Ll T-shirt for Documenta XI Kassel

date: 2002

Okwui Enwezor, artistic director of Documenta XI, 2002 in Kassel, organises a pitch for the design of the logo of this event. Droog is selected as one of six studios.

The keywords given by Enwezor are: Globalisation of modern art and the interdisciplinariness of artists. Droog invites Studio Gonnissen en Widdershoven (now: Thonik) to participate in this project.

Gonnissen en Widdershoven consider a T-shirt to be an omnipresent medium and propose to apply it as a logo.

Their proposal is a T-shirt, imprinted with two vertical stripes the number 11. It is to be distributed worldwide and its recipients should then send back photographs of themselves wearing the shirt. The pictures are to be used as house style items on book covers, brochures, banners and other items to provide the large art manifestation with graphic identity. This proposal is explained in a booklet, an image essay.

Enwezor’s first reaction is positive ‘An unexpected proposal. In this age of extreme violence it is good to focus on the body. That’s what I like about the concept of the T-shirt’. However, he finally chooses the entry of the Austrian designer Ecce Bonk.