Here is an interesting article about the notion of "cultural appropriation" in art and fashion involving my 2 big inspirations Jean Paul Gaultier & Kent Monkman.
“You can’t police how artists draw influence from the world,” he says, “but you can create awareness about what’s cool and what’s not and how to collaborate and engage each other in a respectful way.” It is possible to “educate and develop sensitivity around cultural appropriation versus mutual exchange.” Monkman clarifies the power imbalance at the painful root of appropriation. “When you have a dominant culture taking from a marginalized one, that’s where you run into problems,” he says. “Indigenous people have had more than their fashion stolen. They have had land, language, children—every aspect of their life and culture—taken from them. So there’s a lot of sensitivity when things are removed from their original context. People find that traumatizing; it triggers a lot of reactions that relate to these other thefts.”
