We’re super excited to finally announce that we’re participating in an exhibition at the National Museum (Nasjonalmuseet) in Oslo, Norway. Ephemeral Matters – Into the Fashion Archive has been 18 months in the making, but it’s finally here. The long and short of it is that we’ve been collaborating with curator Marco Pecorari and other folks at the museum to be one of five archival collections that maintain materials connected to “the fashion industry.” OR, in our case, may stand in opposition to or interact critically with said industry.
At the beginning of 2024 we worked with Marco to choose items from the QZAP collections to send to display at the museum, focusing on themes of:
- role of garments
- vestimentary practices and DIY
- Community and Subcultures through modelling/garments
- the body transformation
- zines that mock, play, refer to fashion magazines/fashion languages
- nature of zine and zine archives
- and t-shirts and other wearable ephemera
As a result, in March of this year we sent over 100 items, including lots of zines including copies of Sexy Magazine (1992), Dr Smith (1984), Blue Floral Gusset (2010), and Fat Girl (1996.) Also included were a selection of queer, punk, zine and library related buttons (badges), DIY printed punk patches, and a selection of similarly themed t-shirts. In turn, they sent their videographer Nicholas to us in Milwaukee. We spent a day in the QZAP archive space shooting a video interview, showing off a lot of our collections and listening to Pink Stëël.
After a summer of exchanged emails and tons of work on part of the museum, the exhibit finally opened on 18 October, 2024 and runs through 23 March, 2025. If you’re not able to make it to Oslo while the exhibit is up, the catalog is available through the Nasjonalmuseet web store for 399 NOK (~$36.50) plus shipping.
We want to shout out huge thank yous to Marco, Hanne, Nicholas, Stine, Maria, Hope and the rest of the museum staff, and also all of the other collectors, designers and archivists who have loaned their ephemeral materials to make the exhibit happen.