Leanne Wierzba: Curator, Design Historian, Writer
The best curators can be described as archaeologists of aesthetics. They dig way deep into the strata of a particular subject, uncovering layers of history and meaning. They understand the physical power of the object—how good it looks in the gallery space, surrounded by other eye-catching works within a maneuverable and comprehensive layout. But a good curator also understands the invisible thread of accumulated values, influences, and dialogues among them. Great curators make that transcendental line visible to the rest of the world, using the combined significance to gesture toward something larger than the sum of its parts. Curators like Leanne Wierzba can take up the most urgent and historical topics alike and draw the connection; she can make surface appeal and deep time coinhabit the same content, eliciting interest from experts and casual gallery goers alike.
Leanne Wierzba, a young writer, design historian and curator hailing from bucolic Canadian prairieland and currently residing in London, uses her interdisciplinary background to unpack the complex influence of the digital upon the fashion industry and present it in a way that feels both accessible and relevant. In her recent exhibitions held at the London College of Fashion and the Victoria & Albert museum, where she completed a research fellowship in 2015, Wierzba takes a holistic approach to the impact of technology on fashion and luxury at large. She sees the digital not so much a movement or event but rather as a overarching term that encapsulates a variety of ongoing things, functions and exchanges. Tracing this line, Wierzba believes that technology has most critically impacted the fashion industry by blurring categories and distinctions. She argues this change to have taken place both within the internal systems of production and operation, and the social milieu surrounding the industry, through the shifting identity of the consumer and self-branding in the post-internet era.
Wierzba aims to ground the oft-effervescent and highly speculative understanding of technology’s impact upon the fashion industry into a tangible form of representation. But she steers clear of the tropes elicited by the industry, for the industry: from the most hyperbolic, if not cringe-worthy designs such as dresses made from fibreoptic cables, to the mystified garble of 3D printing’s forever-imminent potential to revolutionize the industry. In Digital Disturbances, held at the LCF’s Fashion Space Gallery last autumn, Wierzba cut through the layers of accumulated glitter and gloss that often occlude a critical analysis of the real-time impact of these changes. Featuring the work of seven artists and design collectives, including Simone C. Niquille’s on-point project REALFACE Glamouflage which takes up the topic of facial recognition software and governmental abuse of that technology, Wierzba tackled questions of identity and self-making in the digital era and its tie-in to capitalism, politics, and other power structures deeply embedded in our society way, way before Pintrest and its associates.
In Wierzba’s eyes it’s not so much stripping off a layer of romanticism that coats the future of fashion than it is fostering a critical understanding of how the digital era is impacting the industry and its surrounding social and economic structures, and consequently how it is shaping our day-to-day lives. And she views this move not as a pessimist or buzzkill, but rather like an agent honing in on her target, for their sake—because it’s in fashion’s best interest to sober up. She believes that the industry will become a lot less utopian and novelty-driven (at least where digital technology is concerned). As technology becomes increasingly embedded into our experiences and environments, our habits and routines, it will so too become more focused on its own direct application—more calibrated to the pressing realities of the world around us.
“What is Luxury?”, Wierzba’s show at the V&A a few months prior, tackled the problem even more subjectively, its final section containing a single video by London-based design studio Committee titled “The Last Man,” which encourages the viewer to consider what they would make if they were the only person left on Earth. Freed from all the social, political, economic and environmental constraints that both strangle and structure creative industries today, viewers are encouraged to investigate what Wierzba calls “the digital imagination” as a tool to think about the conditions of the present by momentarily liberating themselves from it. It’s Wierzba’s capacity to think both outside the white cube, through history, aesthetics, and a constantly shifting culture, and in it—right here, right now—that makes her a force to watch out for—both in the art world, and the next time you check-in on Facebook, or Instagram your brunch, or buy something online, or swipe right, or…
Tigran Avetisyan, SS 2015, Photography: Felix Swensson
Human hair and resin accessory by London-based design collective Studio Swine, featured in What is Luxury?
ON DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIETY:
“Digital tools are just that – another tool. It kind of perplexes me how the concept of ‘digital’ is often embraced with a kind of utopian fervor, as if it is the new, bright future. To me this feels quite limiting and often like a big distraction from some of the more pressing realities of the material world around us. I would argue that the limitations are not so much in the tools or technologies, but in our ability to understand and use them.”
“I think that the focus [of digital technology] will increasingly shift away from the novel aspects of experimentation around digital tools and applications to thinking about their role within our individual lives and society. I’m really excited by some of the work I see happening with 3D-scanning technology and the role it is playing in both surveillance and stealth strategies.”
ON LONDON:
“London has also, in many ways, been a leader in thinking about how fashion can be represented digitally, and of course Nick Knight and SHOWstudio have played a central role in this. Burberry is another brand that has self-consciously embraced digital tools across all areas of their visual identity, marketing and retail strategies. The weird aspect of this, at least for me, is that users have the potential of becoming brand content by interacting with it digitally, say by uploading a picture of themselves in their Burberry trench coat.”
