‘In the focus of the latest Nikola Eftimov project are the text and its embodiment: both translating the representation of one’s professional identity through one’s clothes, and the singularity of the curatorial subject. The project was envisioned as an intermedial interweaving of complex relations among the multilayered text, the body and the stylish expression. Irit Rogoff’s text How to Dress for an Exhibition (Stopping the Process – Discussions in Contemporary Curating. ed. Mika Hannula, NIFCA, Helsinki, 1998) was merely the starting point of this collaboration with Iskra Šukarova, dancer and choreographer, reading the text on stage. Text – texture – textile are words originating from the same root, texo (Lat. weave, knit, build) and through words such as textus (weaving, fabrication) or textile (a carpet with characters weaved into) announce the fragmentation executed by literally extracting from the whole but also with techniques associated with the unfinished, the torn, the unraveled.

“I had no intention to design uniforms for curators with this project, but, while respecting their individuality, to suggest different looks, which would enter certain open categories of their everyday lives such as casual, formal, etc., using many fragments. These are my first impression after reading the text on human dilemmas corroborated with the image we all (curators included) wish to leave behind, the messages we wish to send through our clothing, the desire to either provoke curiosity or to fulfill the norm on the individuality or appropriateness line. While listening about the different profiles of curators/creators I attempted to introduce various subjectivities through the photographs, the models themselves, or though the accessories” writes the fashion designer Nikola Eftimov about his project.’

Suzana Milevska