tenant of culture

The Fries Museum will present the exhibition Tenant of Culture: I Forgot to Tell You I've Changed from 15 February to 13 September 2020. The work of Hendrickje Schimmel (Netherlands, 1990) revolves around clothing. Her motto is: ‘Anything that breaks can be repaired’. Taking a stand against the waste of the fashion industry, she starts her sculptures with residual materials, especially fashionable rejects. These include Western boots made from flattened old shoes, a jacket made from second-hand leather bags, and survival suits.

Hendrickje Schimmel works under the name ‘Tenant of Culture’, also as a way to comment on the brand culture within the fashion industry. ‘I borrow and reinterpret any and all aspects of culture’. She totally reverses fashion conventions, the cut of the clothing is entirely determined by the material, and the zipper can sometimes be a bit lopsided. One of the questions she constantly asks herself is: how do we decide what should be stored, repaired, protected and preserved? Tenant of Culture explores the relationship between fashion, nature and morality.