Mari Cortez is a Brazilian designer, researcher and critical practitioner that has been based in the Netherlands since 2018. She researches fashion as a social phenomenon and explores togetherness through design. By experiencing a different context when moving to Europe, she realized that power structures formed in colonial times remain nowadays and play an important role in society. They frame how people and cultures are treated and explain how social inequality is formed. Cortez aims to exercise a horizontal and open dialogue about these complex topics, aiming to dissolve the process of otherness and bring people together. She has a BA in Design (Brazil) and an MA in Fashion Strategies (The Netherlands).
Marina Sasseron de Oliveira Cabral is a Brazilian creative, designer, researcher and critical fashion practitioner, interested in the potential of participatory practices, such as performance, for example, as a tool in processes of transformation that aim at unlearning oppressive embodied knowledge, internalized mainly by minority subjects. With extensive experience working as a fashion designer in São Paulo, Marina moved to the Netherlands to broaden her perspective of reality and deepen her theoretical knowledge. As a researcher, her multidisciplinary approach explores the micropolitical aspects of materiality, as well as the performativity of clothes and materials in different socio-cultural arrangements. She has a BA in Fashion Design (BR) and an MA in Fashion Strategy (NL).
Designer, artist, researcher and educator from Chile with Palestinian and French roots. Her interdisciplinary practice is based on the observation of sociopolitical phenomena from which through embodied practices she questions the power structures and the production of knowledge by using fashion as a relational and communication medium. Her interest in fashion lies in its intrinsic connection to both the individual and the social body. She has an educational background in clothing design [bachelor, Chile] and in fashion strategy [master, The Netherlands]. She is currently immersing herself as an insider and outsider to research the importance of collective practices, solidarity and hope as alternatives to resist neoliberal models.
