Lashun Costor:The Evolution of a Strange Fruit

What it means to be a black women: Deconstructing Ideas, Reconstructing Identities pushes viewers to consider the ways in which race has affected the fashion system in terms of visibility, aesthetics, and power.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Lashun Costor is a fashion designer who recently graduated at Person School of Design.

She has immersed herself in understanding her ancestral roots and the social issues our country faces today.

She want her audience to receive and reciprocate a message throughout her many pieces whether it is about race, politics or feminism, they should leave with some curiosity about subject matter and question the world around them.

She communicates through her garments by creating an era and then back to reality.

In her works she combines Fashion, Art, History and Social Issues.

ABOUT THE PROJECT- THE EVOLUTION OF A STRANGE FRUIT

The Evolution of A Strange Fruit is about the experiences and contributions of black women in American society to create a collective understanding of our struggles and perseverances.

Her recent work has been displayed at The Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries in New York at the exhibition Fashion and Race: Deconstructing Ideas, Reconstructing Identities

"The goal of this project - says Lashun- is to create a bridge between the past and the present using fashion to enlighten others about what is often overlooked."

Lashun shows us that garments are more than a piece of clothing but a connection to our past. Her works are compelling and ambitious, they are not only the representation of a well-done manufactured clothes, but also an evocation of the historical trauma of the institution of slavery yet, challenges the stigma of Black women's body.

Even though people might think slavery is a thing of the past it still affects the black community today and and how as African American women have felt defeated and just not good enough , to acknowledge that they are raisin and triumphed about it all.

She add: " This piece along with my thesis questions not only my own blackness as a woman but the blackness of others who contributed their thoughts and opinions. By listening to the stories of other black women I am able to create a collective understanding of what it means to be a black woman. Like any story, this one has been through many drafts and is now ready to be seen. This is where you come in. With your help, I will be able to create a one of a kind wearable sculptures that molds and fits the natural features of a black woman to emphasize the psychological captivity of slavery but is also the mental captivity in today’s society. By playing with different textures and shapes in order to express the deep pain and emotion we as black women go through."

This talented and so young artist, within her art deeply touched my heart, she is able to give voices to all those people that struggle with the same problems she has faced and last but not the least, as mirror of human existence, she collected, preserved and interpreted the evidence of this reality, so that people now and in the future will be able to know about the real history and to embrace their true identities.

So please, continue to follow her works on her Instagram pages here,!

Get tooned and don't miss the art party!

Discovering Candida Mezzasalma

Inauguration of "Flora", the new upcoming exhibition of the emerging photographer.

It is called "Flora", the new photographic exhibition that will inaugurate tomorrow, November 14th at the Risalto, space and cultural association in Bologna.

In Literary tradition, Flora is the goddess of spring, flowers and flowering. According to Ovid, Flora corresponds to the figure of Clori or Cloride. One spring day, while the girl walks through the fields, Zephyr sees her and falls madly in love with her. So he kidnaps her and joins her in marriage. As a demonstration of love, he allows Flora to reign over the flowers of gardens and fields. For its part, the goddess offers men an innumerable variety of flowers and honey.

Observing the photographs of Candida, Flora, relives of its divine essence, relocating itself in a modern photographic vision, where we can see links to the delicacy and naturalism of Botticelli's paintings and the surreal and fairytale dream.

The twenty photographs displayed at the suggestive venue of Risalto, a creative workshop, will dialogue with the works of other artists, creating a unique mix of photography, illustration, craftsmanship and fashion.

About the Artist:

Candida Mezzasalma was born in Ragusa in 1992. Following her high school diploma she obtained a three-year degree in classical literature at the University of Catania with an experimental thesis aimed at investigating the influences of the Latin poet Ovidio in the writer Italo Calvino, electing a points of reference and comparison the respective works entitled "The Metamorphoses" and "The Cosmicomics".

After a year of study at the University of Coimbra in Portugal she moved to Bologna where she currently attends the master's degree in Italian Studies and collaborates with the Center of Contemporary Poetry of the University of Bologna.

In her literary studies she has always supported, with equal energy and passion, an interest in the visual arts, in particular for portrait and fashion photography.

Since 2010 she has been able to perfect her artistic training in photography at schools and individuals and set up two personal photographic exhibitions.

Her photographs have been published in the Italian periodical Freetime, on the fashion magazine Atlas Magazine, on the literary magazine Paragraph (both based in New York) and on Vogue Italia.

About her works:

"Her photographic research is characterized by the strongly dreamlike, surreal and fairytale sign with which the relationship between female portraits and nature is explored. Human and natural elements are often caught in an ecstatic relationship of strong almost metamorphic symbiosis. Poetry, literature, fable, nature, flow into the same creative process to give life to images characterized by a strongly pictorial style: dreams painted with a photographic lens that transcends reality."

"Birth of Venus" © Candida Mezzasalma

So, all that remains is to go in Bologna and see the exhibition, and give her new follower on Facebook here and on Instagram here!

Get tooned and don't miss the art party!

Discovering ANUBI

Saturday 13th October, I've been for you at the opening of Fem, a new creative laboratory, where I met Beatrice and Martina, and we discuss about their new up-coming project.

Each of us has a favorite color.

But what if to represent us was not just a color, but the union of many small nuances?

Let's think about it, our character, our physical appearance, our spirit is not only made up of a characteristic, but it is the whole of all these little pieces, like the small glassy tesserae of the mosaics, which create what we are."

These are the theoretical assumptions underlying the colors of psychology, embraced by Beatrice Andreoni and Martina Fagnani, from their new ANUBI project.

But what lies behind all this?

ABOUT ANUBI

ANUBI is an idea developed in 2018 based on the study and research of new forms of expression and use concerning Visual Art, in particular the one that is closest to the needs, use and daily use.

Illustration, Photography, Graphic Design, Styling and Consulting are - for ANUBI - viatico of research and study, passion and originality.

From these same paradigms ANUBI-ZINE is born, a digital space dedicated to publications of stories and studies that, through Visual Art, find their own expression and dimension.

The HUMAN GRADIENT Project is one of the studies of ANUBI-ZINE, based on color, especially on the nuances, that ANUBI is carrying out through a survey.

ABOUT THE PROJECT

The colors of psychology, they explain to me, are often used to recognize behaviors, feelings, affinities and habits, to divide character categories, outlining labels and profiles.

The Anubis team believe that the human inner world is impossible to define only with a color and it is complex and difficult to explain in words, because each of us is a bath of emotions.

HUMAN GRADIENT was born, a project that unites interiority, personality and the colors of people.

Martina and Beatrice explain their theory to me: "The world is not divided into white or black. There is no dichotomy, we are an indecipherable multiform chaos. The reality of people and events is constantly changing. We are the nuance that we build."

We at ANUBI strongly believe that in every person there are nuances that can be attributed or that can be expressed through colors, and that to give it life all you need is to look inside, close your eyes and understand the colors of your personality. Passions, character, what we keep in our memory and what we feel we can help us to try to define the spectrum of our personality.

HUMAN GRADIENT is our project, a catalog of nuances, a precious archive that we build through a survey.

At the opening of Fem, we chatted, laughed and I was infected by this project, which has all the bases to become a sociological study and create a mapping, to investigate the trends of people, even through affinity or less regarding the registry, the place of residence, the social and working status of reference.

In fact, Beatrice and Martina are keen to stress, that HUMAN GRADIENT is a way to bring people together and in fact collaborate on some projects that would like to extend to companies and schools to help create the nuances of their personality as a team-building process.

If you are interested in taking part in this great artistic social study, contact the girls of Anubi directly.

Taking part at the project is simple, leave your e-mail, fill out the form that will be sent to you and remain anonymous, and choose your colors.

Let yourself be infected by the new color revolution!

Martina, I & Beatrice.