Fashion and Race: "Deconstructing Ideas, Reconstructing Identities"

This section of "Fashion and Race: Deconstructing Ideas, Reconstructing Identities" responds to the aftershocks of race as a construct and ideological worldview. In different ways, the artists featured here all confront the ramifications of race through creative acts of subversion, ultimately deconstructing the idea of race and attempting to repair its social implications by reconstructing identities on their own terms.

Consisting of two large, framed conceptual garments, Cecile Mouen’s project, “Unchecked: A Collective Interpretation of Race and Ethnicity,” enables viewers and participants to start conversations around race and ethnicity through the medium of clothes and textiles.

"Laura and Sarah are two mixed-race French/Cameroonian women whose testimonies aim to convey that ethnic and racial identity is profoundly impacted by personal experiences and physical surroundings."

–Cecile Mouen

Subverting reductive assumptions of Black identity, Avery Youngblood’s "How to Be Black" riffs off the prescriptive nature of a “how to” guide, using the booklet as a document to record the multidimensionality of young womanhood.

"I chose the title of this piece not because I wanted to tell people 'how to be Black'–in fact, there is no one way of 'being Black'–but there are processes and perspectives that differ day to day when you are living in the skin of a Black person."

–Avery Youngblood

Douglas's thesis project challenges the U.S. Declaration of Independence's "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness," noting the dissolve of personal identity within the prison system. Her goal is to remove the stigma from those who have served time and to break the cycle of criminality.

"Rebranded" is also a fashion collective made up of designers, artists, photographers and dreamers, working in collaboration with formerly incarcerated individuals.

"'Rebranded' seeks to encourage ideas and dialogue between individuals with multidisciplinary backgrounds in order to effectively make change in prison reform and rehabilitation."

–Joy Douglas