Abstract

The exhibition format, as both space and medium, has developed as a site for pragmatic, interdisciplinary experiments of the performative. The North-American fashion exhibition Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty (2011 and 2015) proved to be a significant case study of this cultural phenomenon materializing through curatorial and exhibition-making practices. At the intersection of a legacy of theatrical aesthetic and new museological and technological possibilities taking shape in the 2010s, the multi-layered blockbuster emerges from the tensions raised by its investment in the materiality of performance, its deep entrenchment in consumer culture, and its memento mori scheme. As a substantial entry point to the study of a museology of the performative, Savage Beauty is analysed throughout this thesis for its relation to the experience, as both subject matter, displayed “object” and product of consumption. I discuss the translation of one medium into another taking shape through the retrospective: the way in which the institution transposes the fashion show into the format of an exhibition. At once a response to the history of fashion curating, this thesis intends to examine the issues conveyed by the politics of embodiment in the fashion exhibition system via a focus on the specificities of Savage Beauty, observed through the lenses of the experiential, performativity, and theatricality.