Two winters ago, a water pipe exploded at Tschabalala Self’s studio on an upper floor of an industrial building in New Haven, Connecticut. “It was like a biblical event!” she says, laughing as she points out where it happened one crisp morning this past fall. “Everything kind of got trashed, but none of my work got destroyed. All of my fabric and materials got drenched. Luckily they’re washable, so I just washed everything.” The things she didn’t wash she tossed out. “The space has been so much better since then. It was a baptism.”...