Tag: ib kamara

  • Mowalola Ogunlesi: paying homage to Nigerian psychedelic rock through fashion

    Tight-fitting leather pants and jackets, accessorized with headlights, futuristic visors and car logos. This is the work of young designer Mowalola Ogunlesi who has grabbed the attention of fashion critics globally with the collection she put together for her grad show at Central Saint Martins.

    Being surrounded by the fashion world from a young age, with both of her parents being designers in Nigeria, Mowalola has always found the transformations that fabrics can go through enchanting. “I would go watch [my parents] work, and even try to create things myself as a child,” Mowalola expressed while reflecting back on how she knew fashion was what she wanted to invest in creatively.

    “I am playing on the relationship between African standards of male sexuality, bold energy and explosive prints,” Mowalola expressed when asked about her designs. Embracing Pan-Africanism, and its emphasis on cultural awareness and pride, her designs covert fabrics into a celebration of Nigerian heritage, a stylistic approach which is central to how she is building the identity for her label, Mowalola.

    Nigerian psychedelic rock from the ’70s and ’80s, the main source of inspiration for her grad show collection, quite fittingly, was also influenced by the Nigerian social landscape. This comes across in the songs by some of Mowalola’s heroes, Fela Kuti, Steve Monite, The Funkeez and Ofege. Explaining that she is “carving out [her] own futuristic signature” while paying homage to these artists and rock movement they pioneered, the collection is a direct translation of the wild guitar riffs and sweaty club scenes that she admires. “The collection is all about the celebration of the black African male – his culture, his sexuality and his desires,” Mowalola explains.

    In continuing with the powerful sonic energies that inspired the collection, the images for the lookbook created in collaboration with stylist Ib Kamara and photographer Ruth Ossai comes across as if vicariously taken in the ’80s, with the spirit of Fela Kuti from the past and future providing artistic direction.

    Mowalola will be taking her talents from the runway to a music video that she will be working on in Nigeria in the Summer.

    To keep up with her work check her out on Instagram.

     

  • Kristin-Lee Moolman: creating a sublime future with imagery that challenges traditional perceptions of sexuality

    Kristen-Lee Moolman’s work is based in a utopian Africa; a fictional mythology is shaped. Fantastic characters inhabit her colorful world and their stories are narrated with her lens. In her world segregation and sexuality are explored.

    As female South African photographer known for her work that blurs the lines between documentary photography and fashion photography, Kristen-Lee sometimes explores ideas relating to effeminacy. Featured in her constructed utopia are popular faces amongst the South African creative scene such as Joe Turpin, Desire Marea, Nicci Saint Bruce and Fela Gucci to name a few.

    Moolman grew up in what she describes as a backwards-Afrikaans town before the end of apartheid in the Karoo region. She feels as though she still has some political confusion as a result of this. In her constructed world that she presents to her viewer in the form of photographs, she does not strive to make political commentary.

    In 2016 she worked with London stylist, Ibrahim Kamara during his Johannesburg residency on the exhibition 2026. More recently she was the photographer for HBA’s SS17 lookbook.  Moolman’s work has a very defined feeling, and her images cannot be easily mistaken for that of any other photographer.

    An ever-present element in her work is sunshine that fades out the backdrops of her portraits and transforms the costumes of her models to surreal outfits. This characteristic is emphasized by her use of bland and unremarkable locations as the setting for her shoots.

    Her subjects can be seen portrayed outside of car washes and garages, spread out on satin-sheeted beds or reclining on plastic upholstered sofas. Her backdrops and choice of styling can be said to be campy and kitsch yet it retains refinement in the way that her characters are posed.

    Her work, even though refined keeps an element of grime and edge, that is maintained by her choice of subject matter which consists of musicians, dancers, actors and artists.

    Moolman who is not only a photographer but also a video artist, created images in collaboration with Kamara for 2026 that is described in an interview with Dazed as confrontational. This exhibition that was turned into a book examines the fragile relationship between the body of the black African male and his sexuality, masculinity and men’s fashion. The exhibition, now in hard copy, showcases to its viewer the manner in which clothes can be utilized to establish identity.

    Kristin is a member of the New Africa movement consisting of artists from Africa and the diaspora. The aim of New Africa is to create an innovative aesthetic exploring themes surrounding identity and belonging.

    In speaking about her own work Moolman says: “The one thing I will never do is disempower a person in my imagery, I always try to empower people. I will never try to make them look like any stereotype that people may have about us here”.

    Her images give its viewer awareness of her world constructed with subjects that are friends or people she met through social media. Obstructing conservative viewpoints and traditional cultural stereotypes held in South Africa, her subjects demonstrate multifaceted sexual and gender identities.

    Moolman was listed as part of Dazed 100 photographers to look out for. She breaks the restrictive way that femininity and masculinity are defined with imagery that pushes boundaries. Her non-binary subjects are carefully curated in stale landscapes. Everyday imagery is pushed into the surreal with her use of a sun soaked pastel aesthetic. In her world she contests uniformity by striving to make what is regarded as unusual the norm.

  • Ib Kamara’s portraits of Black possibility

    I met Ib Kamara on a hot morning. I was still in my post Saturday jol-haze when I introduced myself to the stylist who I had previously only known from his portraits.  Like apparitions from the digital spheres leaping straight out of his Instagram, I would see him and his team, returning from their morning shoot to pick me up to do the interview.

    Squeezed between 3 slender stoic young men, one in a ladies hat which was fitting considering all the Sunday services happening around us. Sitting between them at the back of the car was like being perched within his Instagram posts. I got to rub shoulders with the artist and his team. I got to meet the digital deities in the flesh.

    By looking at his work one can already see a creative dialogue happening between him and South African art collective FAKA  whose images blur the simple divide between the masculine and feminine. He tells me that he’s good friends with and has collaborated with them. They suggested that he come to Johannesburg. From his Instagram page alone one already sees a shared experience, a collective whose quest is to shape how we reconstruct ourselves and how we want to be seen as people from the African continent.

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    Ib Kamara can best be described as an artist whose medium is the body. His work as a stylist has garnered him well deserved praise because of his ability to re-politicize a career that can too easily be dismissed as frivolous and obsessed with the outward appearance. Through clothing he is able to examine what it means to be black, a man, deconstructing our notions that there are singular notions of such.

    Yet before Ib began his career in the creative arts he had studied the sciences with the intention of becoming a doctor. “I was very much into the experiments and had I continued I would have probably become a researcher.”. His parents had encouraged him to enter into the sciences but he wasn’t happy with this choice. “I wanted to be a creative”.

    He would then leave university and study art. Yet his love of experimentation would continue into his passion for art. Coming from sciences which is centred on the body, he would continue this focus through styling.

    52C4CCD9-9C20-41A8-AB7F-66C58039BEA8“I look at people a lot. I look at how people look. How they hold themselves. It could be two guys on the road, leaning. That’s how I draw inspiration. I’m constantly sketching and do my research by reading a lot, but my main source is from ‘the everyday’. It is here that everything rushes to you all at once.”

    For him South Africans go the extra mile when they dress, just like the rest of Africa and her diaspora. He talks about his recent travels to Freetown, Sierra Leone where he was born. Ib would stop people and tell them they are amazing. “For them it’s just every day but for me it’s fucking amazing”.

    “Style is attitude, character, it’s who you want to be.” He works by first looking at his model’s style, and then looks at his model’s the clothes. For him style goes beyond the clothes. “It is a man smoking his cigar. It means living with your own world.”

    Ib interned with the legendary stylist and model Barry Kamen, who became a major influence on his work and his mentor.

    “I would watch Barry when he picked up his cup with his rings.  He embodies a stylish person.  He had so much detail in everything he did, even in the lining of his pants. He was a Father figure to me. He was the greatest living stylist of the time. He was such a humble person in the world yet he brought such grace and art to style.”

    It was through Barry that Ib learned to style the human body.  His personal style is laid back and minimal unlike his mentor. For him however it’s the essence not the amount you put on.

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    “Styling is performance as a moving image. It’s a moving art piece that’s constantly adapting.”

    His Instagram page reflects this spirit. “There is an energy I want to portray here where anything goes. I want to push ideas that I was afraid to do as a child. Most kids grow up and loose their fantasies. I continue the fantasy through my Instagram feed. Here I am talking with myself about my ideas and fantasies.  This is what I want to portray, a ‘boy on a guy on a bike with his butt out’.

    His Instagram page shows the image of the care free black man who embraces the feminine. This heroine is not afraid to embrace a masculinity on his own terms. At times unafraid to be sexy for the camera, with sensual shots in stockings, silk gloves and unafraid to let his pants fall to reveal his love of lace panties.

    This is a man who is also not afraid to be vulnerable. His nakedness is not a symptom of his lack of clothes but in how the viewer is being allowed access to a private self.  This self is one in which he decides how he shall be seen by others.  He rejects the standards of how black men are supposed to be seen as the direct opposite to the female form. For him such boundaries do not exist within his own imagination.

    “These are the characters in my head that I wasn’t allowed to be. Always being told to be a man, I wanted to push and change ideas of how a black man should be, which for me is problematic. I’m against a single narrative on how black people should behave and look. These were never were my things.”

    With his portraits he gives a platform to bodies whose existence are ignored in the every day. His Instagram is a platform of what is possible. Where form can follow fantasy.

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