Africa Fashion Salon: First Five with Christine Checinska and Yomi Sode  

Remember the book that changed your life? The inspirational figure that opened your eyes? The song you’ll never forget? Now pick two books, two tracks and one person that defines you and you’ve got your first five.

First Five will explore Christine’s curatorial thinking behind the Africa Fashion exhibition and delve into the influences that have shaped the creative vision for the V&A’s first exhibition dedicated to the African fashion scene.

Featuring music from DJ Rare Treat

The Africa Fashion Salon series is part of the Young People’s Programme for 16–26-year-olds to engage in topical discussion relating to the Africa Fashion exhibition. Every third Friday of the month between October- February (the salon series will not take place in December) a salon will take place at the museum, that will explore the themes and approaches within the exhibition content.

Africa Fashion salons are hosted by poet and writer Yomi Sode.

This event is free and non-ticketed, please arrive early to avoid disappointment. Please note the location has changed and this event will take place in the Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre at the V&A South Kensington, entry is through the Silver Galleries on Level 2.

Dr Christine Checinska is the V&A’s inaugural Senior Curator of African and Diaspora Textiles and Fashion, and Lead Curator of the Africa Fashion exhibition, July 2022 – April 2023.
Prior to joining the V&A, Christine worked as a womenswear designer, academic, artist and curator. Her creative practice and research explore the relationship between cloth, culture and race. Christine’s recent exhibitions include an intervention for Makers Eye: Stories of Craft, July-October 2021, Crafts Council Gallery, and Folded Life February 2021, Johanne Jacobs Museum, Zurich, Switzerland. She is a co-editor of the forthcoming Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of World Textiles, Volume 4. Her recent publications include ‘Spinning a Yarn of One’s Own’ in A Companion to Textile Culture, Jennifer Harris (ed.) 2020, and ‘Re-Fashioning African Diasporic Masculinities’ in Fashion and Postcolonial Critique, Elke Gaugele and Monica Titton (eds.), 2019. In 2016 she delivered the TedxTalk Disobedient Dress: Fashion as Everyday Activism.
In industry for over thirty years, Christine has created womenswear collections for iconic British brands such as Margaret Howell, where she was a Senior Designer, during the late 1990s.

Rare Treat , DJ/Producer & Artist, brings you the future of eclectic selections from Diaspora across the globe. From Jazz to Jungle, her inclusive sound gets the people moving and raises vibrations. Exploring the depths of Afro-Electronic dance music, this DJ and sonic practitioner is changing the narrative in London, UK and across Africa.

Yomi Sode is an award-winning Nigerian British writer. He is a recipient of the Jerwood Compton Poetry fellowship 2019 and was shortlisted for The Brunel International African Poetry Prize 2021. Yomi has been published in magazines such as The Poetry Review, Rialto Magazine, Bath Magg and Magma. He is a performer, facilitator, a member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen and a Complete Works Alumni. His debut poetry collection, Manorism will be published in 2022 by Penguin Press.