Woven Voices
© Thandiwe MuriuA postage stamp is more than a catalyst of communication- it is a symbol of a country; a reflection of who we are today and who we want to remember and celebrate from the past. Both valuable and valueless, a stamp exists in a dual juxtaposition; a state which the Artist reinterprets in her interrogation on the blindness of self-bias. Muriu contrasts stamps against humanity’s questions on representation and unpacks the power of an object in redefining identity and becoming a status symbol of culture.
Underpinning the long standing self bias across Africa is a historically informed perception on the inestimable value of foreigners. “The eye never forgets what the heart has seen”, and cultural amnesia became a defining narrative at the collective level, where many forgot the exemplary legacy of their traditions and cultural diversity. Instead, the nations superimposed lesser value on themselves; underrating their identity and surrendering the symbols of their culture to external redefinition. This narrative rerouted the self perception of a whole generation- an identity turning point that the community unconsciously absorbed and continues to carry.
Muriu presents a series of photographic interrogations that accentuate histories of appropriation, emulating the silent maestoso of the Kenyan cloth of communication: the kanga. From its characteristic three-element design combining a decorative border, a contrasting central panel of recurring motifs, and a worded inscription, the kanga represents a channel of independent and collective identity.
Widely available in East Africa and possessed of significant cultural context over its 150 year history, the kanga became a symbol which gave women a voice in a society that insisted on concealment as a sign of social decorum. When designing the cloth women selected its inscription- often a proverb, aphorism, taunt, or blessing- to share their specific social commentary. The kanga broadcasted messages on personal rivalries, politics and the current issues facing a community. Sadly over time its power diminished under the collective cultural amnesia of modern day usage and has been relegated to mere messages on love and political campaigning.
In developing this visual discourse, Muriu begins with a single choice from colonial African philately, selecting one African country’s cultural totem as the inspiration for both her reimagined stamp and its custom kanga print. Valorising both the stamp and the kanga to create new hybrid symbols of her own, Muriu replaces historical monarchy figures with ordinary Africans; giving tangibility to questions of self bias and authenticating the substantial power of objects in shaping communal identity. Symbols embalm the passions, pain and pride of a community yet also become the vanguard of self-bias; an anchor of communal blindness which Muriu boldly challenges by asking; “Does reclaiming these foreign imprints reclaim self worth? Will it change how we view ourselves?”
Muriu will develop 54 photographs- one for each African country- in the form of re-conceptualised colonial stamps rooted in the Kenyan cloth of communication, the kanga.
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Another America
© Phillip ToledanoAnother America is an imagined history of New York from the 1940’s to the early 1950’s, with stories written by New Yorker writer John Kenney
Truth in America has been slowly dying over the last decade.
The country is consumed with conspiracy theories.
For millions, facts are a choice. For millions, history is a choice.
The arrival of AI is the next stage in the demise of truth. We can recreate the world as it never was. For every conspiracy theory, there can be visual proof.
Convincing evidence that makes the lie real.
Another America takes this idea, and creates a history that never existed.
A world complete with people, events, and disasters, couched in the veracity of the past.
Did this really happen? Is this real history ?
The images are simultaneously familiar and strange, much like the world in which we live .
click to view all the images in the story and book
Publisher L’Artiere Edizioni
Images created with artificial intelligence by Phillip Toledano
Texts: John Kenney
Editor: Arianna Rinaldo
Design: Teresa Piardi – Maxwell Studio
Publishing Consultant: Alexa Becker
Size of the book: 27,5 x 24 cm
80 pages
5 colour printing + spot varnish.
Published in English
First Edition 750 copies
ISBN: 979-12-809781-27
Pre-Order
Sea Forest
© SchirraGiraldi (Manuela Schirra and Fabrizio Giraldi)More than 1,000 leaf bundles per square meter, from 5 to 8 leaves per bundle, one centimeter wide and up to one meter long. At least 40 square meters of leaf surface per square meter. Posidonia Oceanica is an endemic plant of the Mediterranean Sea and is at great risk due to illegal trawling, recreational boating and discharges into the sea. Its prairies are ecosystems that play a fundamental role for the sea and the land. One square meter of Posidonia meadow can generate up to 20 liters of oxygen per day and for the same fixed surface area 50 times more CO2 than the Amazon Forest.
In addition to being a fundamental habitat for the oxygenation of the sea and therefore the life itself in, it also has a crucial role in terms of biodiversity and in terms of coastal erosion. Over 350 different species of marine organisms coexist in one hectare of Posidonia meadow finding food and protection among its leaves, and therefore it are fundamental for the sea natural repopulation, and the meadows itself reduce the force of the sea motion by 20%, while its dry leaves perched in 'banquette' on the beaches physically protect the coast from storm surges.
In Italy alone, of the 300 thousand hectares mapped by ISPRA in 2005, a loss of at least 50 thousand hectares of meadow is now estimated, of which 20 thousand in Sardinia. Every year in the summer season there are thousands of boats mooring which cause irreversible damage to the meadows of the Mediterranean, the most overexploited sea in the world also on a recreational level.
Posidonia Oceanica has a very slow growth, less than one linear centimeter per year, and this is the main condition for which it is becoming extinct. Its protection and restoration are today the main objectives of NGOs and institutions active in the issue, from teaching people to know and respect the sea ecosystem, to the creation of buoy fields to regulate moorings, up to reforestation to sew the irreversibly damaged meadows. While at the legislative level the aim is to recognize the CO2 credits (blue carbon) that the institutions could place on the market to recover the resources necessary to protect this precious and fragile habitat. It is estimated that one square meter of meadow that disappears is equivalent to a monetary loss of 39-89 thousand euros per year quantified in terms of oxygen production, CO2 fixation, repopulation of the seas (even purely in terms of fish) and erosion and coastal nourishment.
The images are taken in Sardinia, an iconic place for the Mediterranean thanks to the surface of existing and devastated prairies and thanks to its various geological conformations, and therefore thanks to the different conditions in which the prairies was developed and the related different degrees of CO2 absorption, and also thanks to its different coastlines which allow the question of coastal erosion to be studied in the most varied forms.
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Defining Futures
Ukraine landmine clearance and recovery of survivors in Ukraine
© Giles DuleyFor over twenty years I’ve been documenting the impact of landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) globally on civilians – often decades after wars have ended. Angola, Cambodia, Laos, Colombia, Lebanon, Iraq, Vietnam… the list goes on of the countries where I have witnessed the deaths, the injuries, the traumatised communities, and unusable farmland that is the landmine legacy. And since 2015, I have documented the contamination of land in Ukraine.
This series is also a tribute to the bravery and resolve of those whose mission and purpose it is to clear the land of UXO, just as it also honours those Ukrainians injured by landmines who stand with resilience and set an example for us all. Duty, honour, pride, and a sense of service, permeate each image.
Ukrainians never ask for sympathy or pity; rather for support and solidarity. We see International NGOs working together and global support galvanised, but it is just the beginning. Ukraine is now the most mined country in the world: up to 30% of its land has been exposed to conflict and is at risk of contamination with landmines and UXO. At current rates it could take decades to completely clear the land.
When I went back to Afghanistan, eighteen months after I was nearly killed by a landmine (IED), people asked: “Why are you going back? You have nothing left to prove.” After all I was now a triple amputee, it was painful to walk, a struggle to hold the camera in my rebuilt hand. Indeed, why would I once again face those risks, the discomforts, there was no need.
My answer was clear: “Each day,” I said, “I wake with pain - both psychological and physical and must face challenges in life just to do the simplest tasks. But each day when I awake, I do not feel sorry for myself: instead, I think that somewhere in the world a child is waking up for the first time with these realities, and I ask myself why a child should have to go through what I go through because they were walking to school or playing in the forests or were asleep at home. And if my work means one child does not die or is not injured, then all I do will have been worthwhile. That is my purpose”
Every day I wish I could do more, but every day I do all I can.
With the work and exhibition I hope to bring home the realities of landmine and UXO contamination in Ukraine. All I ask is that as governments, NGOs, business, individuals – we ask ourselves that question: Are we doing all we can to make sure the legacy for future generations is one of peace and safety in a landmine free Ukraine?
- Giles Duley: UN Global Advocate for Persons with Disability in Conflict and Peace Building Situations, photographer, writer, and CEO of Legacy of War Foundation.
click to view the complete set of images in the archive
C-Pop Girls
© Giulia Piermartiri + Edoardo DelilleIn the heart of China's crowded metropolises, a generation of young women is growing up with a different world consciousness.
Defying social expectations, these 20-year-old girls embody the change taking place in the Asian country.
Immersed in whimsical C-Pop music, they are a perfect fusion of tradition and modernity, with a rhythm that blends elements of Chinese popular culture with international influences.
On the streets of Chongqing, the largest and most unknown city in the world - few people have heard of it, but it has 32 million inhabitants - Giulia Piermartiri + Edoardo Delille took a series of portraits of young Generation Z women.
Brought up in a historically oppressive society, Chinese women have lived under the shadow of a rigid patriarchal order that has imprisoned women in submissive, hard-working roles.
Mao Zedong, during the 1950s, paved the way for women's emancipation.
'Women hold up half the sky' was the motto of the Chinese Communist Party, which recognised the revolutionary role they played in the liberation of China. However, with the rise of Xi Jinping, the male leadership has veered towards a more traditionalist view of the family, insisting on the role of mothers and wives.
The new generation we have portrayed has the ambition to conquer a different role from the one traditionally assigned to women by society.
The significant social, technological and economic transformations in which these young girls grew up have generated women with a unique and independent identity. In recent years, it is increasingly common that many famous Western fashion brands have chosen these young emancipated Chinese women as ambassadors not only for their consumer power but for their influence on the market.
The extravagant clothes inspired by Japanese manga, the bright colours of the kawaii aesthetic and the eccentric accessories are a declaration of independence.
Coloured hair, contact lenses, piercings and androgynous bodies challenge the norms and expectations of a country in a time of great change.
The desire for personal fulfilment beyond the family, pursuing professional and artistic careers, the expressive freedom of the C-Pop phenomenon and the first hints of emancipation regarding sexual identity, reflect the growing influence of these young women on the major transformations taking place in Chinese society.
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We have quotes to accompany the portraits
