Eight contemporary artists explain how fashion shaped their practices

As a fashion design student at Universidade Técnica in Lisbon, and later, on Central Saint Martins’s Fashion Print program, Angolan artist Sandra Poulson had a similar experience. ‘I felt that the fashion crowd was less interested in research and context than I was, and more interested in the aesthetic outcome,’ says Poulson, whose artwork examines Angola’s political, cultural, and socioeconomic landscape. 

Poulson found London’s Royal College of Art, where she obtained a fashion MA in 2023, a better fit. ‘The program is attempting to rethink what fashion is as a discipline,’ she says. Catapulting her career, her graduation project, Sabão Azul e Água, was selected for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture that same year. Composed of fabric stuffed with textile landfill waste and rendered with sabão azul, a blue soap common in Angola, the large-scale installation comments on colonialism, cleansing rituals, labor, and heritage preservation. 

Meticulous pattern cutting remains a vital part of Poulson’s artmaking. At Art Basel’s Swiss edition this June, Luanda-based gallery Jahmek Contemporary Art will present ‘Safe to Visit’, a series of new works by Poulson which grapples with Angola’s long history of violence. The series includes an AK-47-shaped sculpture, composed of 28 patterned pieces, hand sewn, and built to scale.