Prácticas de vestimenta

The MAZ presents the talk Prácticas de vestimenta, featuring Mella Jaarsma and Rodrigo Santoscoy, at the Juan José Arreola Auditorium.

Ahead of the opening of the exhibition (Des)vestir y (des)obedecer, artist Mella Jaarsma and curator Rodrigo Santoscoy will discuss clothing and wearable art—“wearables,” as the artist refers to them—as mediums that activate a direct relationship between artwork and audience through embodied experience. Through materials imbued with cultural and symbolic meaning, Jaarsma’s practice addresses social, cultural, and political concerns related to the body and identity.

Mella Jaarsma is an artist originally from the Netherlands. She studied Visual Arts at the Minerva Academy in Groningen (1978–1984) before moving to Indonesia to continue her education at the Jakarta Institute of the Arts (1984) and the Indonesian Institute of the Arts in Yogyakarta (1985–1986). Since then, she has lived and worked in Indonesia. In 1988, together with Nindityo Adipurnomo, she co-founded Cemeti Art House—now the Cemeti Institute for Art and Society—one of the first spaces dedicated to contemporary art in Indonesia. In 1995, she founded the Cemeti Art Foundation with a group of collaborators, now known as the Indonesian Visual Art Archive in Yogyakarta. Jaarsma is recognized for her complex costume installations and for exploring forms of cultural and racial diversity embedded in clothing, the body, and food. Her work has been widely presented in international exhibitions and events, including Kunsthal KAdE, Amersfoort, Netherlands (2025); the Lahore Biennale, Pakistan (2024); the Bangkok Art Biennale, Thailand (2024); Videobrasil, São Paulo, Brazil (2023); Jogja Biennale XVI Ecuador #6, Jogja National Museum (2021); Dunia Dalam Berita, Museum MACAN, Jakarta (2019); the Setouchi Triennale, Ibuki Island, Japan (2019); Thailand Biennale, Krabi (2018); the 20th Biennale of Sydney (2016); The Roving Eye, Arter, Istanbul (2014); Siasat, Jakarta Biennale, Museum of Ceramics and Fine Arts, Jakarta (2013); Suspended Histories, Van Loon Museum, Amsterdam (2013); the Singapore Biennale, Singapore Art Museum (2011); GSK Contemporary – Aware: Art Fashion Identity, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2010); Re-Addressing Identities, Katonah Museum of Art, New York (2009); Accidentally Fashion, Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei (2007); and the Yokohama Triennale (2005), among many others. Her work is held in collections including M+, Hong Kong; the National Gallery of Indonesia, Jakarta; Museum Tumurun; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; the Singapore Art Museum; and the National Gallery Singapore, among others.

Rodrigo Santoscoy is an independent curator and researcher. His practice seeks to destabilize notions of gender, identity, and desire through forms of knowledge and practices connected to the body, as well as through processes of documentation, analysis, archiving, and revaluation. He served as coordinator of the Contemporary Fashion and Design Program at the Museo de Arte de Zapopan, where he developed curatorial projects such as Uniforme with ⅛ Takamura and The Void Repels Every Body with Edith Flores. He currently directs Clase de Cocina, a curatorial laboratory that recognizes knowledge production emerging from contemporary artistic processes, positioning the body as the site from which human experience unfolds.

— MAZ