WACKIE JU 'S8S' SENSORY FASHION EXHIBITION
TUE 24 – FRI 27 FEBRUARY
EXHIBITION
S8S is a 2026 sensory-fashion exhibition by Wackie Ju. The exhibition traces the evolution of the label’s first two couture collections within the Self-Save trilogy—Wackie Ju 001: Summer Fade and Wackie Ju 002: Saviour—originally presented at Australian Fashion Week. Expanding beyond the runway, S8S transforms couture into a spatial narrative, featuring garments on mannequins and suspended installations alongside graphic and object-based works. The exhibition unfolds as a multi-sensory journey, activated through an original soundtrack by Sha 芝麻 Zhi Ma and custom scent and sculptures by Jesse Wakenshaw.
Structured in two chapters, S8S presents a metaphoric timeline shaped by paradox: a cyclical movement of self-healing that oscillates between past and future, origin and aftermath. What appears as progression is unsettled by a deeper inquiry into survival—questioning the erosion of humanity and empathy within systems where innocence becomes impossible to retain.
Chapter I: Eden Lost — Conflict of Predestination and Free Will
A garden of gods and monsters emerges. Surreal organisms descend upon mythological bodies; garments hang suspended and freely draped in Renaissance-like formations. Drawing from John Milton’s meditation on disobedience, mortality, and woe, Eden Lost reflects on desire as both creation and ruin. Lustful fruit drips from naked forms, composing a visual poetry of inevitable decay—desires powerful enough to move mountains and seas, yet destined to be condemned, renamed as sin.
Chapter II: Martyr’s Concrete Jungle — Preservation
The landscape collapses into a modern city apocalypse. Mannequins pile upon mannequins—alive, inert, waiting. A forest of mannequins occupies the space, surrounded by arrows pointing nowhere and everywhere at once. The audience observes from a third-person, laboratory-like perspective, witnessing a forensic scene of endurance and sacrifice. Hope lingers in the promise of salvation, yet preservation demands surrender. Someone must fall for the light to rise.
The journey concludes in a cosmic collision, where mannequin formations symbolise humanity’s infinite approach toward divinity through the liberation of free will.
Custom scent sculptures, designed in collaboration with Jesse Wakenshaw, and evolving ambient soundscapes composed by Sha 芝麻 Zhi Ma, intersect throughout the exhibition—guiding audiences through an immersive meditation on heartbreak, survival, and becoming.
Altar Space, 432 Queen St, Melbourne VIC 3000
Free event. No bookings required.
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Opening ceremony:
Tue 24 February / 7:00pm-10:00pmExhibition:
Wed 25 & Thu 26 February / 10:00am - 6:00pm
Fri 27 February / 10:00am - 3:00pm
S8S After Party:
Fri 27 February / 9:00pm - 3:00am -
Accessible for wheelchair users
Quiet space available on premises -
Wackie Ju
pr@wackieju.com -
Wackie Ju is a multidisciplinary fashion-oriented art label founded by Chinese-born, Australia-based fashion practitioner and creative director Jackie Wu, graduated from RMIT University in 2019. Operating across clothing, performance, installation, film, publication, and visual execution, Wackie Ju functions as an evolving practice rather than a fixed aesthetic—using fashion as a narrative, allegorical, and philosophical medium.
Rooted in Wu’s upbringing in China and their lived experience as a queer trans migrant in Australia, Wackie Ju draws from personal observation while extending beyond autobiography into broader sociological, historical, and postmodern critique. The label constructs immersive worlds that act as both witness and sanctuary—spaces where contradiction, vulnerability, irony, and spectacle coexist without hierarchy or judgment.
Engaging with themes of identity, power, emotional capitalism, and cultural mythology, Wackie Ju communicates through metaphor rather than instruction. Humour and theatricality are used to challenge performative heroism, social norms, and systems of oppression, allowing audiences to interpret meaning through reflection rather than didactic messaging. Chinese philosophy underpins the practice conceptually, informing a poetic yet political approach to materiality, symbolism, and process.
Stylistically, Wackie Ju produces a hybrid fashion language that merges hyper streetwear and early-millennium references with technologically influenced aesthetics and traditional atelier techniques. Craft and experimentation are held in tension, reinforcing the label’s non-binary ethos and resistance to fixed definitions of gender, form, or wearability.
Wackie Ju has presented collections at Australian Fashion Week 2023-2024, including Summer Fade and Saviour. In December 2024, Jackie Wu designed the custom couture gown Flower Obsession for Julia Fox, worn at the opening of the Yayoi Kusama exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria.