Beautiful Repair (2023). Installation view at Copenhagen Contemporary. Photo: David Stjernholm.
Beautiful Repair
Mending in Art and Fashion
01.02.23
– 10.09.23
A new phenomenon is spreading across the worlds of art and fashion: the aesthetics of mending. Recycling is gaining creative momentum, generating stunning experimental creations. For a new generation of artists and designers, second-hand materials, dead stock and sophisticated mending techniques are fuelling the creation of valuable narratives and ornamentation, giving new life to clothes and providing fertile ground for aesthetic expression.
Throughout modernity, artists have been fascinated by clothing as a means of change. Clothes can be a political statement or a form of personal expression. Likewise, many fashion designers draw inspiration from fine art. Conceptually, their designs often move in the direction of art.
Appearing in art and fashion, the aesthetics of mending are associated with an ideal of beauty that celebrates imperfection and personal history. Sustainability is linked to creativity, craft
and aesthetic expression.
Zadie Xa in collaboration with Benito Mayor Vallejo, Cellular Portal (2019). Installation view Beautiful Repair, Copenhagen Contemporary (2023). Photo: David Stjernholm.
The exhibition’s artists and designers merge climate awareness with an interest in the basic human need for expression through clothes. How do we communicate with the world around us through fashion? And what importance do we assign to the objects we surround ourselves with – as a society and in our personal lives?
Beautiful Repair focuses on the exchange between two creative fields coming together in an exploration of clothes, our “second skin”. Created in partnership with Ane Lynge-Jorlén (ALPHA), the exhibition shows works by a host of artists and fashion designers, some for the first time in Denmark: Zadie Xa, Rasmus Myrup, Elina Heilanen, Minna Palmqvist, Lee Mingwei, Marie Sloth Rousing & Anna Clarisse Holck Wæhrens, Pia Camil, Idaliina Friman, Tenant of Culture, ALL-IN, Ella Morris, Kristine Sehested-Blad, Beatrice Stenmark, Rottingdean Bazaar, Holly Blakey & Chopova Lowena.
