SARA BONFANTI: OUR MINIMUM DWELLING SPACE – DESI WEAR AT HOME AND AWAY (VIDEO)

On HOMInG seminar 51_21, last April, Sara Bonfanti presented findings of her fieldwork on the meanings and uses of salwar-kameez – the Punjabi suit – by combining fashion theory and social anthropology. Based on multisited ethnography, artwork and a digital survey, Sara considered the “sartorial biographies” of three Muslim women moved from South Asia to Europe. Caught in the seams of a globalized fashion market, diasporic subjects drape ambivalent aesthetics and ethics by wearing a salwar-kameez, as a means to inhabit their environs while they try to express and adjust their life designs on the move.