Fashionality: Dress and Identity in Contemporary Canadian Art

Guest curated by Julia Pine
May 5 to September 3, 2012

“Fashionality” is a newly coined term that combines the words fashion, personality, and nationality, and refers to the interplay between clothing, identity, and culture. Taking this as a starting point, Fashionality: Dress and Identity in Contemporary Canadian Art explores the act of adornment in the work of twenty-four Canadian artists. Reflecting wide geographic and cultural diversity, it considers the ways in which the concerns, identities, and aesthetics of those living in Canada are expressed, deconstructed, and reconfigured through the shared visual language of apparel. Featured artists explore a wide range of creative and conceptual possibilities, ranging from painting, assemblage, sculpture and installation, to video, photography, performance, and social media. Spanning multiple galleries, works on display include a dress that inflates into a tent for two, frozen ball gowns, a colossal toque, and poignant reinterpretations of traditional indigenous dress. An intriguing, moving, and often humorous mix of craft, technology, and cultural critique, Fashionality contributes to an understanding of what it means to be woven into Canada’s national fabric.

Kent Monkman, (b. 1965)
High-Heeled Moccasins, 2007
machine loomed beads on vinyl shoes
10.2 x 27.9 x 20.3 cm
Photo Brian Brian Boyle, © ROM, 2007