Rapha aims to use recycled materials and organic natural fibres across their products

Francois Convercey is the newly appointed CEO of luxury cycling brand Rapha. Here he speaks to LUX about the company’s sustainability initiatives and the need for greater age and gender diversity in cycling

LUX: How has the structure of Rapha changed with the renewed focus on cycling and its benefits since the pandemic?
Francois Convercey: I wouldn’t say that the pandemic and its involvement in cycling actually changed our strategies or the organisation of our business. Rapha already had the focus of making cycling the most popular sport in the world. From day one, we had the ambition of making cycling aspirational and beautiful, and to get as many people as we could to fall in love with the sport.

As much as the pandemic got people to turn their heads towards the outdoors and cycling, it actually acted as a catalyst towards our original purpose and strategies more than anything else. There was a much broader receptive audience for us to engage with – but all the different building blocks and strategies that we had put in place a decade before the pandemic were still very much relevant in the way we have developed our pricing structure and the way we have made the brand more approachable and more relevant to more people. This made it easier for us to capitalise on the renewed interest in cycling – the way we set up as a business, being a direct-to-consumer business in the first place. The pandemic didn’t change much, but it allowed us to accelerate and grow more quickly. It hasn’t made us shift or change the direction of travel for the business. It just reinforced our belief that we are on the right track.

Rapha CEO Francois Convercey

LUX: What do you believe are the imbalances which need to be addressed by sporting brands in conversations about gender equality and diversity?
FC: Cycling as a sport has imbalances which we are trying to address, although it is a long journey. Gender diversity is definitely one of those, which starts at the pinnacle end of the sport, at racing. Equity and equality when it comes to world tour racing and bike racing as a whole is still very imbalanced and focused on male races. Female races have only begun to be broadcasted in the last couple of years. The Tour de France, which is the cycling world’s biggest sporting event and one of the top ten sporting events in the world, didn’t have a women’s tour until 1955, which was then stopped for thirty years, and only reinstated last year. There are still lots of things to be done to provide balance when it comes to media exposure, broadcasting, prize money and salaries for professional cyclists.

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We try to help drive this balance through the storytelling we do, through our initiatives. During last year’s Tour de France we had a collaboration with a streetwear brand PALACE, using our men’s racing team as a billboard to promote the women’s tour. We are making investments on the women’s tour, sponsoring the women’s world tour team, spending 50% of our marketing money on content and athletes on minorities – women and individuals from under-represented backgrounds, which is part of our impact commitment as a brand. I think the gender balance is one of the key imbalances.

Members of the Rapha Cycling Club coming together

There is definitely an element of age; we want more of the youth to look at cycling as an amazing thing to do. Cycling isn’t the most approachable or accessible sport there is – a bike is more expensive than a pair of running shoes, it requires more time and sometimes infrastructures. Five years ago at Rapha, we began supporting cycling at its grassroots and breaking down barriers to make the sport more accessible to young people and under-represented individuals, and people from under-privileged backgrounds. Over the past five years, the Rapha Foundation donated over $5 million in grants to 38 different grantees who all have concrete initiatives to help break down accessibility to the sport and to support under-privileged kids to have access to cycling – whether it’s supporting programs in schools, or young talent programs. We’ve recently partnered with USA Cycling as part of a program called Search for Speed, which is a track cycling talent identification program, looking for the next US track talent for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

Gender balance is key, age balance is key. The third to look at is accessibility and the role that cycling can play in helping mitigate access to education and healthcare. There have been fantastic initiatives such as World Bicycle Relief, which we have supported over the years and continue to support with the Rapha Foundation, which gives bikes to communities who need bikes for basic life needs – whether it’s education for children to travel to school and not have to walk, or to provide a level of healthcare and health benefits which individuals deserve. The bike can be an amazing tool to break down accessibility barriers for under-privileged communities.

Items from Rapha’s exclusive Rapha + Paul Smith RCC Collection, launched in 2023

LUX: How do you balance promoting professional cycling and equipment whilst also trying to encourage a new generation of amateur cyclists?
FC: I do not necessarily think they are mutually exclusive. The pinnacle-end of the sport, high-performance racing, is aspirational to many individuals and will continue to be in the future. I think being able to provide the opportunity to make a career in cycling and being in a position to inspire communities and future generations about the sport is an amazing prospect. But we won’t succeed in achieving our purpose as a brand if we only focus on racing.

We also have to work on more accessible and more approachable activities which help people discover the values and joys of being on a bike, and how being on a bike is a remedy to the world’s biggest societal challenges and threats – whether it’s environmental benefits with more people commuting on a bike, whether it’s mental health and personal wellbeing which comes when you spend time with yourself and challenge yourself as an individual, or the social friendship and comradery which comes with being on a bike. I think professional and amateur cycling should co-exist and they have their distinctive role to play.

An image from the Rapha Spring/Summer ’23 Collection campaign

LUX: Can you tell us about the main ways you incorporate sustainability into your company?
FC: Sustainability is central. We’ve always looked at it as a duty we have to do the right thing. We launched a repair program which provides the opportunity for any garment which may be damaged to be repaired. We used to do that in-house. We have started to involve partners to help us do it. Over time, we started to pay more attention to how we make our products and the impact that we have. For the last couple of years we’ve been offsetting all the carbon emissions that are generated from the shipments to customers. We’ve offset 100% of our carbon emissions coming from our logistics impact that we have on the planet.

We have been driving a lot of work to convert 100% of our product range into sustainable materials, whether it’s recycled fabrics, recycled fibres, or recyclable or compostable fibres. We’ve covered about 70% of the range now. We are removing all PFC materials from our weather protection products. We’re taking a much more abrasive stance on excess materials we produce. We are now repurposing excess material through excess collections in the Spring of this year. This is now becoming part of our ongoing initiatives. Although it only accounts for 2% of our total volume, it is still a meaningful initiative.

The Los Angeles Rapha Clubhouse

We are about to publish our second impact report in September, which will show our impact over the last twelve months and how much we’ve progressed. We are ahead of track on some key commitments, and some others we have found more challenging than we hoped, or we realise we needed to communicate in a very different way, or we realised that people, planet and communities take framework for broader impact. It takes time, and we’ve embedded that as a culture and as a priority. We have a small sustainability team, but that team is there to inspire a vision. If it’s not embedded in business, we will never make the progress we want to make.

Read more: Pierre Barreau on the future of AI in the music industry 

LUX: Do you think cities are adapting to cyclists, or is there more to be done?
FC: We’ve seen cities adapting more and more to cyclists. I think the pandemic has been an amazing catalyst for more infrastructure to be provided, but we are far from being in the right place.

We can look at places like Denmark and Holland, where urban commuting is ingrained in the local culture, and see cities which are built around cycling. There is lots of fantastic work being done by cities and local organisations. I’ve seen places like Paris, for instance, make amazing progress over the last three years and transforming the way people can ride through the city in a much safer way.

The RCC is now a global community with over 10,000 members

It’s a constant push and pull. Safety on a bike is still one of the top three barriers from people riding their bikes. More and more people have decided to take their bikes off the road and ride off the beaten track or in front of the TV, because you’re in a safer environment. This shows we are still far from where we need to be to make riding safe, whether it’s inside or outside the city.

LUX: How do cyclist communities created by the Rapha clubhouses influence the outlook of the company?
FC: We’ve always been committed to real-life experiences from the earliest days of Rapha. We call our physical Rapha stores clubhouses, because they are not just stores, they are a home away from home for our customers. In 2014, we launched Rapha Cycling Club which is part of a membership program which gives people access to unique benefits and unique experiences. That community is now made up of 20,000 individuals across the world spread across 25 different chapters. Actively investing in building communities on the ground is a direct consequence of us trying to inspire the world to take up the bike. The RCC and our clubhouses are there to inspire people to go on a ride every day of the week, you will have a collection of rides you can join as a member.

The cycling communities influence the company on a few levels. It pushes the customer-centrality of the brand because of the unique customer-directed nature of the brand we have got to have the customer-mentality and direct relationship. It depends on feedback from customers and RCC members to have that customer-first mentality. As CEO of the company, I can go on a ride tomorrow morning in a London clubhouse and get real-time feedback from our customers on how they feel and what they think.

Find out more: www.rapha.cc

Sunil Gupta standing amongst his works from Arrival series, 2022

Photographer, writer, curator and activist Sunil Gupta has explored issues of racism, sexuality, migration and inequality in his art. Here, LUX explores our favourite bodies of work by Gupta and the call to action that each series projects

Gupta’s series Delhi: Tales of a City is a play on the old and the new. Gupta has explored and photographed historical sites in Delhi, primarily constructed between the years 1638 and 1739. During these years, the city was rebuilt by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan. He  imposed his power and influence over the state to control cultural life and the urban economy.

Sunil Gupta, Delhi: Tales of a City: Humayun’s Tomb, 2003/2022

Centuries later, Gupta saw these historical sites, such as the Red Fort and Humayun’s Tomb, and noticed the range of age, religion, caste and sexual orientation of the people visiting these historic sites.

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He realised that, in turn,  people were unknowingly overthrowing the repressive heritage of these monuments and even more he could use them as a decorative backdrop to project their individuality.

Sunil Gupta, Delhi: Tales of a City. Red Fort – 3, 2003/2022

Christopher Street is possibly Gupta’s most important body of work. The idea of this series first came to Gupta when he moved to New York City in 1976. The aim of these photographs was not only a way for Gupta to focus on his passion for the freedom of expression but also to shed light on the momentous event in the LGBTQ+ community, known as The Stonewall Riots. This was a series of spontaneous protests by members of the LGBTQ+ community against a police raid that occurred on 28th June 1969 at the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village.

Sunil Gupta, Untitled #42, Christopher Street Series 1976/2022

These demonstrations led to a fundamental switch in the gay liberation movement which led to an increase of openness and unparalleled acceptance within and towards the gay community in New York. These photographs display a community that shaped Gupta as a person and concreted his personal ambition to portray people who have been denied a space to be themselves.

Sunil Gupta, Untitled #43, Christopher Street Series 1976/2022

Arrival, is a body of work Gupta created in collaboration with his partner Charan Singh.

Read more:Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation: Layers of Meaning

In this series Gupta and Singh use elements of Victorian portraits that were known to project Victorian conventions and norms of behavioural identities.

Sunil Gupta and Charan Singh, Arrival series, 2022

However, Gupta and Singh change the narrative by creating an anti-colonial legacy through compassionate, poetic gestures to convey their sitters’ range of emotions, who are always anticipating when the process of their arrival will become complete.

Sunil Gupta and Charan Singh, Arrival series, 2022

The project also serves as a reminder that homophobia is an anti-humanist cultural affliction, that negatively effects nations beyond the Commonwealth.

‘Sunil Gupta: Cruising’ is on show at Vadehra Art Gallery in New Delhi Until Friday 16th September 2022

Find out more: vadehra.com/exhibitions

In 2019, German embroidery artist Jess de Wahls had her works removed from the Royal Academy gift shop after a blogpost – in which she outlined her views on gender identity politics – was deemed transphobic. The Royal Academy has since apologised, emphasising the importance of freedom of speech. Here, Candice Tucker speaks to the artist about the experience, her practice and future collaborations

1. You’ve established yourself as an ‘enfant terrible’. Can you explain what that means exactly?

I was branded that, rather, by Hand and Lock, which is this old-fashioned embroidery house in the West End – it’s over 250 years old, I think. I did a bit of work with them over a period of years and I guess it’s because I’m not your average dolly embroiderer. They did a story on me and that’s what it was called and I thought I’ll run with it, it works! I’ve done a lot of vulva embroidery and I’ve got the Big Swinging Ovaries label and I think that’s where it came from and I thought well I guess that’s true because I kind of go against the grain of what people perceive as embroidery.

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2. Your work explores themes such as the environment, contemporary feminism and female liberation. Do you think there is a natural link between these interests?

There has always been a natural link for me. It wasn’t something I set out to do and embroidery wasn’t something I set out to do either – I just fell into it, naturally.

Traditionally, embroidery and needle work have been seen as women’s work. The recycling bit, for me, is connected in the sense that I am a big fan of trying to reuse things so I almost exclusively work with recycled materials. I embroider onto old fabrics, usually old clothes or bed linen or anything I can get my hands on. When I used to do the Retex sculptures (short for recycled-textile-sculpture) it was purely from donated clothes from friends and family and people that like my work which I cut apart, so that links together with the whole textile aspect.

Feminism was always something I was curious to explore through my work. As mentioned before, embroidery or textile art in general has always been sidelined as women’s work, and regarded as somehow less than mainstream art. I’ve been taking quite a stand over the years now to make a point that embroidery is just as much art as any other medium, but it wasn’t that I thought “I’m a feminist and therefore, I have to choose textile art”, it all just kind of connected. There’s no ulterior motive behind it.

3. How were you first introduced to textile art and embroidery?

I used to paint and draw storyboards, but I sort of fell into textile art when my goddaughter was born and I wanted to make something tactile for so I used some of my old clothes. The last time I had sewn something before that was when I was in primary school. I made a little soft toy for her and I really loved the process of stitching, so much so that I thought, “Why haven’t I done this before?”

After that, I did a lot of sewing which ended up turning into my Retex sculptures that became more and more intricate the more I went with the fabric and the textile. I never studied it so I just found my way through what medium I wanted to work with next. Embroidery happened naturally because the backgrounds got tinier and tinier, and more and more detailed. Now, I pretty much only do embroidery. I find it addictive.

I’ve always been fascinated by meticulous, tiny works of art where there’s lots of repetition, and really, there’s nothing more repetitive than stitching because you get into this flow state and you can go for hours and also do something else whilst you’re doing it. I have a Zoom stitch group – we meet every other day and for 2 hours, we just chat while everybody works on their own projects. It’s kind of like back in the day when women used to meet to stitch. There’s something really soothing about it.

4. How do you think art manages to act as a platform in raising awareness for issues such as equality and the environment?

In a way, I think art has always [raised awareness], it’s just now that the mainstream is taking more notice. Artists have always expressed their worries, concerns, likes, dislikes and fears through their work, but with social media, and the internet, we have much more exposure to [both art and these issues]. Look at Frida Kahlo and her work: she was expressing very similar things early on.

Read more: Helga Piaget on educating the next generation

I do find it a little difficult now because there is so much political art that it becomes a bit like propaganda where I’m not sure how good it is and how much it takes away from the quality of the art. There is also such an incessant need for labels for everyone and everything, which is interesting to me because I’ve sort of become a feminist artist and although the majority of my work is about feminism, it’s also only one of many things that I’m exploring. At the moment, there are a lot of feminist issues that that I’m looking at through my art, criticising or applauding, but that’s not to say that’s what I’ll be focusing on next year when there might be something else that’s more on my radar. There are some really good things about the internet, it allows people to reach broader audiences that they wouldn’t have been able to access before, but [the overload of information and content] can be difficult to navigate.

5. What was the importance of the Royal Academy’s apology with regards to freedom of expression?

Obviously, I welcome the apology. Sadly, over the last two years, I had become almost used to that kind of behaviour. People were really shocked to see what had happened because it was the first time this had happened so publicly, other than what happened with JK Rowling, but that’s a different story because she’s at a different level to me. It was shocking to see that an art institution like the RA would go along with the social media pressure because ultimately that is what it is, and there is a danger in that. I think we should be able to look at art and separate it, to a certain extent, from the artist.

Of course, people are free to disagree with me. They said it’s not freedom of speech if you don’t let people voice their concerns about your views and I’ve never said that they shouldn’t be able to voice them. It’s not freedom of speech if the consequence is that I have to worry about my livelihood and that of my partner and friends. Within art, I think, there are guidelines for hate speech, which I haven’t broken: I don’t hate anyone. So, yes I am glad they apologised publicly. A lot of people were hoping I was going to court, but it’s much more important to have a public stand on this, and I know there are a lot people who disagree with that too, but then, what do you want from art?

Ideas don’t go away just because they are prohibited: they go underground and they fester when they are not being examined. I, as an artist, should be able to say something that isn’t hate speech, and people should be free to say, “That’s rubbish”, or “I agree with you.” To me, that’s what art is about. The way [this whole thing] has been misrepresented as if I am trying to punch down a minority is nonsense: in my opinion, I’m standing up for women. I’ve been open for conversations about my thoughts on this for a long time and they have only every been met with dogma.

If the big art organisations start examining every artist, they won’t have any art on their walls anymore and if only certain thoughts are allowed to be expressed, then we will have a very narrow view of art and life.

6. Do you have any upcoming projects?

I’ve done a couple of webinars with Baroness Nicholson. She wants to get me involved with the Yazidi women in the war camp and bring embroidery there, which I would love to do because in South Africa there are a lot of women who were raped in the war and they work through their trauma with embroidery, which can be super healing and soothing.

There’s also a group of women artists that I’m working with in the background and a couple of curators, we are trying to put on an exhibition about ‘cancelled’ artists, particularly women artists. Who knows, maybe I can convince the Royal Academy to give us a space!

Find out more: jessdewahls.com

Shirin Neshat at home in New York City

Shirin Neshat’s devastatingly striking art combines dream, reality and an undercurrent of anger and sadness. As a major retrospective of her work is held in Los Angeles, Millie Walton meets the artist at the launch of her collaboration with celebrated Italian winemaker Ornellaia, famous for its artist labels

Portrait photography of Shirin Neshat at home in New York by Maryam Eisler

Iranian-born filmmaker and artist Shirin Neshat sits demurely drinking a cup of coffee in the palatial breakfast room at Baglioni Hotel Luna in Venice. It’s the morning after the Sotheby’s auction at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection which saw the sale of limited-edition bottles of 2016 Ornellaia wine with Neshat’s label artwork. A total of $312,000 was raised, with all profits going to the Mind’s Eye programme, which was conceived by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation to help blind people experience art through the use of other senses.

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The success of Neshat’s collaboration, following that of William Kentridge’s in 2018, was well deserving of late-night celebrations, but the artist is composed and alert, her jet-black hair scraped tightly back from her face, and her dark eyes lined with black kohl. It’s a look that would seem somewhat severe or even theatrical on most, but Neshat wears it with authenticity, grace and a sense of homeliness. She pulls up another chair close to hers so that I can hear what she’s saying over the clamour of the breakfast buffet and tells me that she’s been ordering coffee to her room each morning and is worried that Ornellaia will have to foot the bill. Given the sum raised last night along with Neshat’s status as the world’s most important and widely recognised contemporary Iranian artist, it’s hard not to laugh, but she speaks softly and sincerely, taking time to consider each of her answers and apologising when yet another admirer interrupts for an autograph. She has a lot of fans it seems, yet her politically engaged work continues to generate debate. She admits, “Some people dislike what I do. There are a lot of people who hate my work in Iran, but still it is discussed, so I think I’m relevant.”

Here and above: stills from Neshat’s video Rapture (1999)

Neshat was born in the city of Qazvin, north-west of Tehran, but left for California at the age of 17 to finish her schooling. Her training as an artist began with her undergraduate and masters degrees in fine art at the University of California, Berkeley. However, she abandoned art-making and moved from Los Angeles to New York in the early 1980s. It was a decade later, through photography first and then film, that she found her artistic vision. She has now been working as an artist for more than 30 years and has won numerous international awards, including the Golden Lion at the 1999 edition of the Venice Biennale for her powerful short film Turbluent, which explores gender roles and social restrictions in Iranian culture. The film plays out on two screens: one shows a male performer singing a love song by the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi to a large audience of men, whilst on the other screen, a veiled woman waits in an empty auditorium, her back turned to the camera. When the man’s performance finishes, the woman begins a wordless song of guttural cries, mournful melodies, panting and animalistic screeching. This film was not only significant in establishing Neshat’s career, but also in paving the way for her succeeding works, which all, in one way or another, deal with the restrictions of female experience. Though embedded in narratives of conflict, Neshat’s work offers a sense of hope in which women find freedom through art in all its various guises.

Neshat’s designs for Ornellaia’s ‘La Tensione’ bottle label

Neshat with Ornellaia’s estate director Axel Heinz

Given these preoccupations, the artist’s decision to collaborate with Tuscan winemaker Ornellaia is somewhat baffling. “In our culture, wine is a way not to escape, but to transcend reality and so [drinking wine] is a sacred, spiritual act,” says Neshat. “But in general, I feel like an occasional step out of your own milieu is actually very positive. For one thing, it puts your work in front of a new audience, but also, for me, [commercial work] is an attractive way of financing my projects. I make work that takes me six years and I make zero money so I think that any patronage that finances your practice and gives you the freedom to do your work is great.” Her series of images for Ornellaia, interpreting the theme ‘La Tensione’ which gives this vintage its name, depict white hands inscribed with Persian script, luminous against a black background. The use of hands, along with literature and monochromatic shades are all typical of Neshat’s aesthetic and imbue the work with a haunting, dreamlike quality. “I’m very interested in the subtlety of body postures and how they can reveal emotion, especially coming from the Islamic tradition and how provocative and problematic the body can be,” she says. “There’s a certain universality about hand gestures.” She places one palm against her chest: “This, for example, could be love”.

Ibrahim (Patriots) from The Book of Kings series (2012) by Shirin Neshat

The work is reminiscent of Neshat’s first series of black-and-white photographs, entitled Women of Allah (1993–97), which was created following the artist’s return to Iran in 1990, her first visit following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. When Neshat arrived back in Iran, it was in the wake of dramatic cultural changes. Women of Allah not only marked the rebirth of her making art, but also her engagement with the country’s political landscape – an engagement which led to her current state of exile. The series focuses on female martyrdom, showing veiled women holding weapons, their faces, hands and feet again inscribed with Farsi poetry, highlighting the revolutionary Iranians’ dual identities as both Persians and radical Islamists, as well as the tension between devotion and violence.

Read more: Introducing the next generation of filmmakers at Frieze LA

Her practice continues to be preoccupied with contrasts, highlighted by the minimalism of black and white, but also with conflict. “There are plenty of artists whose making of art is an aesthetic exercise, which is important because it has intellectual and artistic values of the highest level,” she explains. “But for artists born to a country like Iran, the relationship to art is personal in a way that it cannot be separated from daily realities. I don’t think we have the emotional capability of distancing ourselves from these issues, and it is an incredibly fulfilling process when you make work that is politically conscious. It also means that you have a relationship with an audience that is larger than the [usual] art audience because people are able to identify with the subject matter.”

Despite Neshat’s acute political engagement, her work has a sense of timelessness achieved by incorporating literature and music as well as elements of the surreal. “Music is very existential,” she says. “It sort of neutralizes a political reality, but it also contains all these cultural references and has a strong physical impact. Powerful music affects your heart.” This is perhaps most apparent in Turbulent, which was inspired by a young blind woman who Neshat saw singing on the streets of Istanbul. Many of her works have involved collaborations with composers and musicians as well as writers and cinematographers. “It’s an essential part of my work to collaborate, especially with people who know me and my work well,” she says. “I’m doing a lot of work in media that I never studied. It’s been really interesting to surround myself with people who have the expertise.”

The artist in her studio

Neshat’s artistic ‘family’ is international, but she has gravitated towards other Iranians in New York: “I am sitting on the outside [of Iranian culture], others are by choice and others not; either way, we’re naturally drawn to each other and spend a lot of time helping each other. I do feel integrated in American culture as far as the artwork goes, but I can also see the limitations of not being Western, when your practice is considered to be a little bit outside the box.” Reflecting this duality, Neshat curated ‘A Bridge Between You and Everything’, an exhibition of Iranian women artists held at the High Line Nine Galleries in New York in November 2019.

Raven Brewer-Beltz (2019) by Shirin Neshat

Neshat has called New York her home for many years, but her latest project, Land of Dreams, is the first time that she has directly turned her artistic attention towards the US. The project explores her experiences of being an immigrant, focusing on an Iranian woman who collects dreams that portray American people and takes them back to an Iranian colony for analysis. The project is now being shown for the first time as part of Neshat’s major retrospective ‘I Will Greet the Sun Again’ at The Broad in LA, and one wonders at the colony’s interpretations. “It’s kind of an absurd comedy,” she laughs, “but it was also [about] how to tackle a very important political subject – the antagonism between the two cultures as well as the corruption on both sides – through a human surrealism so that it escapes absolute realism. I want it to be timely, but I don’t want it to have no value in a hundred years’ time.” Are these surreal imaginings ever drawn from Neshat’s own dreams? “Yes, I try to write down my dreams every time I wake up. I like how ephemeral dreams are. My work is like the story that comes after.”

‘Shirin Neshat: I Will Greet the Sun Again’ is on show at The Broad, Los Angeles until 16 February 2020: thebroad.org.

Shirin Neshat ‘Land of Dreams’ opens at the Goodman Gallery in London on 20 February and will run until 28 March 2020. For more information visit: goodman-gallery.com

This article was originally published in the Spring 2020 Issue.

“Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon,” 2017. Exhibition View: New Museum. Photo: Maris Hutchinson / EPW Studio

The New Museum is well known for its radical programme of exhibitions targeting issues of social representation, but “Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon” is arguably one of the most important to be housed by the space. Bringing together work from over forty intergenerational artists (including Josh Faught, Reina Gossett and Sasha Wortzel, Ellen Lesperance, Mickalene Thomas, and Candice Lin), across a variety of mediums and genres, including film, video, performance, painting, sculpture and photography, the exhibition contests the gender binary, exploring fluid and more inclusive expressions of identity by developing new vocabularies and imagery.

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Tschabalala Self, Mane, 2016. Lewben Art Foundation Collection. Courtesy the artist; Pilar Corrias, London; T293, Naples and Rome; and Thierry Goldberg, New York. Special thanks to Pilar Corrias and T293

Yet these works are by no means mere utopian reconstructions, the artistic practices are plugged firmly into current gender discourses, recognising the complex intersections with race, class, sexuality, and disability. One of the most notable works includes a braided sculpture by Diamond Stingily that trails from the fourth floor down to the lobby, alluding to the racial dimensions of beauty conventions as well as to Medusa, whose gaze could turn men into stone. It’s a powerful reminder of art’s potency as, in the words of Schiller, our ‘second creatress’ of new worlds and perspectives.

Millie Walton

“Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon” runs until 21st January 2018 at the New Museum, New York

Actress, campaigner, wife of Kering owner François-Henri Pinault, Salma Hayek and CHIME FOR CHANGE co-founder, joined UNICEF to meet Syrian refugees in Lebanon in 2015

Gucci is the biggest Kering brand and, as a producer of leather and fashion garments, the one with the biggest sustainability challenges. In a candid exchange, Robert Triefus, Gucci’s EVP and Chief Marketing Officer, tells LUX how the label is tackling them.

LUX: Is there an awareness among all your staff of the broad Kering vision?
Robert Triefus: We are in luxury fashion. For some individuals, they will feel there is a contradiction in terms between sustainability and luxury fashion. But I think that you have to start from the premise that we are a business, a for-profit (not a not-for-profit) one that believes in its responsibility to lower its impact in terms of carbon footprint, waste management and social issues – how we can be responsible in our community. As the big picture, I think that this is the framework that we, as a group, work within.

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LUX: That big picture means not just reducing environmental impact but doing good in areas such as gender equality. Is this on the rise?
RT: It’s interesting because one of the impacts of the inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the United States and his rather nationalistic approach has been that brands generally are looking at how they can contribute towards the debate on the promotion of certain rights. Equality as a whole is a significant topic in America and beyond because it has that kind of reach.

Going back to the mission of Kering, one of the key issues has always been the idea of gender equality, so when we launched CHIME FOR CHANGE [co-founded by François-Henri Pinault’s wife Salma Hayek, a leading campaigner on gender equality issues] three years ago, it was something we believed in both as a brand and as something that makes very good sense given the number of female clients we have. But also within the framework of Kering’s overall mission, it resided very well under that overall umbrella.

Today, I think the issue of gender equality is widely seen because it has built momentum and it has acquired much more engagement in the media for a lot of different reasons. So, I think that over the past three years we’ve been engaging in this campaign because we believed it was the right thing to do as a campaign, and as a topic.

LUX: In the Dining Issue of LUX we have an interview with Marc Glimcher of Pace Gallery who says that they are doing public art because the public sector doesn’t have the money. Likewise, is no one stepping in to do what you are doing?
RT: I think over the past 10 to 20 years, the private sector in its different manifestations has become much more active partly in the growth of understanding of the role that corporations, brands and wealthy, successful entrepreneurs can play. If you look at the Bill Gates and the Warren Buffets of this world and what they are doing today, you can see that they feel they have responsibilities and the capacity of a small country to carry them out.

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LUX: How does the responsibility element, the CHIME FOR CHANGE, link with the sustain-ability element of Kering’s strategy?
RT: Within Kering’s ten-year strategy there are pillars. One of them is focused on the environment, and all what we do goes with that. When you use the word sustainability, it’s immediately associated with the environment. But the second pillar is about social good with campaigns such as CHIME FOR CHANGE on gender equality and other philanthropic activities. The third pillar is more in the area of innovation. Kering looks at sustainability in a broad sense under the notion of responsibility to the environment and to humanity. This innovation is driving ways of doing business differently across the area of sustainability.

Gucci’s pre-Fall 2017 collection

LUX: Gucci and CHIME FOR CHANGE support women’s and girls’ causes and you partner with the action group Global Citizen. It’s a good ex-ample of a corporation taking responsibility for social campaigning. Is this continuing?
RT: Yes, the fact that equality is more under question than it was a year ago, certainly in the most developed country in the world [the US], means that we as a campaign movement are going to be busier than before, probably. We are always looking for ways we can be more effective in getting our message out there. Music as a convening force will be part of what we do. We will be having festivals in New York and Berlin. There will be another CHIME FOR CHANGE hackathon supported by Facebook. We are looking for something in the art community, and will continue to be active as we have in the past, and what we could do in the future.

LUX: Will consumers start to demand that luxury brands are responsible? Are you seeing this now or do they just not care?
RT: No, I think they assume that we are responsible and sustainable so I think it would become punitive if it becomes apparent that we have not been acting in that way. At the same time I think – and it’s a bit of a cliché now – the millennials and generation Z are definitely growing up much more aware because they are living in an environment that is more in question. Therefore, they are increasingly aware of the negative impact that companies can have. So, let’s say that the expectation that you are responsible is put at an even greater premium.

LUX: As we go forward, will you push Kering’s sustainability message forward more in Gucci?
RT: I think the point is that we are a for-profit, not not-for-profit, so we are de facto never going to be perfect. Now, we are not going to make this the unique selling point of our brand, maybe it’s different in the case of Stella McCartney as it is part of her DNA, but by and large it is something we believe companies and ourselves should be doing. We are not going to shout from the rooftops because frankly someone could justifiably say, “hang on a minute, you should be that way, so why are you shouting about it?”

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