Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons - The Met Museum
Art of the In-Between
The Met Museum’s spring 2017 exhibition Art of the In-Between examines the work of fashion designer Rei Kawakubo. Featuring 140 garments of Kawakubo’s womenswear for Comme des Garçons dating from 1980s to today. The exhibition examines nine aesthetic expressions of “in-betweenness” Absence/Presence, Design/Not Design, Fashion/Anti-Fashion, Model/Multiple, Then/Now, High/Low, Self/Other, Object/Subject, and Clothes/Not Clothes.
The exhibition highlights how the garments live within a liminal space that questions binary logic. She states, “Personally, I don’t care about function at all. When I hear ‘where could you wear that?’ or ‘it’s not very wearable,’ or ‘who would wear that?’ to me it’s just a sign that someone missed the point.”
-Envoy of Belfast