Lisa Konno - The Porcelain Body

Lisa Konno

Lisa Konno is an outspoken, interdisciplinary creator within fashion design. Her work is colorful, innovative and striking. Cultural identity and craft are two important elements in her work. She likes to tackle difficult topics with humor. In recent years she has done this a lot in combination with film.

In the documentary/fashion film 'NOBU, BABA and HENK', fathers with a migration background are asked about their life stories while wearing clothes inspired by their identity. Konno experiments with a form of 'designing for the person', with which she sheds a different light on the concept of haute couture .

Her films have been shown on VPRO and BNNVARA and at the IFFR and other international film festivals. In 2018 she won a Dutch Design Award. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Art Museum, Textile Museum and Centraal Museum Utrecht.

New job

In the summer of 2022, Lisa Konno followed a residency in Arita (Japan). Konno, half Dutch and half Japanese, grew up and educated in the Netherlands. For her, the research in Arita was a study that was not only about the material but also about her own identity. There she laid the foundation for a new step in her work and a new collection that will be on display during her first solo museum exhibition at Museum JAN.

The Porcelain Body

What we find beautiful seems to be an autonomous choice, but is almost always subject to culture, politics and time. Relating to the concept of beauty is both oppressive and liberating.

For this exhibition, Konno plays intuitively with female archetypes from her two cultures such as the bride, the geisha, the prostitute and the housewife. She uses symbols such as the apron, the bow and the world-famous Okame mask, which symbolizes the perfect housewife in Japan but has its origins in an extremely conservative story. She seeks out clichés and runs with them, in search of her own aesthetic that is expressed in a video installation and a series of objects that are somewhere between a garment and a sculpture.