Clothing as Interface: Cross Cultural Muslim Identity

This video is a representation of the work Annet did in 2010 as an artist in residence at Willem de Kooning Academie in The Netherlands, where she worked on a collaborative project with Muslim women in Rotterdam and Leiden. These "Sewing and Handicrafts Sessions" opened up extensive dialogues on the diverse views of fashion, politics, faith, beauty, modesty, and cultural diversity held by the Dutch Muslims. In these collaborative sessions, Couwenberg discovered an effective setting for discussions about cultural displacement, relational aesthetics and influenced her other works.

Clothing as Interface: Portrait #1-4

In this 2010 video produced at the Gyeonggi Creation Center an intercultural interface materialized when the traditional Korean Hanbok merges with the Dutch ruffled collar worm by a traditional Pansori singer. These slow moving images based on 17th century paintings fuses very deliberately my own heritage and background with my most immediate environment creating a hybridized version of self. Korea and the Netherlands share a history that goes back centuries. In the mid 17th century Hamel was shipwrecked at the Southern coast and in 1627 Jan Weltevree was left stranded near Busan. The presence of both left traces on the local culture, and the writings of Hamel gave the Dutch a firsthand account of Korea.