Gyarfas Olah

Born 1975 in Tusnad/Romania.

Gyarfas Olah studied textile arts and fashion design at the West University in Timisoara/Romania. In 2000 he received a scholarship of the University of Applied Arts in Budapest/Hungary. After his studies Gyarfas Olah worked as a fashion designer for Heretique and Wanguardia, Bucharest/Romania (2004). Since 2006 Gyarfas Olah has been part of the fashion label Rozalb de Mura that recently changed into the art and fashion collective Apparatus 22.

In 2006 Gyarfas Olah, Maria Farcas, Dragos Olea, Erika Olea und Ioana Nemes (1979–2011, R.I.P) initiated the fashion label Rozalb de Mura. For their work the group received the Kontakt. Erste Bank Fashion Award, Vienna/Austria (2006) and a research residency at the Swedish Visual Arts Fund’s international programme (IASPIS) in Stockholm/Sweden (2010). They participated in several festivals and exhibitions like The Drums of War Will Thunder Once Again that was presented at the Seoul Fashion Week, Seoul/Korea (2008) and ARRRGH! Monsters and Storytelling in Fashion at the Benaki Museum, Athens/Greece (May to August 2011).

In autumn 2010, during their IASPIS residency in Stockholm, the group started rethinking of their interests. As a result, they changed into an art and fashion collective named Apparatus 22. Apparatus 22 works in the art context with ideas and actions that will ignite the critical potential of clothing and fashion and in design/fashion contexts with projects that aim to find new ways to avoid fashion system’s biggest failures. In their quest for projects with greater consequences on fashion topics they are mixing fiction with reality, storytelling and critical approach, blurring the lines between genders and using knowledge and experiences from art, design, sociology, litterature and economics.