Radical Play, the photographic addition to the Radical Beauty (RB) Project, features two newly commissioned series of portraits highlighting four models with Down Syndrome in a collaboration between Radical Beauty and Central Saint Martins. It explores portrait photography through the interplay between subjectivity and representation.
At a time when the agency of these creatives as autonomous individuals is often challenged and contested as coercion, Radical Play questions the normative conventions of desire, and artistic expression, and firmly believes in the agency and autonomy of neurodivergent creative individuals.
Underpinning the rhetorics of play, the new commissions at display aim to challenge prejudices and preconceived notions of difference in the fashion and culture industries. Taking from its name, Radical Play emphasises play as a tool for communities to negotiate, construct, express identities and reinterpret societal expectations.
The exhibition calls for a new framework for what the creative community can become when barriers to access dissolve. It offers hope and confidence in challenging normative conventions of beauty and change towards expansive, innovative and inclusive realities.
Radical Play acknowledges that these models are neither mere representations of a label nor spokespersons for the entire Down’s community. What they are is a testament to the boundless capacities of the human spirit in expanding representation; they are artists in their own right.
Kabuki Trouble is a digital exhibition created on Occupy White Walls powered by KULTURA Ex Machina and StikiPixels. Through an examination of the CSM Museum and Study Collection archives, with a specific focus on Kabuki Theatre ukiyo-e prints, the curatorial team has curated a selection of 30 objects from the collection.
This virtual exhibition seeks to explore the performativity of material wealth conveyed through makeup and costume, shedding light on how Kabuki theatre ukiyo-e prints themselves played a pivotal role in the commodification of these plays by virtue of their continuously reproduced materiality.
No longer restrained to the traditional boundaries of physical exhibition spaces, the power of games and online platforms is harnessed, challenging the very essence of the art world.
To explore the virtual exhibition space, download Occupy White Walls from STEAM, and visit the dedicated exhibition area.
design & code Mercè Lledós