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Fashion Fictions accompanies a major exhibition organized by Stephanie Rebick and presented at the Vancouver Art Gallery from May 27 to October 9, 2023, which surveys experimental design practices that exist at the intersection of fashion and other modes of cultural production. International in scope, the exhibition explores the increasing influence of research-based, materially driven practices on the global fashion scene, while acknowledging the proliferation of creative practices that challenge the aesthetic, material and technological conventions of fashion. Rebick, through the title of the exhibition, references artist and technologist, Julian Bleecker’s influential essay “Design Fiction” (2009) in which he argues that the most innovative, transformative work is produced in the spaces between fact and fiction, the present and the near future, and the scientific and the fantastic. All the designers in Fashion Fictions occupy these liminal spaces, using fashion as a means to unite seemingly disparate sentiments and to propose new possibilities for aesthetics, bodily forms and, more ambitiously, how we exist in the world.

In difficult times, fashion is always outrageous.

Elsa Schiaparelli

Contributors

1. Stephanie Rebick

   is the Director of Publishing and Content Strategy at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Stephanie has curated and co-curated numerous exhibitions including Fashion Fictions; Where do we go from here?; Modern in the Making: Post-War Craft and Design in British Columbia; Robert Rauschenberg 1965– 1980; Out of Sight; Guo Pei: Couture Beyond; Cabin Fever; MashUp: The Birth of Modern Culture; and Grand Hotel: Redesigning Modern Life. She has contributed to a number of publications including KRAZY! The Delirious World of Anime + Comics + Video Games + Art; Visceral Bodies; Unreal; Grand Hotel; and MashUp. Most recently she has edited volumes on the work of Jan Wade and Omer Arbel. Her curatorial interests include visual culture, new media, and the intersection of craft, design and contemporary art.

Co-Published with the Vancouver Art Gallery.

1. Fashion Fictions
   $45

   Subverting the conventions of the fashion magazine, this heavily illustrated magazine-style publication will feature a curatorial essay by Stephanie Rebick, essays by exhibition collaborators Amber-Dawn Bear Robe, Hélène Day Fraser and Keith Doyle, as well as photo essays and short texts covering the themes explored in the exhibition.

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