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Waves and Archives' manifesto comes in a form of a “statement of rights,” revised and dated when modified.

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Waves and Archives endeavors to endorse fashion as one of art's mediums in academic,  institutional, and art world settings. Waves and Archives aspires to nurture an environment where fashion artists can operate as contemporary artists, by exhibiting fashion, writing about fashion, and providing access to the existing knowledge that can be applied to the studying of fashion as art.

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August 11, 2021 : Statement of Rights

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  1. The right of fashion to be acknowledged as one of art’s mediums.

  2. The right for fashion artists to participate in the art world’s academic and institutional establishments on terms equal in their rigor, and analogous in their intent, to those applied to contemporary artists working in widely accepted art mediums.

  3. The right for academics, theorists, and art historians to pursue the study of fashion as their subject of critical investigation, free of prejudice and pressure, and if merited- furnished with the unbiased support of their instructors, advisors, and colleagues.

  4. The right to submit writing on fashion to publications focused on art as their subject expecting unbiased review and fair editorial process.

  5. The right for artists working in the medium of fashion to participate in group exhibitions comprising works by artists working in hitherto commonly accepted contemporary art mediums.

  6. The right for fashion artworks to be evaluated as art, rather than as merely intersecting or collaborating with art.

  7. The right of fashion artists to be represented by contemporary art galleries on equivalent terms to those applied to the representation of artists operating in hitherto more widely accepted contemporary art mediums.

  8. The right for artworks in the medium of fashion to be examined in critical terms equivalent to those applied to other artworks produced in widely accepted contemporary art mediums.

  9. The right for fashion artworks to be actively engaged in the discourses establishing the language that will continue to describe their medium.

  10. The right for fashion artworks to not be reduced to the process of their making (whether it be labor, material, tradition or tools) as the sole narrative of their artistic worth, unless the conceptual bases of the artworks actively engage these processes in the making of their art’s meaning.

  11. The right for fashion artworks to become subject of art museum exhibitions without:
    \ being contextualized by artworks in more widely accepted art mediums authenticating or justifying the fashion art object’s place in said exhibition;
    \ the application of curatorial decisions (from wall texts, contextual visualizations, to exhibition themes or catalogs) otherwise completely unacceptable and demeaning to the exhibiting of contemporary art.

  12. The right for fashion artworks to remain free of prejudice as related to their having a function when evaluated as works of art.

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