Exploring the bond between fashion and art

Fashion and art flaunted a bond, a symbiotic relationship, a connection between them courtesy Khoj International Artists’ Association. It presented ‘The Idea of Fashion’, an exhibition that showcased works by a group of artists and fashion designers.

The project at Khoj Studios in New Delhi was amalgamation of art and fashion, involving Mithu Sen (artist), Manisha Parekh (artist), Anay Mann (photographer), Arjun Saluja (fashion designer) and Kallol Datta (fashion designer). Mithu Sen in her work studies self-perception and analyzes the influence of society on our identity. She engages in queries related to gender in postmodernism and the subjective experience of sexuality and femininity in post-emancipation. Anay Mann started photography in 2001, especially the stage portraits as the idiom to explore. Artist Manisha Parekh has exhibited work extensively in India and abroad.

According to the director of Khoj, Pooja Sood, the residency tried to question the role of fashion in shaping our everyday realities and dreams, as well as both the individual and collective processes of self perception, identity, communication etc. She added: “What’s intended with these processes and perceptions? What’s achieved and what’s at play here, what’s at stake and the powerful role fashion has and continues to play in history? The idea is to explore what it means to an individual, and how one may start seeing fashion as an artifact and also instrument in society as we understand it of the fashion weeks and fashion shows.”

Through installations and garments, the participants presented different perceptions and ideas related to fashion. Anay Mann and Mithu Sen explained that the workshop was more about delving into how fashion can change identity and behavior. Manisha Parekh treated it as a physiological journey into the fashion designers’ minds to follow the attitude behind experimenting with different fabrics and materials.

Arjun Saluja and Kallol Dutta went back to the basics and experienced the joy of team working and thus understand the mindset of artists and how they used it in terms of fashion. According to them, both artists and fashion designers have quite a similar sense of expression though the medium of expression is different.