collaborator Zusi Rongen

Zusi Rongen, artist, designer, performer and musician - works at the interface of these diverse practices and media.     In  her life and work, fashion shows become multi-media performance events and Dj sets are fused with installation and performance  aesthetics.

She studied jewellery and product design in Poland and fine art in Maastricht, Holland with emphasis on fashion, performance and design. Her works after graduating have centred on fashion-installations and performance events, always with an ear for sound and an eye for unified conceptual design.

Previously.... in  Nu-Ology (2009) sci-fi models performed intergalactic and international operations. Models inhabited an imaginary mindscape, where not only dream and reality infused each other, but the fashions themselves operated within a brain-centre scenario of the imagination.  In the retro-future, ancient-manga-nature-robots at the nerve centre reached out to international fashion sensors - are these masked models for real? Salon Open Zusi’s  Nu collection and way of showing, asked questions, you – the viewer, the wearer - provide the answers.
At the same time, Rongen’s designs are handmade and retain a localised design sensibility and production. Each ‘autonomous’ t-shirt and outfit encapsulates a real or fantastic story that could provoke an exhibition or performance (or both?) of their own. As her motif global balloon design disappears into outer space it reappears and comes sharply into focus in the imagination of the viewer and materialised on an object as everyday as a t-shirt. Each piece a fragment of the story of a performance collection. 

Zusi Rongen’s new fashion performance installation draws inspiration from the natural, science and philosophy. She use landscape of the coast, flora and fauna, sea and rocks, as abstracted motifs within a range of prints on organic cottons. She photographs these natural elements and manipulates and collages the images to produce print patterns that contrast and interact with images from the urban landscape of east London. These images all reflect journeys made and heightened experiences of places and spaces.

The designs are not a traditional, nostalgic view of nature and landscape, the designs are modern and contemporary and the prints emphasise structure in nature, pattern in the organic. They are clothes with a story, a translation of picture memories

Imagine yourself wearing a painting, clothes as a painting, an everyday performance of the small, momentary but unique mind and memory of a captured moment. A spiritual process drawn from being in a place at a specific time with the emotional awareness of being part of it.

Each design and garment produced is a very limited edition and variations of fabric, print, pattern, cutting and shaping produce a unique piece, emphasising the range as fashion as part of contemporary art.


Imagine yourself travelling and see yourself being part of the landscape or wearing a experience, or being dressed up for  a particular experience 
fused with the landscape.