PORTAL: Recontextualizing Clothing with Elisa van Joolen

PORTAL is a participatory research project by Elisa van Joolen that explores the hidden stories, values, and connections embedded in the clothes we wear. By inviting participants to map and reflect on their own garments—considering their production, materials, ownership, emotional significance, and connections to other garments—PORTAL reveals how clothing intersects with personal, economic, social, cultural, and political realities. Through this collective process, visitors become the focus of the workshop, challenging traditional ideas of fashion, authorship, ownership, and value while uncovering the complex networks that shape our everyday wardrobes.

Elisa van Joolen

Elisa van Joolen is an Amsterdam-based artist and educator whose work explores the relational aspects of clothing and subverts processes of value production. Her projects respond to specific social contexts and often emphasise collaboration and participation. She has exhibited internationally, including at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, New York Fashion Week, the Brazilian Design Biennial, Het Nieuwe Instituut, OCAT Shenzhen and the West Bund Art Center Shanghai. She holds an MFA from Parsons New York and has been artist-in-residence at Iaspis Stockholm and the Jan van Eyck Academie Maastricht.

Van Joolen is Head of the BA Fashion Department at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, member of Warehouse | A Place for Clothes in Context, and co-art director of Our Rags Magazine; a publication where the pages themselves are garments. She also serves as advisor for the Netherland-America Foundation (NAF).