It was recently announced that the 2016 Profielprijs was awarded to fashion theorist, historian and curator José Teunissen. As Irenebrination readers may remember from previous posts, Teunissen has been pushing the fashion boundaries for 25 years, through exhibitions, dedicated installations and books.
The jury has indeed assigned to Teunissen the award for her innovative approach to fashion and for the international scope of the exhibitions she has so far curated.
Trained as a film theorist, Teunissen has been writing about fashion since the '90s, organising high profile fashion and costume exhibitions for the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, while working on expanding its collection as well.
Teunissen started the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts, Arnhem in 2002, and six years later she set up the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) research project "National Identity in a Globalised World", working with Radboud University Nijmegen and the universities of applied sciences Saxion and HAN.
The latest exhibition Teunissen curated - "The Future of Fashion is Now" - held at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in 2014, attracted more than 80,000 visitors, and then moved on to tour Shanghai and Shenzhen.
In January 2016 she was appointed Dean of the School of Design and Technology at the London College of Fashion and Professor of Fashion Theory at the University of Arts in London.
Founded in 1987 by Nel Rol (1912-1992), the Profielprijs is assigned every three years to someone who has made a special contribution to textile design in the broadest sense of the word. The award consists of a cash prize of € 3,500 and a trophy designed by Victoria Ledig. Previous winners include Bart Hess (2013), Lam de Wolf (2010), Felieke van der Leest (2008) and Ulf Moritz (2006).
The awarding ceremony will take place on September 30, during the preview of the new exhibition Teunissen has curated, "Three Eyes: Five Chinese Young Designers" that will open at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, at the beginning of October, and that will feature new pieces commissioned to young Chinese designers by the Han Nefkens Foundation.
The exhibition has a symbolic title: in Chinese culture a designer needs indeed three eyes, two to look into the future and one to look back onto five thousand years of Chinese culture. The designs shown during "Three Eyes" will therefore be linked by the idea that tradition and the future go hand in hand.
The award to Teunissen makes you wonder why there aren't more prizes for fashion exhibition curators and researchers. The fashion industry is obviously more interested in encouraging young people who want to become designers, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to refocus also on other fashion-related careers that may prove equally interesting and rewarding.
"Fashion is a mirror of our society and an important part of contemporary visual culture. It is an issue that deserves serious study," states Teunissen in an official press release about the prize. It seems difficult to disagree with her wise words as fashion is definitely much more than just a moribund industry crowded by an increasing number of superficial celebrities, charlatans and poseurs.
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