Hats go in and out of fashion, but, for some of us, headdresses have different meanings as they may immediately indicate and reveal to other people further information about our nationality, ethnicity, religion, social status or gender.
Fascinated with this theme designer Daniela Dossi started collecting and studying headgear press photos from all over the world that highlighted the symbolic, political and social values behind specific head pieces.
Dossi then sat down and proceeded to remix the visual information she had collected, using the headgear as a tool to combine and remix the cultural identities of the wearer.
The results of her research are currently on show at the exhibition “Hybrid Heads” (on until 1st September) at the Design Museum Gent, in Belgium.
The exhibition opens with background information about Dossi's research: the designer went indeed through 838 press photos from 170 countries, then she proceeded to carefully analyse the DNA of each piece.
She looked at the textiles used for a particular head piece, at the wearers and their social status, resources, actions and locations.
These data were then summarised in a list of words and used to examine the values that particular headgear may have in today's society and to come up with an entirely new collection of head pieces.
With the help of a group of people from various countries, Dossi developed during a long-term residency at Manoeuvre (an arts space for co-creation, craftsmanship and diversity in the Rabot quarter in Gent), 800 hand-made textile samples.
The social fabric of the urban space were Dossi worked also had an impact on her project as in Manoeuvre there are women wearing different headgear and people of different origins and backgrounds.
Dossi's textile samples were inspired by the images she collected and, moving from them, she created new hybrids, so that the textile of a specific type of headgear from Kyrgyzstan was combined for example with the shape of Pakistani headgear, generating innovative designs.
Through this research Dossi invites us to consider how head dresses define a separate identity, foster certain social standards, generate certain expectations and accentuate stereotypes in the perception of cultural diversity.
At the same time, Dossi's hybrids put visitors in front of modern challenges and questions about identity and nationality, generating unique narratives and posing new dilemmas (what would the Mexican female President of the United States look like, Dossi wonders in one of her researchers?)
A person donning one of Dossi's pieces represents indeed an unfamiliar cultural hybrid, he or she is the result of a massive globalisation process and represents the possibility of activating a tangible and physical intercultural encounter and exchange.
Dossi's final message is easy to grasp and goes beyond mere design or fashion: her headgear is a way to ponder on some of the modern problems of our times and eventually reaching one conclusion – collective participation and collaboration are the antidotes to divisions and hybridisation the solution to many contemporary issues, including the malevolent nationalisms that have infiltrated in the governments of many European countries generating politics of aggression rather than integration.
Image credits for this post
All images by Tom Callemin, Courtesy Design Museum Gent
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