More pics from Beijing ⭐️ Departing from multiple threads developed in 'The Endless Garment: Research Station’ (March-May, 2021), the second chapter of the exhibition dives deeper into the heterogenous connotations of ‘Asian’ fashion production through a range of artworks and installations. The exhibition zooms in on moments of commodity production and exchange, from Thailand’s oldest indigo dyeing techniques to Shanzhai handbag vendors on New York’s Canal Street. Bringing us from family-run clothing stores in Portugal to thatch weaving workshops in The Cayman Islands, the artists in the exhibition pay attention to the emblematic nature of fashion commodities, which often carry histories of migration, conflict, community, and kinship. To study the history of Asian garment manufacturing is to study the foundational network of the globalized world: from the earliest pre-colonial textile trades within Asia to the rendering of Southern China as ‘the world’s factory’ in the late 20th century, boundless material and social threads connect South East Asia and China to Europe, West Africa, and North America through fashion. These numerous crossings extend into the present, where digital-first style practices and diaspora networks continue to elaborate on distributed modes of fashion production that may or may not be identified as ‘Asian’, a polemically interwoven concept that itself begins to fray inside the frenzied commodity chain of global consumer culture – be it in malls in Hong Kong, textile mills in Manila, or online shopping out of Rotterdam. At the heart of the exhibition is an inquiry into ‘Chineseness’ and ‘Asianess’ as they manifest as aesthetic signifiers in the work of both local and diaspora practitioners. Contending with traditional and even stereotypical images of Asia, the artists in the exhibition articulate the complex and critical ways we may deal with ‘heritage’ as style, and how the fashioning of Asia (as a place or idea) happens as a complicated feedback loop between home and away, reality and fantasy, image and product. Co-curated with @poppydxwu