Tag: memories

Prince Gyasi – instilling hope through imagery

Ghanaian photographer Prince Gyasi likes to describe himself as an artistic vessel who uses imagery to express how he feels, and to share what he cares about. Primarily producing portraits and documentary photography, his work creates a collage of his city and the people who live in it. Playing with colour, shadow and composition, he has developed a style that beautifully captures planned and candid moments. With Instagram operating as an online gallery and portfolio for his work, he is able to curate the collective visual narrative for his photography, pushing against the fetishized and problematic representations of African cities by outside photographers.

Reflecting on his portraiture, Prince expressed in an interview with Sukeban Magazine that, “Portraits are part of human history…Portraits go way back; it helped people keep track of growth, express creativity and record memories. I believe portraits are important in our generation; it helps you communicate your emotions to others just by the way you look. As a photographer when you’re taking portraits you’ve got to be the mirror! People have to look at their portraits and say I feel dull today, I’m happy today, or I feel I’m really pretty or fine. It helps people grow and tackle their day to day issues with hope.”

His most recent project continues with the idea of instilling hope in people. Prince co-founded Boxed Kids with his partner Kuukua. This nonprofit project aims to help creative children in Jamestown with getting access to education. The name “Boxed Kids” refers to the fact that many of the children Prince came across in the small fishing district were in places and situations that are difficult to come out of without any assistance. Inspired by an event that his mother organised to help underprivileged children, his aim was to go further by helping them to develop their creative talents through education.

The initial plan was to launch a campaign that offered direct access to school, but with this own limited means this was not an option. Working within his own creative practice, Prince took photographs of the city, some of the children and the conditions in which some people live, and shared this on Instagram. Titled ‘Boxed Kids: Accra, Ghana’, this work received an increasing number of likes and shares, and this response encouraged him to set up a gofundme page for some of the children he has gotten to know, with the hope that this will assist with the initial goal.

15 August 2018
Artist Wanja Kimani’s interrogations of private and public power

Kenyan-born artist Wanja Kimani has a visual practice that strings together stories and visual histories which comment on the idea of home, displacement, trauma, memories and imaginations.

While imposing elements of her own life in public spaces, she occupies the positions of both narrator and character. This is evident in the various media she uses to construct her work, including installation, performances, text, film, textiles and sound.

One of her recent works Expectations, a collaboration with Annabel McCourt, is a performance that was presented at Dak’Art 2018 – Biennale of Contemporary African Art. It was performed in response to Annabel McCourt’s Electric Fence. The work dives into the complexities surrounding borders, immigration, race, as well as private and public power, and how these forms of power are constructed. These larger themes are interwoven with explorations of mortality as well as personal and physical boundaries.

In the video of the performance online, the first few seconds create the impression of eyes opening after a long sleep, with shots of lights hanging from the ceiling and wire fencing coming in and out of focus. The voice of the narrator recalls memories from a childhood, presumably the childhood of the character (played by Kimani) that appears on screen. As the narrator goes on to explain how walls will come separate the children mentioned in the recollection of memories, the viewer sees Kimani maneuvering between wire fences and throwing rocks and bricks on top of each other, as if intending to build a wall or to examine what remains of the structure these bricks once constituted.

The poetic narration speaks of silencing, leaving home, crossing borders, and the traumas that accompany this. The interaction between the words and what the viewer sees create a heaviness, the relevance of which becomes apparent as the story of Charles Wootton is told. The narrator shares how Wootton has died as a result of a racially motivated crime in Liverpool in 1919. He was thrown into the water at Kings Dock, and as he swam, trying to lift himself out of the water, he was pelted by bricks until he sank. Kimani writes his name on a blackboard during the performance. She then goes on to write down the names of many other victims of hate crimes. In this way the victims are mourned and celebrated at the same time.

21 June 2018
Photographer Juliana Kasumu // the image as a device for educating

British-Nigerian photographer Juliana Kasumu combines cultural research and imagery to critically engage with concepts related to Africa and its diaspora, Black identity, and her own identity as a British-Nigerian woman of colour. Through her photographs she takes on the role of an educator, presenting cultural histories that she was not taught or did not have access to while growing up.

The policing of Black women’s hair and sexuality have been strong conceptual foundations for her work, accompanied by personal memories. The series ‘Irun Kiko’ with its visual potency shares with viewers the symbolism within African hairstyles. The title refers to the Nigerian method for hair threading, originating with the Yoruba. This project looks into the ways in which West African women conform or rebel against European beauty standards. It also intends to inform viewers of the history behind these hairstyles, which are often taken out of their cultural context, alienating them from what gives them significance.

As a continuation from ‘Irun Kiko‘, Kasumu released her series ‘From Moussor to Tignon‘ which shares the value ascribed to various forms of head wraps. At a deeper level she unpacks how they can be intimately connected to personal identity, linking status, class, and culture. Kasumu’s photographs reflect her narration of the origins of this global phenomena, piecing together the bridge between traditional culture and contemporary fashion.

Check out her website to see how her latest project ‘#hairdiaries‘ unfolds.

15 May 2018
‘Embroidery For A Long Song’ // merging the traditional and the modern in a neon-inspired meditation on female energy

‘I rise, I run. I even try dancing’ – these are the first words one hears after being greeted by the music from ‘Khaleeji’ (the ten piece band of folk singers) in the opening scene of ‘Embroidery For A Long Song‘. This short film is a neon-inspired meditation on female energy, and it creates a bridge between the modern and traditional by examining the histories of the Gulf region through music, fashion and poetry.

Filmmaker Amirah Tajdin has always been fascinated by the connection between fashion and film. With designer Faissal El-Malak‘s concept for ‘Embroidery For A Long Song’ she was finally able to explore this. A few months before Faissal asked Amirah to get on board with the film, she had created a fashion film for his Spring/Summer 18 collection. They had been friends for a while, but while working on the fashion film they discovered a new kind of creative synergy. When Faissal was approached by the W Hotels and Mixcloud team a few months later to curate the Dubai edition of their Future Rising event he automatically thought of making a second film with Amirah.

Faissal was given the broad brief to combine music with ideas about the future and a wonderland. These elements came together in his mind through nostalgic memories of the traditional music shows and concerts he used to watch on tv while growing up in the Gulf. “The sets of these shows were oddly futuristic; they created something very interesting visually where the tradition was respected and preserved within an ultra-modern context. It was sort of a wonderland where technology and an abundance of LED lights created a space to express one’s self fully. This was not a foreign concept to the way we live our daily life in a region that has seen exponential growth and has embraced very quickly modern and futuristic architecture as a norm, but that still hangs on very strongly to tradition, most notably in the way most people still wear traditional garments on a daily basis.”

With these memories and his desire to further his knowledge about women who play traditional music, Faissal began to ask around about this practice. He was also influenced by the words and pseudonyms used by millennials who revived the tradition of spoken word poetry through platforms such as Flickr and MySpace. These pseudonyms – ‘Eye of the Gazelle’, ‘Daughter of the falcon’ and ‘The one with the khol lined eyes’ – are interpreted visually through the animated illustrations that appear at particular moments in the film. “The expression of traditional music is in itself a collaboration between sung poems, the traditional garments, beats and dances coming together to create a feast for the senses,” Faissal explained. The connection between poetry, fashion and music is intimately displayed in how the film unfolds.

At the core of Faissal’s approach to fashion is his appreciation and celebration of Middle Eastern textiles and motifs, designing women’s ready-to-wear garments that offer combine the traditional and the modern. There is a parallel display of this in the film. A string of symbolic gestures echo this, such as the ironing and incensing of the main character’s hair and her dancing in the hall on her own. These traditional references are juxtaposed against the futuristic elements of the W Hotel hallways and neon lights. Trippy, distorted sonic encounters are merged with the instruments and chanting by Khaleeji. A poem is used as a device to narrate the film, inviting viewers into the mind of the main character.

This film is a loud celebration and a quiet reflection all at once. It offers itself as a compilation of memories presented in a way that excites sight and sound.

View the full film below.

11 May 2018
Meghan Daniels – The Photographer capturing honest emotion through the people closest to her

Candid intimacy. Grit. Snapshots of personal memories. Longing. These are the descriptions that come to mind when looking at the photographic repertoire of Meghan Daniels.

Meghan Daniels is a Capetonian photographer whose work falls largely under the wing of documentary photography. Regarding her camera as an extension of herself, Meghan does not view what she photographs as subject matter, but instead a compilation of experiences taking the tangible shape of a photograph. “Basically, I guess I don’t care too much for photography but rather a sense of what I interpret, to be honest,” she expresses in an interview with DEAD TOWN zine.

Meghan’s photographic practice began as a visual diary of sorts as she is drawn to capturing those closest to her – herself, friends, family, as well as memory inducing spaces. She articulates further that her visual diary acts as a way of capturing her feelings which touch on themes related to sexuality, gender issues, relationships, intimacy, love, pain, mental health and recovery. She sees photography as a mirror of herself and the world around her. “When people ask what I do, it’s difficult to say I’m a ‘photographer’ and that I ‘photograph’.”

Photography has acted as a medium to facilitate processing the more difficult aspects of life for her. In her personal projects, Meghan captures moments as they unfold with the passing of time. In documentary projects her approach is grounded in research, participatory research methods which including the person/persons the project are centred around, as well as self-reflexivity which plays an integral function. Her commercial practice foregrounds certain visual signifiers that are a trademark of her eye, namely honesty, vulnerability, intimacy and grittiness.

Meghan works as a photographer and cinematographer in a professional capacity. Her go-to camera arsenals are her Contax point and shoot as well as her medium format Mamiya. She is never devoid of inspiration. She finds it in the work of fellow South African creatives, areas seen while driving and the small details in life such as broken, flickering light bulbs just to name a few. But as is the case with most artists, feelings of melancholy also lend inspiration – trauma, heartbreak and so forth. Meghan often uses her practice to heal her own pain.

Images of honesty and true emotion. Real people and real events. Meghan Daniels’ practice tugs on the heartstrings as her candid style is one that projects authenticity and the real nature in which she photographs those close to her makes one feel as though you know them or can identify with the feeling they convey.

18 April 2018
Artist and filmmaker Kitso Lynn Lelliott on disrupting knowledge hierarchies

Michel-Rolph Trouillot in his book Silencing the Past: The Power and the Production of History interrogates ideas about the history and pastness, demonstrating how positions of power silence certain voices from History. He points to how oppressive, destructive and inhuman interpretations of people of colour led to colonial powers not being able to imagine histories or a History that could be animated, directed and authored by people of colour.

The work of Kitso Lynn Lelliott also unpacks the philosophical and ontological constructions of race that emerged during European Imperialism, which resulted in multilayered tools and attitudes for ‘Othering’. One of the most important tool was that of hegemonic colonial languages; language as the foundation of these constructions, as well as what allows for these constructions to continue to have life. In this sense, Lelliott, similar to what Trouillot states, looks at pastness as a position as much as a temporal concept (Trouillot 1995: 15).

Her solo presentation of a multimedia body of work, titled I was her and she was me and those we might become, was born out her PhD research related to the perpetuation of the idea of “racially marked beings” and how this led to the erasure of knowledges held in diverse languages. This becomes more apparent when one thinks of language as more than sounds for communication. Language carries a particular imaginary of the world, a way to interpret the world and a way to describe the world.

As a way to speak back to these dominant narratives, Lelliott uses the “language of the ghostly” to gesture towards the presence and absence of omitted knowledges and histories. This is incredibly powerful as it is a reminder of the conscious and active act of silencing, while simultaneously pointing out that the imaginaries, mythologies, memories and multitude of ancestral histories can never be silenced.

About her installation Lelliott stated that, “It is a gesture to reclaim an agency to articulate the narratives that make us, through dialogue that is always in flux, so they might produce a shape we see fit for ourselves.” In this statement we can directly see interest in voicing from spaces beyond epistemic power, as well as how epistemic articulation that pushes against hegemonic forms of knowledge identification and construction offers avenues to break down these hegemonic practices and knowledge hierarchies. This is particularly relevant in a time when we are thinking about decolonial practices and how they can be played out in real life.

“. . . But we may want to keep in mind that deeds and words are not as distinguishable as often we presume. History does not belong only to its narrators, professional or amateur. While some of us debate what history is or was, others take it into their own hands.” (Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past 1995: 153)

26 March 2018
OH OK releases its latest lookbook, ‘Mellow Yellow’

Yellow. The colour of sunshine, warmth, happiness and OH OK‘s Summer collection. This is what makes the title for the lookbook – ‘Mellow Yellow’ – so fitting. Although the label is still in its infancy stage, having only launched last year, they are running full steam ahead with their designs. Similar to the garments featured in their debut lookbook ‘Orange‘ released in September 2017, their new collection includes simple everyday items with an emphasis on comfort. The minimalist designs of the collection play off the larger than life mountainous landscape and the youthful models encapsulate everything that OH OK sets out to represent – a brand made for young people.

Various locations in Cape Town served as the backdrop for ‘Mellow Yellow’, creating a narrative around these picturesque views. The intimacy presented in ‘Orange’, which was translated through photographing people in their homes, is carried through in the photographic effects and compositional choices present in the new lookbook images. This triggers memories of hanging out with friends and family on a Sunday afternoon. The inclusion of landscape shots within the lookbook points to the construction of a narrative, and mimics the way in which some memories appear in our minds – as snapshots of faces and powerful scenery.Skillfully captured by the lens of David East, the overall look for ‘Mellow Yellow’ appears slightly different to his other work – the documentation of compositionally sound and strikingly beautiful architectural imagery and natural landscapes. Here we are met with foci on humans, with nature playing a complementary role in the storyline.

Two fresh-faced models whose looks play off one another are embedded in the natural landscape. They face the viewer in a subtle rebellion, the image is blown out by the sun kissing one of the model’s shoulders. Even though the image has a blown out aspect it is not unappealing. It conveys a cheeky mood and the nature of film softens the blow.In addition to the feelings of nostalgia these images evoke, the pairing of models, the softness of film and lost information in the images creates a mysterious absence in sections. This lost information, sometimes associated with film, does not take away from the images. It enhances them.

Crisp and clean. A mirror into the souls of youth and an aesthetically appealing lookbook is what is brought to light. The combination of yellow clothing against the green and blue colours of nature elevates the brand’s designs. This lookbook is vivid with life, budding with youth and will make you dream about Summer days.

Credits:
Photography by David East
Concept by OH OK
Models: Erin Simon, Devon Massey, JQ du Toit, Lara Simon, Lucas Botes and Willow Borain.

All clothing made in Cape Town, South Africa
All clothing available for purchase at www.oh-ok-worldwide.myshopify.com – Worldwide delivery

6 March 2018