COLLECTION 2
For collection 2 we are moving away from creating work about the black experience or a "lived experience" to more work centred around who we are and where we are going. - Really contextualising Africanism and really giving insight to the depth of our existence. The very simple but complicated question of who you are and not WHAT YOU ARE is one many don't answer. This for us is the COMPLETE HUMAN, FULL REALISATION which few ever get to.
Few ever get to this space of being and many wish to but few actually do. But one man who did, who is a real treasure in South Africa, is the high Sanusi o baba Credo VUSAMAZULU Mutwa. I was met with these staggering ideas of self through the classic of African literature 'Indaba My Children', which the title of the collection took the direct reference from. In this book, you realise there are many aspects of self that every human possesses but lie dormant, suppressed by this western context we find ourselves in.
All of baba's traits are what every human possesses as he likes to say that in 'Africa everything is natural, not supernatural.' What he does, we possess but lies dormant because we have accepted a western framework or, to remove the euphemism, a concrete jungle. O baba was a shaman, sculptor, healer, prophet, philosopher. These traits are a lot in today's context but in the times of our ancestors were common.
So with this collection, it's about taking the archetypal wardrobe and reimagining how we would dress if we were living like COMPLETE 'human beings,' not what we have adopted in this concrete jungle where we have lost all sense of self and eventually our souls due to hyper-industrialisation and capitalism. So this is about finding a middle ground between traditional African aesthetics and a modern wardrobe and trying to find a synergy between the two worlds.
This is also a continuation in our styling of the Vibram Five Fingers and some looks being barefoot, as this is an urgent call to man to return to his ultimate self.
ARTWORK IN collaboration with @ohsuluhp