DR CHRISTINE CHECINSKA___ ARTIST, DESIGNER, CURATOR & STORYTELLER
Dr Christine Checinska is a British artist, designer, curator, and storyteller. Her work explores the intersections of cloth, culture, and race, and challenges the absence of diverse voices in fashion studies, advocating for an equitable art and design world where Black creativity is celebrated. In her role as senior curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) and Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg, she continues to champion these themes. Our editor Nancy Bugeja sat down with Dr Checinska to discuss her journey, and work as the curator of the groundbreaking exhibition, Africa Fashion which debuted at the V&A and marks a historic celebration of contemporary African design. Touring internationally until 2026, the exhibition has arrived at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). Curated by Dr Christine Checinska, Africa Fashion celebrates the rich tapestry of global Africa.
The conversation highlights the collaborative spirit of the exhibition, its emphasis on public engagement and educational initiatives, and unveils the impact and lasting legacy of Africa Fashion.
Fluoro (F): Can you share some early experiences that influenced your path towards fashion, leading to your creative practice and your role as a senior curator at the V&A?
Dr Christine Checinska (CC): The first thing that pops into my mind is the fact that both of my parents were really snappy dressers. I come from a family of people who love clothes. I have very early memories of having clothes made by the dressmaker across the road, so I’ve always had this interest in fashion and creativity. I’ve always drawn. I remember drawing with my father, and I think it was really my parents’ love of clothes that rubbed off on my sister and me.
I grew up in Gloucester, a really sleepy town in the West Country. I initially studied fashion and textile design in Bristol, which is quite close to Gloucester. After graduation, I moved to the big city, relocating from Gloucester to London.
F: What significant milestones in your career led you to curate the groundbreaking Africa Fashion exhibition?
CC: The turning point for me was when I was working as a women’s wear designer for British brands, including Laura Ashley.
Someone once said to me, “It’s brilliant that you’re head of design because you’re not exactly an English rose.” It was meant as a compliment, but it really rattled me. That moment led me to start researching my place within the British fashion industry. People like me of African heritage—what is our impact? Of course we know there’s an impact, but where are we in the histories of global fashion?
That early moment propelled me into doing a PhD. After that, I had my art practice, worked in academia, and continued designing. With Africa Fashion, those three strands of my life somehow plaited together, formed the foundation for leading this project. It comes from research, my own creative practice, and my lived experience as an invisible woman of African heritage heading up a quintessentially English brand.
F: Did this experience inspire the public participation component of the exhibition?
CC: Absolutely, audience participation was absolutely key. The public call-out was one of the first collaborative elements of the project driven by my own lived experience of invisibility and my knowledge of the importance of fashion and textiles are across global Africa.
For years, I’ve been inspired by African American fibre artist Sonya Clark who said, ‘Cloth is to the African, what monuments are to Westerners’. For me, this quote really sums up the importance of fabric across global Africa, but also this idea of beauty in everyday life and that comes through textiles.
F: Can you outline your key responsibilities of your growing role at the V&A? Is acquisition a primary focus?
CC: My role as senior curator of African and diaspora fashion and textiles is about building the collection to properly and mindfully represent African excellence in terms of creativity through fashion and textiles. So yes, it’s acquisitions but also caring for the collection we have. It’s also about disseminating the stories around that collection. There is a lot of work around public programming like the Fashioning Global Africa course through V&A Academy which was really well attended.
I also have a mentoring role of young curators of African diaspora heritage that are not part of my department but they’re dotted around the museum. I also co-chair the museum’s new Global Africa strategy group which looks at collecting creativity from global Africa whether that’s in photography or painting, design, digital, as well as fashion and textile.
A large part of what I’m doing is around the legacy of African Fashion. What have we learned? What can we apply to other exhibitions? What can we apply to collecting and presenting African creativity in other areas around the museum?
F: How do you foresee ensuring that the impact of Africa Fashion extends beyond its duration? Are there any ongoing or future programs, particularly in education, that you believe could positively influence the fashion industry?
CC: At the V&A we’ve made over 150 acquisitions through the Africa Fashion project. We’re building our collection of fashion and textiles from designers of African heritage and that’s an ongoing process. With Africa Fashion now touring the world, I’m still researching new emerging talent and making new acquisitions to build the collection back at the V&A. It’s really important because then people are written into the histories. The public can come in and research and see these garments. They can be used for educational purposes.
Acquisitions are really important. The way that we acquire work now is much more collaborative. We always discuss with the designer, what do they feel represents their practice right now? What’s the story that they want to tell about their work? So I think the role of the curator has shifted and changed for the better. In fact, in Africa Fashion, the groupings of the contemporary works all came out of the conversations with the designers themselves. Things like the ‘minimalist group’ or the ‘artisanal group’ — those terms were used because those were the terms we kept hearing them use about their work.
F: Can you talk a little bit about the consultative process involved in determining the style of the mannequins?
CC: It’s interesting because in most fashion exhibitions the mannequins disappear, it’s not really meant to be about the mannequins. The mannequins are there to support the garments, but because of that ongoing history of invisibility, we really wanted the mannequins to be a moment of re-humanising the black subject. It became really important to give people an immediate glimpse of the diversity of nations across the African continent.
Through a process of consultation with our Global Narratives Network, which is our staff group of people of colour at the V&A, we consulted with them on what skin tone representations they’d be happy with. What hair textures and hairstyles they’d be happy with, that they felt represented them. It’s a diverse group, and it was wonderful.
We ended up with four different tones which represent the outcome of the day-long survey that we had with our Global Narratives Network and the proportion of each colour matches the survey findings. If you counted up the mannequins and looked at the colours, you’d find that it’s the two darker shades that our staff network felt represented them. And so it was a wonderfully organic process, that this idea of collaboration, it’s so important that people see themselves in spaces like the V&A and the NGV, and the mannequins was just one of them.
To design the contemporary mannequin, we were lucky enough to work with the model Adhel Bol, who was an emerging model back in 2020 when we started, that lots of the people in the show were using. And so in collaboration with her, she allowed us to borrow her features. It’s an abstracted version of her, because again, we wanted a human touch. And it was really wonderful when she came to see the different versions of herself, she was visibly moved.
F: Does every work carry a distinct statement or message?
CC: One of the things that has been really important to myself and the team at the V&A, at the NGV, and in all the tour venues is that we really wanted to challenge people’s assumptions about what African fashions are. So, it was really important in all of the iterations that we start with a group that’s focused on minimalism. These are the designers for whom it’s not about print, it’s not about colour; it’s all about architectural cutting and simplicity of line. And right next to that is the polar opposite: the mixology group, or the mixologists, for whom it is about the mixing of pattern, the mixing of print, the mixing of different cultural references.
There’s a group entitled Artisanal which is about showing them up at the hand, then there’s co-creation, the idea of made-to-order which, if you think back to the history of fashion on the continent, trends were in the hands of the dressmakers whose names — often it’s women — were not recorded, they’ve been forgotten. That whole made-to-order component of the fashion system on the continent and in the diaspora is so vitally important that we included that in our Cutting Edge section.
I think the largest group in Cutting Edge is Afrotopia and it’s important here to say that a lot of designers on the continent just want to make beautiful clothes. Not everything has a political message, not everything is rooted in tradition, whatever that might mean, but there is a section that’s called in Afrotopia — narrative fashion — where people are using their creative practice to comment on whether it’s a personal issue around gender, whether it’s gender fluidity or sexuality, or they’re looking at a broader issue, maybe it’s around women’s empowerment, or sustainability.
People draw on such a broad variety of inspirations and it can be, “I’m inspired by Yamamoto”, “I’m inspired by the colour of the sea”, “I’m inspired by my heritage”. It’s a real mix of everything. Inspiration is everywhere and there is a lovely quote from Paul Smith around that very thing, “You can find inspiration in everything. If you can’t, then you’re not looking properly.”
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As the V&A’s first-ever exhibition dedicated solely to African fashion, it highlights the immense creativity and global influence of designers from across the continent. This groundbreaking exhibition highlights the creativity, diversity, and innovation of African fashion. Through garments, textiles, photography, music, and film, it challenges Eurocentric narratives and honours the cultural significance of African aesthetics. As the exhibition tours globally, including its presentation in Australia showcasing over 200 works from more than 50 designers across 20 countries, it aims to foster greater understanding, appreciation, and respect for African cultural expressions and their global impact.
To coincide with the exhibition at the NGV, co-curator of programs Dorcas Maphakela initiated a residency program engaging companies and collectives spanning performance, music, cultural, and fashion disciplines. This program offers them an opportunity to collaborate on programs, talks, and stagings that respond to the exhibition content and engage our local diaspora audiences.
The Fashion and Textiles Collection has seen significant acquisitions, including works by people like Lagos Space Program, Lisa Folowiio, Loza Maléombho and Thebe Magugu enriching NGV’s collection building a rich resource to draw upon for future displays.
Dr Checinska is in the process of writing her book entitled Fashioning Black Masculinatives, which draws on her PhD work, inspired by her father. Africa Fashion is developed by the V&A, London, and presented in Melbourne in partnership with the NGV and opens on 31 May until 6 October 2024.
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Conversation with Nancy Bugeja. Thank you Dr Christine Checinska, and NGV.
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