Refashioning: CFGNY and Wataru Tominaga

The Japan Society’s exhibition Refashioning: CFGNY and Wataru Tominaga challenged visitors to think beyond their preconceptions of how contemporary art exhibitions are presented and to explore the nuances of identity. Curated by Tiffany Lambert in collaboration with the artist collective Concept Foreign Garments New York (CFGNY) and designer Wataru Tominaga, the aim of the exhibition was to present “two emerging fashion labels that engage with the intersections between fashion, art, and identity.” CFGNY is a New Yorkbased artist collective founded in 2016 by artists Tin Nguyen and Daniel Chew and expanded with the addition of Kirsten Kilponen and Ten Izu in 2020. Wataru Tominaga is a Tokyo-based fashion designer who founded his eponymous brand in 2019. Curated as two individual yet symbiotic gallery spaces—one dedicated to CFGNY and the other to Wataru Tominaga, a long hallway bridged the two galleries so viewers could seamlessly flow from one room to the next. This subtle transition aided in promoting the audience’s appreciation of how the work of these artists were separate but connected in exploring identity through fashion and contemporary art. Visitors could begin touring Refashioning in either gallery space, but the exhibition’s main didactics were displayed immediately outside the gallery containing the work of CFGNY. These introductory text panels introduced the curatorial thesis of Refashioning: “As individual creators, their practices share a sensibility to obscure boundaries between art and design, high and low, and global and local, representing a new approach. Through this pairing, Refashioning suggests that fashion is always in formation.” Both CFGNY and Tominaga collaborated with the curator to develop the exhibition design for the designers’ respective gallery spaces—Tominaga also worked with the design studio Chen Chen & Kai Williams. This process created unique environments that were playful but intentional and seamlessly enhanced the presentation of the work. Provocatively positioned just inside the CFGNY gallery were two unusual mannequins (Figure 1). Artfully constructed from cardboard and both malepresenting with large arm muscles and broad chests, one mannequin was 1 Japan Society, “Gallery.” https:// japansociety.org/gallery/refashioning-exhibition/.