gender as performance; the catwalk runway and the theatrical tableaux of fashion photography point to fashion as spectacle. Counter-codes also circulate from subgroup fashions and streetwear to images that parody and subvert fashion’s conventions. How much of fashion is socially regimented? How much is personal expression? Mechanisms of production and commodity—from shopping to sweatshops— must also be called into question. Globalization and digital technologies mean expanded audiences and more possibilities for cultural exchange in a postmodern world; we can, thus, discuss a politics of fashion extending from the street level to a global fashions cape.“
Director of CSULB School of Art Dr. Karen Kleinfelder
Christy Matson & Carol Shaw Sutton
Krista Feld
Edith Abeyta
Heather Anacker
Annette Heully
Manny Krakowski
Christy Matson
Frau Fiber
