Let’s think about ‘addressing a dress’ or ‘dressing an address’. Etymologically, the verbs to address and to dress seem connected to the French adresser (Latin ‘ad’ + ‘directiare’), meaning ‘to direct, guide, make straight’. In the early 1300s, the definition of address meant ‘to direct a written communication to a specific person or destination’, while to dress meant ‘to make up right’. The latter evolved in military contexts to mean ‘preparing oneself’ or ‘rigging oneself out’. By the 1600s, to dress signified both ‘to put clothes on’ and the very piece of clothing used for it. Thus both ‘addressing’ and ‘dressing’ allude to orientations — This talk will reflect upon trajectories: going back and forth between site-specificity vs. tailor-made, flattening of bodies (pattern-making) vs. flattening of the word (styling), vintage vs. nostalgia, and many other crossovers between fashion design and sculpture.

Bruno Zhu is an artist living and working between Amsterdam and Viseu. Ranging from fashion design, publishing and scenography, Zhu’s practice is preoccupied with fiction and its manifestations. He employs methods that cut, stitch and write against normative alignments of knowledge production and social reproduction. Zhu is a member of A Maior, a curatorial program set in a home furnishings and clothing store in Viseu, Portugal.