Roundtable: Decolonizing the Gaze – The Colonial Heritage of Italian and International Fashion Design

Decolonizing the Gaze is an international, participatory project initiated by artist and researcher Caterina Pecchioli. The project brings together artists, stylists, Afro-descendant fashion designers, as well as those from countries with a colonial past in order to critically examines how fashion has historically contributed to the visual construction of colonial ideologies. The programmes organised within the context of Decolonizing the Gaze explore ways to reframe these legacies through material culture and embodied practices. On 18 September, Framer Framed hosts a new roundtable with designer and lecturer Linnemore Nefdt, artist Caterina Pecchioli, researcher Enrica Picarelli and associate professor Alessandra Vaccari, moderated by curator Alessandra Saviotti.

This roundtable is organised within the framework Pecchioli’s project, which proposes a visual and historical analysis of dress items, fabrics, and accessories from the Italian and Dutch colonial period that are preserved in the collections of the Ex Museo Coloniale in Rome and the former Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam. A participatory study that aims to bring the Italian decolonial perspective within a live European debate on the decolonization of fashion and culture and on the political uses of fashion and clothing. The complex relationship between de-colonialism, heritage, cultural globalisation, and “Made in Italy” is tackled through a program of workshops and seminars with the collaboration of institutions engaged on the subject in Italy, Holland, Ethiopia, South Africa, and the USA.

Register here.

About

Caterina Pecchioli is a multimedia and multi-disciplinary artist, researcher, curator, and art director, whose work explores critical aspects and effects of power on mass behavior and socio-cultural and political dynamics. In September 2025, she received the Thami Mnyele Foundation residency award. During her residency in Amsterdam, she will continue working on her project, Decolonising the Gaze. The Colonial Heritage of Italian and International Fashion Design and Its Impact on the Collective Imagination, which she developed in 2023 during her previous residency at the Thami Mnyele Foundation collaboration with CBK Zuidoost and Framer Framed, and was supported by the Italian Council (11th edition, 2022).

This event is in English. Admission is free.

In collaboration with Thami Mnyele Foundation, Framer Framed, Africa e Mediterraneo. The project was supported by the Italian Council Fund, XI edition (2022), Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea – Ministero della Cultura.

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