Soif / Khatvong

“Soif/Khá” is a project focusing on gender inequality in Ho Chi Minh City by examining women’s daily work in the kitchen. In our project we want to encourage Vietnamese women to use the clothes they wear when driving on their scooters as a platform for public articulation of the hidden problem of gender inequality. 

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The project is based on an idea by Thi Que Chi Trinh, Ho Chi Minh City who is currently studying Social Design. She wanted to reflect on how change can be promoted. Our idea was born during a research trip to her hometown: while staying there, we met with a Vietnamese women’s association, and interviewed women of different ages and from different backgrounds while they were cooking for their families. Our project, inspired by their desires, was to set the conflicts of cooking into a new context: public space. We aim to empower women, motivating them to create an identity that overcomes their role within the family life, and reflects on their own self worth.

We aim to empower women, motivating them to create an identity that reflects on their own self worth.

We also wanted to create solidarity between women. Ho Chi Minh City has a great number of scooter-drivers, many of them women. To protect themselves from the sun they are covered in garments that while hiding their faces and bodies still make them identifiable as women by using colourful patterns, putting on long gloves, and wearing heels: “Soif/Khá” is the art-based, Vietnamese-French, fashion project inventing new symbols symbols which aim to encourage women to fight for equal rights.

Time

Summer 2016

Location

Ho Chi Minh City

Team

Cosima Terrasse

Thi Que Chi Trinh

in collaboration with Floor Kolen