WHEN SUBCULTURE BECOMES MAINSTREAM – A BALANCING ACT

According to sociologist Ulf Wuggenig a subculture initially develops by its members identifying with certain values and norms attributed to minority groups – this can be shared tastes in music, style preferences or by their “presenting a common front” to the outside world. Logically, the existence of a subculture is determined by it being different to the normative majority of society. So what happens when subcultures penetrate the mainstream? Ideally, barriers are broken down and space is created for a broader and more diverse audience. However, in the worst-case scenario the hype turns out to be a mere appropriation of certain style phenomena while safe spaces for marginalized groups of people disappear; in other words, playing with the mainstream remains a balancing act.

From February 29 onwards, with the exhibition THE CULTURE SCHIRN devoting itself to an equally rich subculture that has its roots in the Black community, and which has not only long since reached the mainstream but has also made it to the much-vaunted ivory tower of art, namely hip hop!

BETWEEN HIP-HOP, HAUTE COUTURE AND ART

One of the most famous examples of such a meteoric rise is Virgil Abloh. Back in 2013, he founded the successful luxury streetwear label Off-White and in 2018 showcased his debut collection as the first Afro-American artistic director for the long-standing Louis Vuitton couture brand. In 2019, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago devoted a retrospective to him and in 2020 he co-curated an auction at Sotheby’s. Sadly, he died unexpectedly in 2021 after a brief battle with cancer. The polymath from one of the Chicago burbs broke down barriers and paved the way for greater diversity in the previously exclusive bubbles of fashion, design and art. Surprise, surprise, these spheres are not only the preserve of those privileged people who were born in the bubble, but also those that do not fit into the hegemonial norm. Abloh, who through his love of DJing and graffiti already had strong roots in hip hop culture long before his collaboration with Kanye West, became a symbol for breaking into the White elite’s domain in the fashion world. He is comparable to Jay Z who wrote history as the first hip hop billionaire in the music industry. While in 2012 Karl Lagerfeld castigated jogging pants as beyond the pale, not least of all thanks to Abloh the tracksuit has long since been rehabilitated and become an it-piece in the high-fashion segment. This was more than obvious in Abloh’s final collection for Louis Vuitton, which was characterized by oversize styles and tracksuits and was accompanied on the runway by the music of Rapper Tyler, the Creator.

You could easily imagine that the people depicted in Monica Ikegwu’s paintings originated in the Off-White streetwear collections: in works such as “Open / Closed” (2021) they also pose in the fashion style that emerged from the Black Diaspora and has now become mainstream. Ikegwu is concerned about how her community is portrayed: She strongly resists representations in western art that border on exotification. To borrow the language of the hip hop culture you could also say that Ikegwu pays tribute to her community by respecting its members and showing them as self-confident people. She is keen to overhaul the Eurocentric, white canon of art history. It is a crunch issue that is also innate in Arthur Jafa’s work, albeit in a different manner. Before he achieved international renown as a visual artist Jafa worked as a video artist for the above-mentioned billionaire, Jay Z. In his art, Jafa concerns himself with the representation of the lifeworlds of suppressed minority groups and criticizes the racist ideology of white supremacy.