FUSIONABLE CHEONGSAM
WESSIELING, 2007

Fusionable Cheongsam is a project by WESSIELING focusing on the cheongsam and the hybridity. The work arising from this project is a series of installations exhibited in the Hong Kong Arts Centre in June 2007. This book is released in conjunction with the exhibition and documents the research and artwork for the project.

This project articulates the notion of hybridity as the formation of cultural objects and practices produced by histories under negotiation with power relations. A background of political chaos saw the emergence of the cheongsam, and the dress’ rise coincided with the political and social movements of Republican China. Amidst its denial by Communist China and its ignominious adaptation, media culture, fashion production, and global circulation and consumption ensure the cheongsam’s continued evolution. Mapping a series of dichotomous representations into one, the cheongsam keeps endlessly reproducing and multiplying. Its hybridity channels its production, re-production and consumption, rejuvenating its stylistic evolution along the way.

With a foreword by Dr Hazel Clark, Chair of the Department of Art and Design at Parsons The New School for Design, this book includes essays by Dr Christian Huck, Research Fellow, London College of Fashion at the University of the Arts London, and Dr WESSIELING investigating the cultural contexts of the cheongsam and contemporary mediations involved in realisation of this project. Accompanied with colourful photos, Fusionable Cheongsam offers a critique on the meanings and representation of the cheongsam.