As part of the series of exhibitions at Salle St Georges on the theme of "Culture and Society", an original exhibition of paper clothes will open in late summer 2009.
The first section presented a collection (never before shown) of paper clothing patterns found on markets in Kenya, among the slums. Africans reuse paper to produce patterns to show designs to their customers, such as Western-style dresses with little collars and puffy sleeves for girls to wear on special occasions. These modest objects are infused with poetry: buttons are suggested by circles of cardboard, frills made from pages of a newspaper where you can still read brief news stories or check share prices…
While at the stall, the customer chooses the shape and fabric, and less than an hour later the design has been produced and is ready to take home.
In contrast, several items of paper clothing created by Isabelle de Borchgrave based on ceremonial kaftan designs were exhibited to demonstrate their perfect execution and the ostentatiousness they reveal.
The exhibition also presented the work of a young French artist currently based in Brussels, François Marcadon: paper as a material to put on and take off; it gains volume with its inherent areas of emptiness and fullness, enhanced at times by cutting line motifs. These clothes are unwearable and ephemeral due to their extreme fragility…
Finally, contact was established with a school in Quaregnon – the Jeanne Dufrasne secondary school – where a vocational department recently produced some interesting paper clothes, which were presented in a catwalk show. This was a popular exhibition that attracted a new audience, less accustomed to attending cultural events.