The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is pleased to announce Fake Fashion 3, a newly commissioned performance by the New York-based art collective CFGNY, their first in a museum context.

Fake Fashion 3 brings together text, garments, and mobile set pieces to explore the concept of the "bootleg": unauthorized counterfeit garments linked with illegal production in Asia. Considered in the West as second-rate and fake, these associations lower bootlegs to an illicit status. Bootlegs in Asia have developed in tandem with the conditions in which they are produced, shedding some of their aspirational qualities and enabling truly creative gestures in their production. Exploring markets in Vietnam or perusing the online stores of TaoBao, unexpected graphic and textual combinations weave together their own poetic language.

As the idea of a bootleg in the West is so heavily connected with notions of being Asian, CFGNY builds its ongoing dialogue around race and value through these intersecting associations.

Looking at the term bootleg more broadly, in English "bootleg" also is used to describe something that is haphazard or unruly. Often, this descriptor is used when an object is being intentionally misused to accomplish a task that it wasn't initially designed to do. CFGNY engages with this notion by scrambling the logic of the theater's seating arrangement, orienting audience members in various directions. Movable wall and set pieces are arranged around the space during the performance creating differing lines of sight, which makes a complete view of the performance impossible. As an Asian-American collective presenting a collection of its own bootlegged European garments within a European cultural institution, CFGNY flouts traditional notions of both trade routes and artistic veneration.