The After Library blends collective reading therapy with design and the wear of clothing. It is a tiny library of clothes and books produced and purchased for the purposes of being worn and being read. For its pilot iteration, the After Library presented its first seven garments in collaboration with Thandi Gamedze, Tlotliso Skefu, Kamva Matuis, Abri de Swardt, Abigail Dawson, Nombuso Mathibela and Max Thesen Law, and worn by many more. 

The process goes like this: Each garment is conceptualised and designed by me, Thulile Gamedze, in response to a text chosen by a collaborator. Through a speculative reading and mapping process, the garments, which most often use at least some worn and secondhand fabrics, emerge as demonstrations of, or companions to ideas in the text. In turn, the collaborator becomes a kind of co-guardian of their corresponding garment, which goes on to live as a library 'book', to be loaned out with its parent text. The growing archive of wearers and wear of the library books facilitates a kind of distant but 'touched' collectivity amongst readers, insisting that embodiment and livedness are central to how we receive text.  

For its first iteration, the library responded to a collection of seven texts, chosen for their importance to the Southern African context, by seven collaborators. 

While it is impossible to determine exactly how a wearer’s experience causes wear to a garment, the proposition is simple: The wear of a garment, together with the wear of a text, through reading, must soften both. The softening, as a result of wearing and reading by different bodies/ formations, is non-singular—every reader-wearer erodes the fabric and the text with their own flair, collectivising the burdens of reading and the weariness of daily life. 

A portfolio below (and a website forthcoming)...