The exhibition Voices of Fashion: Black Couture, Beauty and Styles will run until 15 August, and our series of Voices of Fashion Talks is also nearing the end. Our last talk will be streamed live on our YouTube channel on Thursday 12 August at 7pm.

In this sixth and last Voices of Fashion Talk, Erica de Greef (AFRI), Lesiba Mabitsela (AFRI), Marian Duff (OSCAM) and Daan van Dartel (National Museum of World Cultures) will engage each other in conversation. Ninke Bloemberg (Centraal Museum) will introduce the guests and briefly describe the exhibition.

The topics in this edition include the establishment of the African Fashion Research Institute (AFRI) in Cape Town, South Africa , as well as its partnerships , challenges and future.

“AFRI aims to engage both local and global African fashion activists, pioneers, academics, makers, thinkers, students, critics and leaders through fashion-driven decolonial research projects via platforms and networks of knowledge generation and exchange using online and shareable materials for outreach, curricula and general public interest.”

Based on their experiences as curator at the National Museum of World Cultures and as founder of the Open Space Contemporary Art Museum, respectively, Daan van Dartel and Marian Duff will conduct the interview. The founders of AFRI -- Erica de Greef and Lesiba Mabitsela – will respond and tell us about their goal and approach of the organization .

Erica de Greef

is fashion curator, scholar and co-founder of the African Fashion Research Institute (AFRI) in Cape Town. She obtained a PhD in African Studies at the University of Cape Town. Her dissertation 'Sartorial Disruptions' examines the colonial stagnation in fashion collections in South African museums. De Greef contributed to the development of local fashion curricula, exhibitions and interdisciplinary research. She was previously the head of the fashion department at Cape Town’s Zeitz MOCAA museum. She has authored various scholarly articles and is a board member of the Research Collective for Decoloniality and Fashion  and the International Journal for Fashion Studies.

Lesiba Mabitsela

is a South African artist active in fashion, and a co-founder of AFRI. Lesiba’s work incorporates performance, video, textile and immersive technology to examine and decolonise perceptions of ‘blackness’, maleness, fashion and aesthetics. As a multidisciplinary artist, she has participated in art projects and group exhibitions in South Africa and the Netherlands. Lesiba is a former recipient of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation scholarship, which contributed to attaining her Master’s degree in Performance Studies at the University of Cape Town.

Marian Duff

is founder and director of the OSCAM museum platform in Amsterdam’s multicultural  Bijlmer district. She is an independent curator of fashion and contemporary art, with a special focus on young (sub-) cultures. Born in tropical Suriname and with roots in neighbouring French Guyana, she grew up in Haarlem and now lives in Amsterdam. “I glide and weave my way  between artists, institutions and the public. Curating is more than compiling attractive selections of objects; I  am also a guardian of cultural heritage.”

Daan van Dartel

is a curator at the National Museum of World Cultures in Leiden. She studied Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University (MA) and Museum Studies (MA) at Reinwardt Academie. Following a career at the Tropenmuseum, in 2015 she was appointed curator of popular culture and fashion at the NMVW. She is interested in the everyday matters that shape people’s daily lives, the significance of clothing in communication, the power of fashion as a language, and issues of identity. Her interests regarding museums pertain to the role played by museums in society at large and in decolonisation through fashion and polyphony.

Ninke Bloemberg

is a curator of fashion & costumes at Centraal Museum: “As a fashion curator I am interested in the crossovers between art and fashion in both historical and contemporary designs”. She is the co-curator of the exhibition Voices of Fashion: Black Couture, Beauty and Styles, together with Janice Deul,  and the editor of the same-titled book. Follow this last talk live on Thursday 12 August.

Did you miss one of the talks? The full series remains available on YouTube channel.