Grace Wales Bonner: A Time for New Dreams

Grace Wales Bonner presents the first in a new series of unique projects in the fields of music, fashion, art and design with Chino Amobi, Black Audio Film Collective, Rotimi Fani Kayode, David Hammons, Michael John Harper, Liz Johnson Artur, Rashid Johnson, Kapwani Kiwanga, Klein, Laraaji, Eric N. Mack, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Ben Okri, Ishmael Reed and Sahel Sounds.

Grace Wales Bonner is a cultural polymath, who sees fashion as a means to explore ideas of identity and self-expression. Through the course of her research, she has developed a design process that involves a rich cross-pollination of sources, bringing together literary, musical and visual references. Key to her practice is long-term collaborations with other practitioners who bridge multiple disciplines and genres. Each of her fashion collections is a meditation on cultural narratives, presented within a carefully considered scenography. Wales Bonner is recognised as one of the most innovative designers of her generation who is changing the ways in which we understand this discipline. Inviting a designer to create an exhibition that culminates in a runway show is unprecedented within the Serpentine’s near fifty-year history and marks a new commitment to fashion as part of an existing cross-disciplinary remit that already includes visual art, architecture, music and design. The collaborative nature of Wales Bonner’s process makes this project an exciting beginning to this new thread within the Galleries’ programme and follows on from her participation in the 2015 Transformation Marathon.