A Hoodie Is More Than a Fashion Statement. Now a New Exhibition Questions the Cultural Significance of the Sweatshirt With Attitude

The hoodie has come a long way.
Originally a garment designed to keep 1930s factory workers warm in
chilly New York warehouses, hooded sweatshirts are as political as
another humble garment with attitude, the T-shirt. Now, there is a
scholarly exhibition exploring the hoodie’s cultural
significance. 

In the exhibition, which is
simply titled “The Hoodie” and is now on show at Rotterdam’s Het
Nieuwe Instituut, the complex associations surrounding the
sweatshirt are explored through photography, film, installation,
and fashion. The exhibition, which has been guest curated by the
writer Lou Stoppard, does not pull its punches. Included are the
hoodie’s links with ideas of race, social inequality, and “outlaw”
youth culture, as well as opposition against police
brutality.

Featured in the show are
hoodie-themed works by leading artists, including David Hammons,
Campbell Addy, Sasha Huber, John Edmonds, Lucy Orta and Thorsten
Brinkmann, and designers such as Rick Owens, Virgil Abloh’s
Off-White, VETEMENTS, and Vexed Generation.

The Swedish artist Angelica
Falkeling has made a special hoodie-inspired
commission. For her mixed-media installation, Falkeling
uses audio and sculpture to draw attention to the impact of the
cotton industry on the environment and society. She explores how
producing raw materials and making the garment can involve the
exploitation of low-paid workers.

Bogomir Doringo created his work using Artificial
Intelligence Generative Advisarlian Network (AI GAN),
employing 8,000 images of hoodies to essentially “train” AI to
create new images of the clothing item. They are presented in the
exhibition via a collage of new images, previously-produced
journalistic or documentary footage, and documentation of the
garment featured in pop culture.

In total, 60 hoodies, plus
photographs, music, magazine covers, and film footage are on view,
presented with an aim of unpacking the item’s various cultural and
political associations. Stoppard teases out
the sweatshirt’s
multifaceted function in culture today, evaluating its opposing
roles as that of trendy outerwear versus marker of inequality. Such
is the hoodie’s outlaw status, a 19-year-old gang member in the UK
was recently banned from wearing one except in bad
weather. 

Stoppard tells Artnet News:
“There are so many diverse issues and stories sparked by the
hoodie—on topics ranging from style and dress habits through to
CCTV and surveillance.” She is also interested in the hoodie and
sustainable clothing production, its place in subcultures, and
music culture, as well as stereotyping, profiling, and racism.
Stoppard also notes the hoodie is at the center of “the rise of
regulations and even laws around clothing and face/head
coverings.”

She says that she hopes the
exhibition will spark a wider conservation about these diverse
issues. “Hopefully,
this exhibition encourages debate around these topics, and a
questioning of certain norms, or habitual ways of thinking,”
Stoppard says.  

See images of the exhibition below.

The post A Hoodie Is More Than a Fashion Statement. Now a
New Exhibition Questions the Cultural Significance of the
Sweatshirt With Attitude appeared first on artnet
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