Tenant of Culture is the name of the practice of Hendrickje Schimmel (b. NL, 1990). She has completed a BA in Fashion Design at ArtEZ School of the Arts, Arnhem, NL followed by
an MA in Textiles at the Royal College of Art, London, UK. By disassembling and rebuilding manufactured garments, Tenant of Culture examines the ways in which ideological frameworks materialise in methods of production, circulation and marketing of apparel. The materials used in her textile assemblages are sourced from various stages of the garment production cycle as well as secondary use platforms and refuse. She recognises commodities not only as the result of a standardised production process, but also as the social relations that arise in the process of their usage and wastage. Working across mediums such as garment, sculpture, workshop and installation her work suggest implicit potential for both destruction as well as transformation. Previous solo exhibitions include I forgot to tell you I’ve changed at Fries Museum (Leeuwarden), Eclogues (an apology for actors) at Nicoletti Contemporary (London) and Works and Days at Outpost Gallery (Norwich). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Le Fondation Cartier (Paris), Frans Hals museum (Haarlem), Centraal Museum Utrecht (Utrecht), Bloomberg New Contemporaries (London), Exile Gallery (Vienna), Galerie Gregor Staiger (Zurich), Soft Opening (London) amongst others.
an MA in Textiles at the Royal College of Art, London, UK. By disassembling and rebuilding manufactured garments, Tenant of Culture examines the ways in which ideological frameworks materialise in methods of production, circulation and marketing of apparel. The materials used in her textile assemblages are sourced from various stages of the garment production cycle as well as secondary use platforms and refuse. She recognises commodities not only as the result of a standardised production process, but also as the social relations that arise in the process of their usage and wastage. Working across mediums such as garment, sculpture, workshop and installation her work suggest implicit potential for both destruction as well as transformation. Previous solo exhibitions include I forgot to tell you I’ve changed at Fries Museum (Leeuwarden), Eclogues (an apology for actors) at Nicoletti Contemporary (London) and Works and Days at Outpost Gallery (Norwich). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Le Fondation Cartier (Paris), Frans Hals museum (Haarlem), Centraal Museum Utrecht (Utrecht), Bloomberg New Contemporaries (London), Exile Gallery (Vienna), Galerie Gregor Staiger (Zurich), Soft Opening (London) amongst others.
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Tenant of Culture - Conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist
About
Reification of the Milkmaid
For Tenant of Culture, exhibitions function as “trend reports.” Clothing is indeed an apt site for staging such interrogations, as the history of clothing closely matches that of the modern commodity: from the Industrial Revolution’s mechanized cotton mills and bleach drying all the way up to fast-fashion’s short shelf lives and shop-fitting. But the Eclogues title refers also to Virgil’s pastoral poems, to scenes of an Arcadian golden age consistently allegorized following periods of relative economic progress. By internalizing the latent ideological residue intrinsic in these collective moments, Tenant of Culture is able to lay them bare: uncovering the manifold reactionary fantasies that serve to legitimate new forms of social domination.
Michael Eby
Winner of the Camden Art Centre Prize
The artist literally opens up and exposes narratives of labour, production, luxury and waste held in the processes and products of the fashion industry, as well as the broader social and cultural histories of the clothes we wear. These ideas speak to increasingly urgent issues beyond the worlds of art, design and fashion.
Martin Clark
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In museum collection:
Fries Museum