Fashion Forward: Africana Style

10 Middle St,Portsmouth NH 03801

01 May, 2021

Description

Fashion Forward: Africana Style Connecting Threads of African Fashion Through Time and Place As a colorful showcase for spring, SAACC explores the world of Black fashion in an exciting new exhibit--Fashion Forward: Africana Style--that imagines connections between African American design aesthetics and Africa from past to present. Features award-winning, London-based photographer Tariq Zaidi’s photos of the sapeurs of the Congo, a group of ordinary folks by day who don elegantly wild fashions after work, taking style cues from the Roaring Twenties and Black Dandies popular during the Harlem Renaissance. Vogue named his Sapeurs: Ladies and Gentlemen of the Congo one of the “Best Fashion Books of the Year 2020.” Zaidi was also named a "Top 10 Travel Portrait Photographers" in 2016 by the International Photography Awards, and his images, stories, and videos from around the world have been published in The Guardian, BBC, CNN, National Geographic, Washington Post, Newsweek, Spiegel, Stern, El Pais, GEO, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian Magazine, and VICE. Along with Zaidi’s photos are never before shown pieces from SAACC’s own Gustin Collection of 1930s Liberian fashion, including purses, fabrics, tunics, tops, and even alligator skin shoes that show influences of Islam and African American immigration to the West African country. Bringing it back to the present and Seacoast, the exhibit includes many contemporary pieces by Ghanaian African fashion designers and quilters Monica Ami Gligah and Kathleen Otoo of Virginia. Exhibit will include fashions from the private collections of Dzifa Patterson and Akua Sika Daisy Houdegbe living and working in New England today and the late Nelson Cantave. May 1 to September 1, 2021, Daily 10am-4pm $5 for members, $10 for nonmembers The Seacoast African American Cultural Center is supported by the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) through the New England Arts Resilience Fund, part of the United States Regional Arts Resilience Fund, an initiative of the U.S. Regional Arts Organization and the Andrew Mellon Foundation, with major funding from the CARES Act from the National Endowment for the Arts. 2020-2021 programing is supported in part by a grant from the New Hampshire Humanities and the National Endowment For The Humanities. Additional support by Walmart, Green Acre Bahai', Najee Browns "Sol Series and Cup of Joe's.