Kerstin Pinther – författare

“A revelation. Reclaiming fashion from its European history.” – Shane WhiteWith a focus on sub-Saharan Africa, Fashioning the Afropolis provides a range of innovative perspectives on global fashion, design, dress, photography, and the body in some of the major cities, with a focus on Lagos, Johannesburg, Dakar, and Douala. It contributes to the ongoing debates around the globalization of fashion and fashion theory by exploring fashion as a genuine urban phenomenon on the continent and among its diasporas. To date, “fashion” and “city” have not been systematically related to each other in the African context and, for too long, a western-centric gaze has dominated scholarship, resulting in the perception of Africa as provincial and its visual arts and textile cultures as static and folkloristic. This perspective is all the more distorted, given Africa''s rich sartorial past. With a huge number of tailors ready to adapt and renew clothing, reshaping garments into contemporary styles, and many cities in Africa becoming hot-spots for a steadily growing and well-connected scene of fashion designers in the past 20 years, the time is ripe for a reevaluation and reconsideration of the fashionscapes of Africa. Leading scholars offer an updated empirical and theoretical foundation on which to base new and exciting research on sub-Saharan fashion, challenging perceptions and offering new insights.

“A revelation. Reclaiming fashion from its European history.” – Shane WhiteWith a focus on sub-Saharan Africa, Fashioning the Afropolis provides a range of innovative perspectives on global fashion, design, dress, photography, and the body in some of the major cities, with a focus on Lagos, Johannesburg, Dakar, and Douala. It contributes to the ongoing debates around the globalization of fashion and fashion theory by exploring fashion as a genuine urban phenomenon on the continent and among its diasporas. To date, “fashion” and “city” have not been systematically related to each other in the African context and, for too long, a western-centric gaze has dominated scholarship, resulting in the perception of Africa as provincial and its visual arts and textile cultures as static and folkloristic. This perspective is all the more distorted, given Africa''s rich sartorial past. With a huge number of tailors ready to adapt and renew clothing, reshaping garments into contemporary styles, and many cities in Africa becoming hot-spots for a steadily growing and well-connected scene of fashion designers in the past 20 years, the time is ripe for a reevaluation and reconsideration of the fashionscapes of Africa. Leading scholars offer an updated empirical and theoretical foundation on which to base new and exciting research on sub-Saharan fashion, challenging perceptions and offering new insights.

“A revelation. Reclaiming fashion from its European history.” – Shane WhiteWith a focus on sub-Saharan Africa, Fashioning the Afropolis provides a range of innovative perspectives on global fashion, design, dress, photography, and the body in some of the major cities, with a focus on Lagos, Johannesburg, Dakar, and Douala. It contributes to the ongoing debates around the globalization of fashion and fashion theory by exploring fashion as a genuine urban phenomenon on the continent and among its diasporas. To date, “fashion” and “city” have not been systematically related to each other in the African context and, for too long, a western-centric gaze has dominated scholarship, resulting in the perception of Africa as provincial and its visual arts and textile cultures as static and folkloristic. This perspective is all the more distorted, given Africa’s rich sartorial past. With a huge number of tailors ready to adapt and renew clothing, reshaping garments into contemporary styles, and many cities in Africa becoming hot-spots for a steadily growing and well-connected scene of fashion designers in the past 20 years, the time is ripe for a reevaluation and reconsideration of the fashionscapes of Africa. Leading scholars offer an updated empirical and theoretical foundation on which to base new and exciting research on sub-Saharan fashion, challenging perceptions and offering new insights.

Dedicated to the stories of migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and exiles, this collection asks how these stories are interwoven with art, art practices, activism, reception, and (re-)presentation. It explores the complex entanglements of art and aesthetic practices with migration, flight, and other forms of enforced dislocation and border/border crossings in global contexts - the latter significant phenomena of social transformation in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.These entanglements take centre stage when migration shapes forms and aesthetics (and vice versa), when actors employ image politics and visualisation strategies in and about migration at different times and places, or when materialities, sites, and spaces gain importance for decision-making processes.Giving space to these stories of art and migration and its power of pluriverse knowledge production, the book takes an art and cultural studies perspective and questions the significance of spatial changes for artistic practice in migration and elaborates on new or different theory formation. Bringing together its case studies and theoretical approaches, the argumentation unfolds over the five sections of the book Visibilities | Invisibilities, Sites | Spaces, Materiality | Materialisation, Racism | Resistance and Practices | Performativity.

Dedicated to the stories of migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and exiles, this collection asks how these stories are interwoven with art, art practices, activism, reception, and (re-)presentation. It explores the complex entanglements of art and aesthetic practices with migration, flight, and other forms of enforced dislocation and border/border crossings in global contexts - the latter significant phenomena of social transformation in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.These entanglements take centre stage when migration shapes forms and aesthetics (and vice versa), when actors employ image politics and visualisation strategies in and about migration at different times and places, or when materialities, sites, and spaces gain importance for decision-making processes.Giving space to these stories of art and migration and its power of pluriverse knowledge production, the book takes an art and cultural studies perspective and questions the significance of spatial changes for artistic practice in migration and elaborates on new or different theory formation. Bringing together its case studies and theoretical approaches, the argumentation unfolds over the five sections of the book Visibilities | Invisibilities, Sites | Spaces, Materiality | Materialisation, Racism | Resistance and Practices | Performativity.