Entering Museum Arnhem, you encounter a monumental tree, its branches a spiral of clothing that twist up and out across the room. And perched up among the fabric foliage is a woman, her cheek to trunk, her arms and legs tenderly embracing the tree. Melati Suryodarmo’s site-specific work ‘Clothes Ape’ – made from locally donated secondhand garments and involving hours-long durational performances – writs large our excessive consumption of fast fashion and the industry’s harmful impact on natural resources. This poignant installation encapsulates the spirit of State of Fashion Biennale 2024: Ties That Bind. This edition of Arnhem’s sustainable fashion platform explores how designers and artists from across the Global South propose more equitable approaches to fashion while addressing the political power of cloth.

Curators Louise Bennetts and Rachel Dedman invited three interlocutor-curators – Sunny Dolat in Nairobi, Kallol Datta in Bengaluru and Hanayrá Negreiros in São Paulo – to respond to these themes within their own local contexts. These satellite exhibitions occurred in April, highlights from which have come together in Arnhem alongside a fourth meditation that unites 160 works from 20 countries. “Ties that Bind is rooted in the intimacy of fabric, the universal familiarity of clothing and the urgent need to change the current fashion system, it’s exploitation of environmental and human resources impacting disproportionately heavily on the Global South,” says Bennetts. “Across the local and global network of sites that connect this edition, our intention has been to amplify the kinships among these artists and ultimately to share the human stories that are woven into their work.”

At Arnhem cultural centre Rozet, projects by five locally-based designers and collectives look at ideas around food migration, mental health and the refugee experience in the Netherlands. Meanwhile Lebanese graphic designer Farah Fayyad presents ‘Screen-Printing the Uprising’, which originally stemmed from the popular protests in Beirut in 2019. “We wanted to participate so we dragged our printing press out onto the streets and started printing the slogans of the revolution onto whatever people were wearing,” Fayyad explains. She’s since moved to the Netherlands, bringing the table with her, and continues to activate it in public spaces such as this.

Moving onto the Rembrandt Theatre, Ties That Bind has transformed this disused venue into an extensive journey through four realms. The first, Dismantling Tradition, sees “designers revel in rich textiles traditions, contesting reductive stereotypes and evolving these legacies for future generations,” Dedman says. A vast array of techniques including weaving, draping, sculpture, quilting, embroidery and paper cutting are used to explore how innovation can keep indigenous knowledge systems alive.

Here a trio of African designers shine. Nkwo Onwuka’s cloak-like dresses are made from dakala, a cloth she developed by stripping, braiding and sewing together textile waste to form a new fabric that is resonant of traditional Nigerian textiles. South Africa’s Lukhanyo Mdingi has worked with faso danfani from a social enterprise in Burkina Faso, weaving organic threads into quietly luxurious tailoring steeped in provenance. And Morocco’s Maison ARTC by Artsi Ifrach presents a series of dramatic couture looks made from vintage and artisanal textiles.

The second space, Political Bodies, speaks to clothing as a tool for performance and resistance. Gathered together are designers who examine the textile trade’s centuries-long connection to systems of oppression while harnessing the potential of fabric to both enable protest and express solidarities. Jakkai Siributr’s piece ‘Blind Faith’ questions compulsory conscription in the artist’s native Thailand. Three military uniforms are embellished in bullet shells and glass beads that act as amulets. The talismanic results remind us of how we all use clothing as unspoken protection against harm. Alongside this hangs Esna Su’s ‘The Burden’, a cluster of hollow knitted and crochet leather sacks. She draws on techniques from her Turkish heritage to highlight the plight of Syrian refugees who have arrived in her country.

Third space, Designing Integrity, surveys practices that address the damaging impact of fashion production. “Combining creativity with innovation, these designers pioneer novel solutions for waste textiles, supporting artisan makers and prioritising transparency in supply chains,” says Dedman. Bobby Kolade of Buzigahill presents his ‘Return to Sender’ collection featuring intricate streetwear styles made from deconstructing secondhand clothing that has been dumped in Uganda by the West. And Paris-based design studio About A Worker has collaborated with former sweatshop labourers in Shenzhen to reinvent the ill-fitting uniforms there have been forced to wear while making cheap clothes for the rest of us to squander.

The fourth space, Fabric of Shelter, brings us back to the elemental nature of textiles. “Cloth acts as the body’s first home, it’s the foundation of our social and material lives, and clothes are vehicles through which we navigate the world. This theme reflects on textiles as refuge, as architecture, as home,” says Bennetts. One of the most moving pieces floats above our heads. ‘Night Holes’ by Mounira Al Solh consists of a number of large bedsheets strewn with holes through which gentle light shines. The artist is reflecting on memories of being a young girl living through the Lebanese Civil War. Her mother allowed her make small tears in her pyjamas and mend them again as a distraction from the encroaching violence. As we stand beneath these sheets, we hear a soundscape of children’s lullabies and admire the shadow patterns on the floor. Are these star-strewn skies or bullet hole-marked tents? And what would it feel like if we only had these textile comforts to calm us?

The last and perhaps most vital section of the exhibition is dedicated to the three sister sites. Dolat’s ‘Tradition(al)’ brought 19 artists and makers from over 10 African countries to Nairobi to connect customs, rituals and techniques that have survived imperial erasure and now thrive through contemporary fashion. “I want to honour the role of designers in the preservation of knowledge and craft and the custodianship that they so effortlessly carry,” says Dolat. “As Africans, we have been lucky to be born into a wealth of textile culture. I believe we have a duty to grow and add to this heritage.”

Patricia Mbela’s fully beaded ensemble is indicative of this designer’s practice that revives the lost art of Taita beadwork. She and her cousin are the only two Taita beaders left in Kenyan – an ancestral reclamation of a skill once banned by the British as witchcraft. A two-piece by Nigerian designer Bubu Ogisi of Iamisgo is made from Ugandan bark cloth, an ancient textile made from the Mutuba tree that is beautiful because of its natural imperfections. Loza Maléombho from Côte d'Ivoire incorporates Baule mask motifs into a structured dress as a way to interpret their spiritual strength. And Kenya’s Kikoromeo presents the Ewala coat made in collaboration with Sudanese artist Eltayeb Dawelbait, using bleach painting to create designs inspired by the Turkana people.

Kallol Datta introduces ‘…of Involution, of Langour…’. While not from Bengaluru, he chose this city for its political and social significance. “Bengaluru is witnessing a nationalistic movement, which is a response to the language imposition from north India. It’s also where there’s almost a complete depletion of ground water, and people are realising that water scarcity is a feminist issue,” he explains. Site specific works by Indu Antony, Rujuta Rao and Swati Kalsi protest the structural and sexual inequalities of everyday life. Anthony and the women of the Namma Katte programme have taken 15 used saree blouses and embroidered them with personal statements about water poverty. One voice has no way to wash the blood off her clothes after her husband beats her. Another can’t send her children to school in dirty uniforms. But by coming together, they hold each other in care.

Finally, Hanayrá Negreiros gives us a glimpse of ‘Through the Waters We Sew Other Brazilian Stories’. Her curation in São Paulo used bodies of water as a metaphor for the strength of community among indigenous and Afro-Brazilian people. From the Atlantic Ocean that carried with it African civilisations to these shores, to the fresh waters upon which original inhabitants rely, narratives rise up that interweave politics and poetry. “The exhibition acts as a collective embroidery within which memory becomes the guiding thread – sewing the method and imagination the backdrop – for water cosmologies to be woven as vivid encounters, prayers and mysteries conceived by many hands,” she says. On show are women artists including Dayana Molina and Goya Lopes whose works communicate the “unstoppable force of the collective core, present in our bodies, in our designers, in our futures.” And that, like Suryodarmo’s textile tree, can give us some hope that through collective action, and through shared voices across continents and cultures, these ties that bind us can truly make change.