Decentering Bodies
UPDATE:
The invite for researchers, academics, artists and designers to contribute to a special edition for TEXTILE Cloth and Culture is ongoing!
Callout: 2000 – 5000, word essay to include images. Up to Ten images per essay by 18.00 BST, January 31st 2026, all essays will be peer reviewed.
Further to our report on the launch of the Textile Clothe and Culture special edition read more here is the exciting news that the deadline for submission has been extended to submission is 2025. Email word documents to Davina Hawthorne
Female boxer
Fashion, and culture intersect through empowerment, gender norms, media portrayal, aesthetics, resistance, commodification, identity, and visual semiotics.
Anatomy of Boxing 2022 © Max Kandhola archives
Scope of Submissions
The journal encourages contributions that critically engage with race, identity, and decolonialise narratives across a wide range of creative and cross disciplinary practices. Submissions might include the following:
Studio and Digital Work: Projects that explore how race and identity are expressed through creative practices, whether in physical studio work, digital media, AI or hybrid forms. This includes interrogations of representation, cultural appropriation, and empowerment through visual and material storytelling.
Art, Craft and Design: Investigating how artistic practices and traditional craftsmanship intersect with racialised histories and cultural heritage, particularly in marginalised communities.
Cloth, Body, and Space: Understanding how textiles engage with temporal and spatial narratives reflecting the evolving relationships between people, environments, and material technologies, with bodies and spaces, particularly in the context of race, colonisation, and cultural representation, to question dominant narratives and celebrate diversity.
Fabric sculpture
Decentering Bodies: Negotiating Identity through Craft, Histories, Theology, Heritage, Embodiment, Spatiality, Race, Colonisation, Textiles, Labor, Decoloniality, Manufacturing, and Equity.
Shroud - Alabaster The Anatomy of Hands 2020-2021 © Max Kandhola archives
Scope of Submissions continued…
Manufacturing and Object Production: Analyses of how race and identity intersect with the production of textiles, beauty products, and other material objects. Submissions might examine the systemic inequalities, racialised labour practices, and cultural significance embedded in these processes.
Interdisciplinary Explorations: Innovative approaches that expand the understanding of how textiles, beauty, and other cultural practices shape and are shaped by race, identity, and power dynamics. This includes research that bridges fields such as design, fashion, architecture, and sociology to propose new frameworks for inclusivity and equity.
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