Benjamin Mengistu Navet


Off the Grid
Periode: 01.06—17.09.2023

Benjamin Mengistu Navet (°1994,) was born in Addis-Abeba, Ethiopia and grew up in France. Navet arri­ved in Belgium to stu­dy Fashion Design at La Cambre (Brussels) and Textile Design at KASK School of Arts (Ghent). Navigating bet­ween dif­fe­rent appro­a­ches of tex­ti­les and fas­hi­on, he pas­sed by Margiela’s knit­wear stu­dio in Paris, and was later selec­ted for the TaDA resi­d­en­cy in Switzerland, whe­re he was wor­king clo­se­ly with tex­ti­les indu­stries in order to devel­op new pro­jects. Afterwards, he retur­ned to Belgium to work on seve­r­al pro­jects bet­ween Brussels and Flanders as well as exhi­bi­ti­ons with Komplot, The Constant Now, and Ballon Rouge Gallery (invi­ted by Please Add Color) . He has col­la­bo­ra­ted with cho­re­o­grap­her Stanley Ollivier and most recent­ly with Swiss artist Axelle Stiefel for vorstellen.network on a spe­ci­fic pro­ject for the Sculpture Garden Biennale Geneva.


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Keen gallery ugowoazti Sculpture garden geneva vorstellent network 211115 TAD2102 4272 40cm Ballon rouge ugowoatzi min Tadaa ladina bischoff

Benjamin Mengistu Navet

The main focus of the wea­vings and prac­ti­ce of Benjamin Mengistu Navet is the cre­a­ti­on of a dia­lo­gue bet­ween indu­stry and crafts­mans­hip, in order to ques­ti­on the pro­duc­ti­on pro­cess of objects. Based on Navet’s research in post-colo­ni­al prac­ti­ces in the field of fas­hi­on and tex­ti­les, he cur­rent­ly inves­ti­ga­tes his own Ethiopian back­ground through pat­tern-making by com­bi­ning tra­di­ti­o­nal with indu­stri­al tech­ni­ques. He appro­a­ches his prac­ti­ce as a labo­ra­to­ry whe­re tex­ti­le and gar­ments enter in a dia­lo­gue or con­fron­ta­ti­on with other media and ima­ges. Whether it is hand­woven, or indu­stri­al­ly prin­ted, straight from the indu­stri­al wea­ving machi­ne, or reve­a­led by hand dyes, whe­ther it’s for a sce­no­grap­hy that reveals the colo­ni­al tra­jec­to­ry of a fabric, the Ahmaric alp­ha­bet, cros­sing per­so­nal tra­jec­to­ries from dias­po­ras with tex­ti­le tech­ni­ques, the­se embo­died nar­ra­ti­ves are at the cen­ter of his research-based practice.