INGRID KRAFTCHENKO

The Ingrid Kraftchenko label is founded by British radical Creative; Artist, Architect, Activist and Fashion Designer Ingrid Kraftchenko. She has gained critical acclaim for challenging modern luxury. 

Ingrid Kraftchenko's inaugural durational presentation DOLLHOUSE - The Body of Architecture '24 MADE IN LONDON E1 & E8 / AW '24  will showcase in Dalston for London Fashion Week 14/09/24 21:00 - 23:00hrs. She invites you into  Dollhouse - the Architecture of her first London Atelier and store, as a celebration and confirmation of the Artist's own manifesto, beliefs and politics. 

She questions who is safe and who is disposable by re-understanding the 'Body as Architecture' and the current capitalist supply and demand and priority for protective, post-utilitarian clothing and bespoke accessories fusing a delicate use of resilient fabrics. The Body of Architecture '24  unfolds at Kraftchenko Atelier, as an exploratory site-specific work and invites the audience to immerse themselves in the performance and Architecture of her first London store. The new collection is showcased through live-exhibition by the artist reroutes the gaze via architectural intervention; installations and live choreography, sound, and moving images. 

Ingrid Kraftchenko opens 𝕯𝖔𝖑𝖑𝖍𝖔𝖚𝖘𝖊 in a Victorian historic disused Factory in Glebe Road, Haggerston E8, which was built in 1890, which she has transformed into her post-industrial "Dollhouse." Dollhouse is named after the play by Henrik Ibsen c. 1879. At Dollhouse; the norms of Theatre proscenium stages are under interrogation; as interscenium, simultaneous hybrid spatial interventions as a tool of subversive moving target. Dollhouse forms the DNA of the Kraftchenko's ideal couture body, as a fetishized femininnity doll, showing the artificiality of gender as constructed by fashion, exploring the mannequin as a site of resistance and disobedience. Embodying a cultural bodily uniform of dynamic and sustainable urban protection; Kraftchenko challenges the notions of functionality of deconstructive continuous skins in architecture and fashion in industrial collapse.


The invitation to dynamic exploration of the interior-turn-exterior accentuates the removed agency of the models. The fashion show and durational performances throughout the hours of the opening show aim to distort oppositions between fashioned bodies and manufactured industrial objects. Audience alike performers willingly depersonalised as parts of collective creation of post-industrial space dynamics. Restrained bodies of human dolls embody key codes of the brands motives of anonymity and isolation in urban environments. The exhibition will open durationally to the public following the live show on mannequins. 

Kraftchenko's deconstruction of clothes as well as her atelier architecture, both point at industrial collapse and are mobilised as critique of fashion production through renegotiation of functionality. Kraftchenko's modus operandi is based on pre-existing, deadstock and sustainable technical materials that become involved in innovative construction process of dynamic urban protection uniforms, juxtaposed hand stitching and painting utilising zero waste japanese deconstructive pattern cutting and weaving techniques. By re-appropiating fetish, military and medical aesthetics, Kraftchenko draws links between control, submission, resistance and community. 

While the domestic space of Kraftchenko Atelier opens up as an arena to discuss politics of shelter and dwelling, at the same time it calls for initiative in spatial surgery and architectural interrogation. At Kraftchenko Atelier, the post-runway show encourages adaptation strategies for existential runways from control agents within megacities. She viscerally hand-paints psychosomatic urban guerrilla tactics on the political canvas of fabrics.

Ingrid Kraftchenko is a radical collaborative studio involved in works spanning multi-disciplinary projects operating between architecture and fashion design, film, the conceptual visual and performing arts. The firm's architectural and fashion design work frequently addresses issues of bodily enclosure and shelter at scales ranging 1:1 - 1:3000. Their work has been widely exhibited in the UK, Europe, USA and Asia.  

Ingrid Kraftchenko (IK), among others in the collective, have gained critical acclaim for challenging modern luxury and for their provocative predisposition towards body-politics, shelter, control and surveillance tactics, by representational modes (fashion, clothing, the "design" of consumer goods and imposed by institutions (media, museums and border control). 

“My work is a subversive utilitarian uniform exploring androgynous tailoring, reusing deadstock and focuses on the body as a site of social and political contestation, and subverting social conventions.” THE FACE 

"Previously working as a performance artist for Marina Abramović, Ingrid Kraftchenko started to design her collection by performing each of the characters she wanted to create. Titled Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (after the 1989 Pedro Almodóvar film) the collection explored gender power play, and archetypes of women... Cue the leather clad models their ensembles often with 80s power shoulders." DAZED

 

"Ingrid draws on the current climate and feelings around her. Her collection focuses on those dynamics by referencing femininity along with emotions of anger, despair, euphoria, mania and desire. TV: What inspired you to channel your political frustration into art? IK: It was a very personal project inspired by my own experiences and women around me. It reflects our political struggles in the current youth culture." TEEN VOGUE

With Design experience at Margiela, Helmut Lang, AF Vandevorst, Barbara Gongini and having worked closely with Shayne Oliver on work for Hood by Air and Helmut Lang, she launched her own label in 2019. She is currently part of the Centre of Fashion Enterprise and supported by the UKFT.  

 

Ingrid Kraftchenko (IK), is a British Artist, born in Dungeness, Kent. Previously a performance artist for Marina Abramovic and trained in Architecture and Engineering, she graduated from London College of Fashion Womenswear in 2017. She gained design experience for Margiela, Helmut Lang (Shayne Oliver), AF Vandervorst and Barbara Gongini in London, Paris and Antwerp, before launching her own brand label and multidisciplinary studio in London 2020. She frequently collaborates with her brother, James Alder, Architect RIBA (James Alder Architects) amongst many other contemporary visionaries and performance artists. 

Curated by Ingrid Krafchenko

Image: © Ingrid Kraftchenko