Bárbara Sánchez-Kane’s approach to creativity has always been holistic. Though she trained as a designer at Florence’s prestigious Polimoda school, her work has always skated between the boundaries of fashion and art, refusing to be boxed in or categorised (the fact that the designer uses both ‘he’ and ‘she’ pronouns is likely connected to this). It’s now 10 years since the Mexican designer graduated from Polimoda and founded his eponymous brand Sánchez-Kane, a label that, in the past, has explored the machismo embedded in Mexican culture, as well as the underexplored topic of female sexuality. These explorations were made via sculptural suits and Lucha Libre masks, but also objects and sculptures, which she coined as ‘objetos absurdos’. Back then, Sánchez-Kane presented her inspired collection in disparate settings – LA Fashion Week one month, and the Museo Experimental El Eco, a contemporary art gallery in Mexico City, the next. Today, that interdisciplinary approach remains.

“I never felt a strong separation between art and fashion,” Sánchez-Kane tells me. “If you turn off the lights, what remains is a silhouette. A garment can behave like a sculpture, and a sculpture can feel like something worn.” These musings are a product of Sánchez’s latest work, an exhibition called Coro de Soles Menores, or ‘Chorus of the Minor Suns’ in English. The exhibit takes place at CHERUBY, a Shanghai arts and culture centre that “operates at the intersection of art and fashion”, and is also where Sánchez-Kane completed a two-month residency before Soles Menores.

Inspired by a book on volcanoes by Clive Oppenheimer, the exhibition attempts to articulate “the desire to find new ways to ‘descend into hell’ and make sense of a ‘better place’, through our inner volcanoes: the minor suns.” The phrase ‘descend into hell’ is itself taken from the Apostles’ Creed, a Christian doctrine which taught that Christ descended to the underworld after death, to symbolise the passage of darkness through to rebirth. “I’m interested in tilting the body, literally and metaphorically, so it has to find new paths,” Sánchez-Kane tells us. “Maybe when the body changes its balance, other possibilities suddenly appear.”

In the conversation below, we catch up with Sánchez-Kane about the ideas behind Soles Menores, the restrictions of the current fashion system, and the separation between fashion and art.

Hey Bárbara! Thanks so much for agreeing to speak with us. First of all, if you were to give us a brief explanation of Coro de Soles Menores, how would you describe it?

Bárbara Sánchez-Kane: My work only really exists when it’s shared. Coro de Soles Menores comes from my time at CHERUBY. It was my first residency program and the first time I’ve truly worked outside my own studio. Eight years ago, before moving to Mexico City, I was afraid to leave my first studio – the place where Sánchez-Kane started – because I thought my creative process might dissolve if I stepped away from it. Now I think what we really need is to let life interrupt us. We cannot pretend to be isolated.

What was the spark of inspiration that led to creating Coro de Soles Menores?

Bárbara Sánchez-Kane: It’s a direct response to the residency. Specifically, I started reading a book on a flight to China by Clive Oppenheimer about volcanoes. How a single eruption can affect the entire planet, or how its consequences can be felt years later, even at the antipodes of where the eruption first occurred. I became interested in that idea of delayed collectivity. The invisible connections that keep resonating across time and distance.

Reading Fred Moten also helped shape the way I think about the project. ‘Listening to noise  means recognising that there is always a wild outside beyond the structures we inhabit – and that inhabit us.’

Can you tell me the meaning behind the translucent blazer with the calla lilies inside?

Bárbara Sánchez-Kane: Reading Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi helped me think about how we live surrounded by more information than we can possibly retain. After forgetting most of it, something remains, and sometimes that remainder becomes creativity. The exhibition comes from that condition: fragments, signals, and encounters that stay with you without fully explaining themselves. Sometimes it’s enough to see through a garden.

“Reading Helena Chávez Mac Gregor on Frida Kahlo made me think about how images carry historical tensions inside them” – Bárbara Sánchez-Kane

Another striking piece is the leather jacket with vases protruding from the shoulders – what was the idea behind this?

Bárbara Sánchez-Kane: I’m interested in tilting the body, literally and metaphorically, so it has to find new paths. Changing the balance forces the body to renegotiate how it moves and how it sees. Visiting a Chinese garden, I learned the idea of ‘one step, one view.’ Every shift in position reveals something different. Maybe when the body changes its balance, other possibilities suddenly appear.

There are also a number of crumpled shirts hanging from gold rails. Who are the faces on these shirts, and why did you want them there?

Bárbara Sánchez-Kane: They come from the Mexican 500 peso bill that went out of circulation in 2018 – Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. On the bill, Frida appears at a different scale than Diego. I expanded them so they occupy the same dimension. Reading Helena Chávez Mac Gregor on Frida Kahlo made me think about how images carry historical tensions inside them. I kept returning to André Breton’s description of Frida’s work as ‘a ribbon around a bomb.’

I was also struck by the near absence of physical money in China. Everything circulates digitally, which made me think about older forms of circulation, like the Silk Road and its historical circulation of materials, images and bodies between Asia and Mexico. 

You’re trained as a fashion designer and went to Polimoda; your work straddles the art and fashion worlds. Why do you prefer this particular method of showing your designs?

Bárbara Sánchez-Kane: Honestly, I didn’t even know what to study at first. I started in engineering because numbers felt intuitive – easier than memorising texts. Don’t ask me to do calculus now, though.

Fashion became a way of thinking spatially and materially. It allowed me to understand the body as something that can be constructed, shifted, and reoriented. I never felt a strong separation between art and fashion. If you turn off the lights, what remains is a silhouette. It could be bronze, or it could be fabric – the body holds the same form in space. A garment can behave like a sculpture, and a sculpture can feel like something worn.

Is there anything about the current fashion system that keeps you away from the traditional seasonal calendar?

Bárbara Sánchez-Kane: Being forced into a rigid calendar doesn’t fit my curiosity or my rhythm.

Are there any other mediums you’d be keen to try? 

Bárbara Sánchez-Kane: Works on paper.

Is there anything else you are working on next?

Bárbara Sánchez-Kane: I’ll be presenting Aguas Frescas at Performance Space New York to mark the 10-year anniversary of Sánchez-Kane. Aguas Frescas is an installation like a fountain of poetry, and is a collaboration between different artists, performers, and musicians. It is a space where different practices meet and translate into one another.