Untamed Assemblies 1: Launch
Screening and Panel Discussion
13.03.2025
Join us on Thursday, 13th March, at 6.30pm for the launch of the Untamed Assemblies public programmes series, featuring a panel discussion and a screening of archival materials from the Untamed Fashion Assemblies (Riga, Latvia, 1990-1999).
Untamed Assemblies 1 marks the launch of Cell Project Space’s new research and public event series, exploring the intersection of visual art and fashion in newly independent 1990s ‘Eastern’ Europe and its artistic exchanges with the United Kingdom. The event will focus on the Untamed Fashion Assemblies, an extraordinary experimental festival that brought together fashion, visual arts, club culture, politics, and drag. Fashion designer Bruno Birmanis (Riga, Latvia), legendary organiser of the Assemblies, will be joined by two of its original participants: Guus Beumer, Founding Director (2013–2021) of Het Nieuwe Instituut and Temporary Fashion Museum (2015-2016), Rotterdam, and Phyllis Cohen, make-up artist, illustrator, and Founder of Face Lace, London.
This inaugural event celebrates the ecstatic transitional moment of the early 1990s through archival and documentary footage, examining the Assemblies’ reception in both UK and Latvian media. It will explore their non-commercial approach and broader cultural impact of joyous ethos of radical freedom and creativity, with a particular focus on the connections between London and Riga. This programme continues Cell’s engagement with experimental artistic and cultural practices emerging from ‘Eastern’ Europe, following the Queer Anti-Colonial Solidarity Fundraiser Performance Night (2023) and CEED Feminisms programmes (2023-24).
In the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet empire, the shared mood in newly independent, decolonised countries such as Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Georgia was marked by an ambivalent mix of euphoria and economic collapse. Against this backdrop, a singular early-90s phenomenon emerged – the Untamed Fashion Assemblies in Riga and, slightly later, the Avantgarde Fashion Assemblies in Tbilisi. These carnivalesque annual festivals presented an interdisciplinary flurry of experimental fashion, incorporating visual art, drag performance, political statements, and partying – erupting during rather than after the events' themselves.
For a brief moment in the 1990s, radical young fashion in the region captured the international imagination – particularly that of the United Kingdom. Iconic sculptor and jeweller Andrew Logan brought his performances to Riga and Tbilisi, along with BBC film crews. Designers Zandra Rhodes and Red or Dead’s Wayne Hemingway were among other notable participants, and in 1994, Paco Rabanne served as a jury member for the competition. A list of Central Saint Martins students in attendance suggests that Alexander McQueen may have witnessed the Assemblies firsthand.
The story of the Untamed Fashion Assemblies – its impact on contemporary art, social change, and queer discourse in the region, as well as its latent influence on non-commercial and experimental fashion internationally – has yet to be fully explored. Pioneering visual artists such as Eglė Rakauskaitė, who represented Lithuania at the 1999 Venice Biennale, presented wearable objects, while curator Raimundas Malašauskas, whose poetic, ephemeral methods contributed to what is now known as new institutionalism, modelled for designer Sandra Straukaitė at Vilnius' UFA-inspired Fashion Infection. Meanwhile, in Georgia, the Assemblies helped shape the ethos and aesthetics of ‘anti-fashion’ – most recently brought to the global stage by Georgian designer Demna Gvasalia, creative director of Balenciaga.
Untamed Assemblies 1 also marks the start of research into the Untamed Fashion Assemblies (Riga), Avantgarde Fashion Assemblies (Tbilisi), and broader cultural exchanges between 'Eastern' Europe and the United Kingdom at the intersection of art and fashion in the 1990s. If you participated in or contributed to these events, or hold archival material, please do not hesitate to get in touch: info [at] cellprojects [org].
Bruno Birmanis is a designer whose work spans alternative fashion, wearable art, environmental and interior design. He is the founder and organiser of the experimental festival Untamed Fashion Assemblies (1990-1999) and has held the position of director for Vilnius Fashion Week and Moscow Fashion Week. Birmanis has also contributed to notable exhibitions and events such as ‘We Don’t Do This’, MO Museum, Vilnius; ’13 Women I (Still) Haven’t Married’, Latvian National Museum of Art, Rīga; ‘Ballet. Beyond.’, Putti Gallery and Riga Central Station, Riga. Additionally, he co-created ‘The Post-Banalism Ball’ in 1988, the first alternative fashion performance in the former USSR.
Guus Beumer was the Founding Director of Het Nieuwe Instituut (2013–2021) in Rotterdam and Temporary Fashion Museum (2015-2016), Rotterdam. Earlier, he directed Marres in Maastricht and led the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI). Beumer also curated the Dutch Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2011.
Phyllis Cohen is a makeup artist, illustrator, and the founder of Face Lace. Her career spans several decades, during which she has collaborated with numerous iconic figures. Throughout the 1980s, she worked with renowned artists such as David Bowie, Annie Lennox, Tina Turner, and Janet Jackson. Her work appeared in prestigious publications like Vogue, Elle, and Vanity Fair. Her notable trompe-l'œil (optical illusion) makeup looks, producing three-dimensional effects on the skin, solidified her status as a pioneer in experimental makeup artistry.
Generously supported by the Cockayne Foundation, with additional support from the Foyle Foundation.
