Art you can wear goes on show at Queen’s Park

An exhibition that merges the worlds of visual arts, haute couture, and slow fashion featuring prominent and emerging fashion designers and artists opened Saturday with a Wear Your Art Party at the Queen’s Park Gallery.

Back for its second installment after a successful inaugural year, the National Cultural Foundation’s (NCF) Wearable Art Exhibition is set to run until January 6. The NCF is also encouraging visitors to the exhibition to not only see but buy the accessories, jewellery and clothing on show.

After a special invitation was extended to previous participants and an open call was made for creatives to be involved in the Wearable Art Exhibition, the NCF selected 21 artists for the expo which bridges the gap between artist expression and function by providing a platform for individuals to express their identity.

Chief Cultural Officer Andrea Wells noted that anticipation is especially high for this showcase as Christmas approaches. 

“It’s not just fashion,” she said. “It’s an opportunity for you to make a statement, either about how you see the world or how you approach this season or just being noticed when you walk into the room.”

Curator Oneka Small said: “This year we have a phenomenal group, it is nice to see the diversity that is in the room.”

Creativity was on display in the exhibition.

Among the designers on show are Mark Daniel’s Avark, which is highly recognised for one-of-a-kind handcrafted pieces, Adora Hoyte with her t-shirt line and Ayissa, who specialises in textile designs.  

“We get up every day and we are sometimes told what we need to wear, or we put on things that fit,” Small explained to Barbados TODAY. “This [exhibition] lets us expand beyond those thoughts so that we can determine who we are and how we want to dress.” 

Pieces crafted by Azizah Onifa.

Jewellery maker Taisha Carrington, who has been making waves internationally, shared her perspective on the challenge of defining wearable art. She believes that events like this offer Barbadians a chance to rethink traditional concepts of fashion and art. 

“I think that is because there is such a fluid grey area. Sometimes we want things to be more on the commercial side, sometimes they are more on the art side, sometimes you can’t tell what part of the body they belong to, but I have found that in that exact greyness is where we get the opportunity to tell our story,” she said.

Carrington encouraged fellow artists to embrace that grey area and explore unconventional ideas about jewellery, clothing, and other wearable forms of art. Drawing from her personal experience as a designer, she emphasised how jewellery has served as her medium to share stories about Barbadian and Caribbean culture with the world.  

Some of the pieces were modelled.

She encouraged fellow artists not to feel constrained by conventional paths. 

Extending gratitude for the platform she said: “I hope that we continue to get the support to increase the ways that we can show fashion, art, jewellery and just for artists to know that they don’t have to fit in a specific path, but they can continue to expand that grey area.”  

Embracing creativity was the primary focus of the wearable art exhibition. Throughout the event, pieces from last year’s showcase were featured in a virtual exhibition displayed on the gallery’s screen. Show attendees transformed into living mannequins as they donned their artistic creations for the Wear Your Art Party opening night.

Leading artist-designers Pauline Bellamy, Shakad Eco Lifestyle and Kim Butcher (Okoye by Kim) are joined by ceramicist-jewellers Gloria Chung and Julianna Iniss, fashion artist Margaret Herbert and several younger, emerging artists. (STT)

Jewellery maker Taisha Carrington.