MINORITY / ALTERNATIVE VS. MAINSTREAM

The students of the UMPRUM Fashion Design Studio build on further themes devoted to issues surrounding the individual and society. Following up questions dealing with identity, and intelligent clothing, they are interested in the topic of minorities, whether in the sense of ethnic, national, or religious groups, urban communities, subcultures, narrow communities, and abnormalities. The semester project was led by fashion designer Lenka Kohoutová, who substituted for Pavel Ivančic the head of the studio.

UMPRUM students are very perceptive toward their surroundings and often solve problems among themselves. The theme of Minorities openly offered to project their attitudes, personal themes, and feelings of the surrounding world into their works. Given the unprecedented invasion of Ukraine and a number of other societal circumstances, this theme was all the more vivid and pressing.
"Stressful situations are known to trigger the targeting of our most difficult issues, whether they directly relate to the topic or reflect it. Thus, some have taken up the Minority theme by way of gender identity, others by way of cultural appropriation, religious or family relationships, physical differences, teen nightlife, subcultures, or escaping into their own sci-fi worlds. The common denominator was often the fact that, apart from the aforementioned minority, this was their first creatively free excursion into the field of their own topic, in which they had not yet had the courage or opportunity to express themselves", says Lenka Kohoutová, the project leader.

An example of work that has crossed fashion boundaries is Body as Object, Object as Clothes by Lenka Hanzáková. Her clothing objects deal with the form of the human body stripped of clothing and the representation of pure physicality.
The question of cultural appropriation was taken up by Natália Repkovská in her collection You got what you give. It draws attention to and confronts the power structures and the institutions that represent them. She incorporates their aesthetics and characteristic elements into the form of the garments. Beauty and looking at fashion through the lens of disability - specifically blindness, is explored by Tomáš Višňovský. In Laura's Archive collection, Tomáš tries to portray the inner experience of a person who does not know the world visually, but rather through feel and touch. The models work with the texture of textile materials and Braille decoration.
Jakub Hronský tries to look at the issue of minorities in an unencumbered and objective way. He is inspired by an almost fairy-tale story about a star who fell to earth and everything is new to her. He not only worked the story into a clothing collection but also accompanied it with an original book. The Star collection aims to process the emotional side of the theme of minority - self-repression, and assimilation.

The above-mentioned projects are not the only part of the exhibition. In addition to other collections, the exhibition will also offer a projection, and large-format photographs created in collaboration with the Photography II Studio under the direction of Štěpánka Stein. The work of Samuel Petráš, Iurii Ladutko, and Jakub Demartini places the individual designs into a respective context and adds another conceptual and aesthetic layer.

The exhibition will be on display in the entrance hall of the UMPRUM Technology Center until November 25th.

Exhibitors: Markéta Hájková, Lenka Hanzáková, Adéla Gréta Holušková, Barbora Horáková, Jakub Hronský, Adéla Králíková, Sofiia Maika, Tomáš Máčik, Natália Repkovská, Barbora Tomalová, Noemi Špontáková, Dominik Švarc, Tomáš Višňovský, and Linda Vondrášková.

Pedagogical leadership of the project: Lenka Kohoutová, and Viera Devečková.
Professional cooperation: Karolína Čejchanová, Dana Burianová, and Zuzana Jirsová.
Consulting: Radana Sikorová
Production: Lenka Kohoutová, Štěpánka Stein, and Viera Devečková.
Text: Veronika Soukupová
Visual identity: David Šrot, and Kryštof Novák (Studio of Graphic Design and Visual Communications lead by Petra Krejzka).
Design, and implementation of the exhibition: Sára Svobodová (Studio of Furniture and Interior Design led by Roman Vrtiška, and Vladimír Žák); Matěj Peterka (Studio of Architecture IV led by Roman Brychta).
Production team: Lenka Hanzáková, and Markéta Hájková.
Photography: Samuel Petráš, Iurii Ladutko, and Jakub Demartini (Studio of Photography I led by Štěpánka Stein).
Video projection: Tomáš Máčik