Darn

On November 30, the Zeeuws Museum will open a new fashion exhibition: DARN. You may know this English word as a curse, but it also means "stopped hole in clothing. Because, by golly, what do you do with a hole in your favorite pants or sweater: you fix it! Departing from the collection of samplers and endlessly mended shirts from the museum's textile collection, this exhibition shows the beauty of the better repair work as well as the emotions involved. For several centuries, embroidery and darning classes have been the most important in girls' education. The stitches must be done to perfection, every time. Looking at the practice patches makes you admire the young makers and realize how much blood, sweat and tears go into them. The art of mending is being forgotten due to prosperity and the advent of fast fashion. There are entire generations who still cannot sew on a button. Meanwhile, making and mending clothes yourself is all hot again. A remarkable number of contemporary fashion designers and artists take inspiration from "old-fashioned" knitting, crocheting and darning and apply it to their creations. That working with your hands in this way is also of therapeutic value can be seen in objects made by people in mental distress. Within the walls of a mental institution, they find solace, therapy and a form of protest in handwork.

DARN offers a stage to young talents such as fashion designers Bastiaan Reijnen (ArtEZ, Arnhem, birth 2023) and artists Wolfgang Tant and Elvira Mulkay (both KASK, Ghent, birth 2024). Fashion designer and artist Rianne de Witte has been a familiar face at the Zeeuws Museum since the Rood exhibition in 2008. Her so-called Littekenlap fits seamlessly into DARN. A special detail is that it also features work by her mother, Mien de Witte-Verhage. Thanks to a loan from Museum Arnhem, the work Lying Couple by Barbara Polderman has been added. MoMu in Antwerp has also loaned us a number of special pieces. Feminist handwork initiative Club Geluk takes you into a cheerful, sensual world of knitting, embroidery and crochet in which the role of women is primarily their own.