Outside/In: Lisa Konno
On Thursday 16 August fashion designer Lisa Konno will be at Foam for Outside/In, Foam's programme where guest speakers delve deeper into the stories behind exhibitions at Foam.

ATTENTION: this event is in Dutch

Dutch/Japanese Konno won a Dutch Design Award for her NOBU collection, for which she was inspired by the life of her Japanese father, who moved to the Netherlands in the late 1980s. Through this collection she shows how moving to the Netherlands has influenced, and even changed her father's identity. Konno considers fashion as one of the building blocks for identity. By using the vernacular photography of the Migrant Farm workers and Grace Ndiritu’s work Still Life, part of the exhibition, Konno explores the relationship between these works and her collections NOBU, 'For the Workers' and her designs for clothing brand AFRIEK.

NOBU collection by Lisa Konno © Laila Cohen

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
In the exhibition Structures of Identity, Foam presents a selection of photographic works from The Walther Collection. In Structures of Identity, iconic works by photographers including August Sander, Richard Avedon and J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere are combined with the work of contemporary photographers such as Yto Barrada, Samuel Fosso, Zanele Muholi and Guy Tillim. Works of vernacular photography, from a range of cultures and historical periods, are also on view.
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ABOUT LISA KONNO
Lisa Konno (1992) is a fashion designer based in Amsterdam. Always searching for innovative ways to handle design she aims to walk a different path in fashion and work on projects that challenge the current fashion system. Her work is always a balance of activism and aesthetics and often contains many colours and prints. Lisa never wants to lose the optimistic, fun and ever changing look that fashion can bring but shake off the unethical ways of the industry. The main purpose of her work is to use fashion to tell socially relevant stories.

In 2014, Lisa graduated at the Fashion Design department of Artez in Arnhem. Since then she presented several collections and collaborations at Amsterdam Fashion Week, Dutch Design Week, Tokyo Design Week, Stedelijk Museum and FOAM. Her latest collection NOBU is inspired by her Japanese father: Nobuaki Konno. The collection reflects on both his Dutch and Japanese identity, caricaturises cultural misunderstandings, the hype about Japan and at the same time draws an intimate portrait of her father as an immigrant. With NOBU, Lisa Konno recently won a Dutch Design Award.

The exhibition is a collaboration between The Walther Collection, Neu-Ulm (Germany) and New York (US), and Foam.

Foam is supported by the BankGiro Loterij, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, Gemeente Amsterdam, Olympus and the VandenEnde Foundation.

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Outside/In: Lisa Konno