LUXE NOIR MAGAZINE (ISSUE I)

LU X E NO I R • IS S UE 01

LU X E N O I R 1

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Luxe Noir Magazine Sandton 2146 Johannesburg South Africa Published by IBEJI Media LLC. Publication Design by Daniela Velasco.

Printed in Germany by Medialis Offsetdruck GmbH

EDITOR IN CHIEF Aiwekhoe Iyahen

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Ekhosuehi Iyahen

SUB-EDITOR Isiuwa Iyahen

SUB-EDITOR Ntshonda Tynes

CONTRIBUTORS Nana Boateng Martin Hofmann Sean O’Toole Ehi Iyahen Michiru Ito

WELCOME

Luxe Noir is a biannual publication dedicated to showcasing contemporary African art, design and travel. Produced in Johannesburg, South Africa, our magazine celebrates the wealth of creativity, diverse traditions and the rich cultural resonance of artistic expressions from the African continent and her vast diaspora.

We work collaboratively with an active network of individuals on the continent and elsewhere, in order to bring you interesting features on dynamic African brands, awe-inspiring craftsmen, personalities and enterprises, all making their mark on their communities and the world. We are an inclusive platform and strive to bring into focus a variety of perspectives, viewpoints and experiences.

Our magazine entertains and educates, but most importantly it adds a fresh African perspective to the world of creative publications. In so doing, we hope to cultivate a richer, more diverse narrative on African art, design and travel.

Come with us, as we begin what will undoubtedly be a captivating journey.

09 Editor’s Letter 12 Malian Blues: Reviving Traditional Indigo Dyeing in Mali: A Conversation With Master Dyer Aboubakar Fofana 22 A Burkinabé Tradition Reinterpreted An Interview With Hamed Ouattara 34 Tea Time with Yswara: Savouring African Teas and Rediscovering Legend 42 Masks and Masquerade: On the Past, Present and Future

table of contents

50 From Object to Subject: A Conversation with Tatiana Etienne 62 Laolu Senbanjo: The Sacred Art of Ori 66 Maki Oh: Storytelling through Adire 72 AAKS: Akosua Afriyie-Kumi’s Fresh Take on a Traditional Ghanaian Craft 78 My Heritage, My Inheritance: Maxhosa by Laduma 86 Water No Get Enemy. Makoko Floating School: A Prototype Building for African Water Cities 96 The Future is Now: The Engineering Craft of Ifeanyi Oganwu 102 The 99 Series + The World is 9: An Introduction to the Work of Aida Muluneh

108 Emeka Ogboh’s Lagos Soundscapes: On Nostalgia, Memory and the Present 116 Anything You Give Me Boss, Will Do: A Photo-Essay by Lindokuhle Sobekwa 126 The Unflinching Witness

By Sean O’Toole 128 At Night They Walk With Me: Photo-Essay by Sibusiso Bheka 136 Magical Realism: Sibusiso Bheka by Sean O’Toole 140 Where Do You Call Home?

The Plight of the Afropolitan by Nana Boateng

146 Johannesburg, Capital of Cool 26.2041° S, 28.0473° E 150 Zanzibar, A World Away 156 Oh Ye Mighty Drakensberg: A Journey Through South Africa’s Barrier of Spears 164 Marrakesh in Detail Snapshots from One of North Africa’s Most Beguiling Cities 168 Appendix 169 Closing Notes

table of contents

144 The Digital Generation: Meet the Creatives Changing the Way the World views the Continent

EDI TOR’S LET T ER The African continent has a deeply rich tradition of craftsmanship. Growing up as a child in Nigeria, I lived close to a street lined with the workshops of Craftsmen, who for hundreds of years and through successive generations, were charged with creating exquisite bronze plaques that graced the Oba’s palace in the ancient Kingdom of Benin. I was in a sense, privileged to see works produced on this familiar street exhibited in the most prestigious museums around the world and in Nigeria. However, I remained largely ambivalent to this until much later in life, when I was better able to appreciate the contribution of these Craftsmen and their works to my individual identity and the collective cultural heritage of my homeland.

The journey to create the very first issue of Luxe Noir Magazine is inspired by this experience and by the singular purpose of producing a well-curated platform that celebrates and explores the creativity, skill and processes of those who continue to build upon the rich creative heritage of the African continent. From contemporary Master Craftsmen, to innovative designers, exceptional artists and promising young photographers, the aim is to be inspired by the journey and purpose of the guardians of our creative heritage.

In this issue, we explore the captivating work of Aboubakar Fofana and his lifelong mission to revive the ancient craft of indigo dyeing in Mali. We share the story of Hamed Outtara, whose exquisite modern furniture designs find their genesis in traditional Burkinabe metallurgy. Tatiana Ettiene gives creative expression to a young multicultural generation from the Diaspora, whose works remain very much inspired by the African continent. Nigerian sound artist, Emeka Ogboh takes the voice of his homeland to the world, quite literally, while challenging conventional notions of art.

Beyond an appreciation of aesthetics, we also feature designs from within the continent that provide functional, innovative solutions to broader development challenges. Our feature on Lagos’ Makoko Folating School perhaps best exemplifies this. The documentary work of young South African photographers Lindokuhle Sobekwa and Sibusiso Bheka also provides us with intimate portraits of social issues and places that may otherwise go unnoticed – keeping alive a vibrant tradition of craft as social commentary.

As we travelled around the continent looking to bring you interesting stories, we also couldn’t help but take in the beauty of the land around us. In our travel section, we speak to the experiences of so many young Africans today, who see home as both on the continent and elsewhere. Through photo essays, we explore the multicultural melting pot that is Zanzibar, the majestic and immensely ethereal landscape of South Africa’s Drakensberg mountains and of course North Africa’s most beguiling city, Marrakesh.

It has truly been a pleasure producing this inaugural issue of Luxe Noir Magazine. We were deeply moved by the boundless creativity of those who we had the opportunity to feature, and we do hope that as you turn the pages of our magazine you are equally inspired.

Aiwekhoe Iyahen, Editor-in-Chief

ON C RA F TS M A NS H I P, C R E AT I V I T Y A ND T R AD I T I ON

Malian Blues

Reviving traditional indigo dyeing in Mali: A conversation with master dyer Aboubakar Fofana

Aiwekhoe Iyahen

Photos by Robert Wright and Aboubakar Fofana

It has been said that all works of art conceived by the human hand and mind hold within them stories which range far beyond the time of their creation or the lifespan of their creator.

Contained within a single work can be the countless stories of craftsmen, a culture, a people and a place. African textile art in particular, possesses immense cultural power and its varied manifestations have for multiple generations helped to tell the story of the continent, its diverse history and the traditions of its people.

Long before the convenience of modern industrial dyes and imported textiles from Europe and the Far East into West Africa, Mali was known to produce the most intensely coloured and exquisitely woven indigo dyed fabrics. Evidence points to a sophisticated and ancient textile making tradition that predated the medieval period. Indeed, well-preserved, intricately woven, indigo Tellem textiles dating as far back as the beginning of the 11th century have been found in Mali’s Bandiagara escarpment.

However, today, the tradition has all but disappeared.

Aboubakar Fofana is a Master Craftsman who thankfully, has committed his life’s work to reviving the lost tradition of natural indigo dyeing and cloth weaving in his homeland of Mali. Born in Bamako, he is internationally recognized as an unrelenting advocate for natural dyeing methods and possesses considerable knowledge of the rich textile traditions of his homeland.

In our interview with Aboubakar, we learn more about his mission, the history of indigo textiles in Mali, its cultural significance to its people and of course the process behind his most noble craft.

Aboubakar, you have been described as a Master dyer not only because of the exquisite quality of indigo cloth you produce, but the very important role you continue to play in resuscitating traditional Malian dyeing techniques which were on the verge of disappearing. When and how did your love affair with indigo and the traditional dyeing process begin?

Thank you for your kind words! My passion for indigo started very early. We used to go to my father’s village in Guinea when I was very young, and we would be told by our elders about the plants around us, which ones were used as medicines, or for food, and which ones to avoid. I was around seven years old when someone showed me the way that the green leaves of the indigo plants that grew wild in this region produced a blue colour when crushed. I was fascinated by this, and it stayed with me for many years, even though the technique of making the dye-vats using indigo leaves had already disappeared from this region by the time I first saw the magic. I moved to France when I was 10, and spent most of my youth and young adult life there, moving into working as a calligrapher and a designer, but always this idea of indigo was in my mind, and I began to try to build my own indigo vats. Eventually, I was able to move into becoming a full-time indigo dyer.

Growing up in West Africa myself, I often heard of Malian blues, in reference to the special quality of the indigo cloth found in parts of Mali. I know indigo can be produced in several ways, but there is something unique about the traditional dye-making process in Mali that results in the production of indigos of an exceptional quality. What makes the process so special?

I believe there is a combination of factors which result in the indigos of this region being so lucent and beautiful.

Firstly, most indigo traditions in the world use an extracted pigment powder, in which the indigo is fermented in a basic process to produce the pigment, and then the textile is dyed in a separate process.

This makes a very strong dyestuff which is easy to control and measure, because the fermentation process, which is the difficult part, has already been done. In West Africa and Japan however, the dyeing process used the whole leaves.

The leaves become part of a fermentation process in which live bacteria are encouraged to grow, and they are still there along with the bacteria when the fabric is introduced into the vat. I think somehow that this living process transfers the full potential of the leaves to the textiles, not just the colour blue but a complete profile of the living plant, aided by the bacteria which are themselves alive. My blues are alive because they come from the interactions of living things, they are an imprint of the life that birthed them.

There is also the indigo pigment content of the two indigenous West African species of indigo-bearing plants. One of them, Indigofera arrecta, has the highest indigo content of any indigo-bearing plant in the world, so I think this must contribute to the depth of colours I can achieve in my work.

Historically in Mali, the indigo plant was considered to be much more than just a plant that delivered the most beautiful of blues. For some groups, the plant and its dye were thought to have spiritual and medicinal qualities and it held immense cultural significance. Can you tell us a bit about this?

Indigo itself is an antiseptic and anti-inflammatory, and it also LU X E N O I R 1 3

repels insects, which is its main function in the plant itself, so it’s good to dye your mosquito net in indigo. The colours of indigo and the cloth dyed in it have very strong significance throughout West Africa.

In Mali, a newborn baby would be received into an indigo cloth, a child would be set to sleep on an indigo blanket to open his or her mind, a young man would wear an indigo shawl at his wedding and at his death would be buried in this same shawl, whilst his bride may have a trousseau of indigo.

Indigo was considered a connection to the divine. If you look at the Tellem burials found in the cliffs above Bandiagara, which predate the Dogon people who now inhabit this region, many of those people were wrapped in indigo cloth and this cloth has survived because of the conditions in the caves.

It was the same in ancient Egypt – indigo has had deep significance for African peoples for many thousands of years.

It’s also something that enhances beauty, some people used to like the excess indigo dye to be on their skin both for medicinal reasons and because on black skin it creates a beautiful blueish sheen. So there are many reasons, spiritual and other, why indigo is so important in this part of Africa.

Do lots of people still hold those views in Mali, or are most people now simply concerned with aesthetics of the colour?

I wish they did still respect these things. No, these traditions have almost died out, except maybe in the distant regions.

Also, it’s not a great thing to say, but there is no natural indigo that I know of in these regions any more – it is all to some extent chemical and so the traditions that surrounded the indigo dyers have all but disappeared as well, because chemical dyes can’t support these traditions and the meanings have been lost.

How were you able to learn, in practical terms, traditional Malian dyeing techniques in circumstances where the process was virtually obsolete? I imagine that must have been very difficult.

Yes, it was very difficult. For a start, I could not find a single person who knew, or who would tell me, how to collect the indigo and set up a vat. I ended up travelling all through West Africa, throughout Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Ivory Coast, but I couldn’t find anyone. The technique had disappeared from most places even before I was born, in fact really a generation before when chemical dye started to be used on a big scale, so the people I encountered often knew of it but not how to make it, or they knew a little bit but not the whole process.

Often I encountered people who would ask why I would want to know that when there was blue chemical dye so easily and cheaply available. For a lot of people, they didn’t know or didn’t care about the difference between natural indigo and chemical dye, and they couldn’t see why I would want to know about indigo because they considered it useless. So I would go around, trying to find out this information each time I was in West Africa, and then when I was back in France, where I lived, I used to spend hours in the library of the old Musee de l’Homme, reading accounts of indigo dyeing, and then I would go back to Mali and I would practice and practice. I failed a lot. It took years to get a vat to succeed and more importantly, to live for any length of time. I am still learning, I never stop learning. I still occasionally have failures or I can’t get the vats to stay alive. It’s not really a science, it is experience and a little bit of alchemy.

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You make all of your dyes organically, from scratch, by hand and through a fermentation process. The process appears to be extremely labour and time intensive. However, as with all things of quality, there are significant differences between indigos produced organically through fermentation, versus those from compressed powders or more common industrial dyes. Can you tell us what those differences are?

Like I mentioned above, the indigo powder is the pigment already extracted from the plant in a simple and quite short fermentation process. This pigment is almost 100% indigo, unlike the pigment in my vats which is considerably less, and is also very variable because it depends on the pigment content of the leaves, which varies from season to season. The pigment powder is much easier to use, and it can be scaled and measured and so setting up a vat with indigo powder is much easier to handle, especially on an industrial scale. But indigo fixes onto the textile it dyes by a process of oxidization, which forms a chemical bond between the textile and the dyestuff.

In order for me to achieve a very dark blue, and depending on the age of my vat, I have to dip the textile many times, and each time I am creating new and stronger chemical bonds.

With the pigment powder, some really beautiful results can be achieved, but it is vital to prepare the textile and to treat it afterwards, otherwise, because so much pigment is available, it can give a very dark colour that seems to fade on washing.

It’s not fading, actually, it’s just that the excess pigment which didn’t bond to the fabric is being washed out. But this is one reason why indigo has had a bad name for not being colourfast. I have to say here that real indigo done properly, either by powder or by leaf fermentation, is 100% colour and light fast, in fact it is the fastest natural dye and a lot more fast than most chemical dyes. The textiles from the Tellem people, or from ancient Egyptian tombs dyed in indigo are still blue, even if the textile itself has almost disintegrated.

There’s also an issue of how a powdered vat is prepared. To make an indigo vat of any sort, natural, fermented, powdered, or even chemical indigo, you need a reduction agent. In my work, I use soda ash, water which has had fire ash soaking in it. It’s relatively gentle. But many people use really strong and dangerous reducing agents, such as caustic soda or hydrosulfite, even when they are using natural indigo powder, because they want a quick result or because they don’t know another way. Apart from being very bad for the environment and for the skin and the textiles they are dyeing, these strong agents force the indigo into the cloth but the chemical bonds they create are quite weak, and you will often see cloth that has been dyed like this can begin to change colour or fade in a matter of days or weeks.

Finally, chemical indigo dye, which was invented in the 19th century, is supposed to be the same as natural indigo dye, but of course it cannot be. It doesn’t contain all the tiny particles of things that are not indigo. Natural indigo also contains a reddish colour called indirubin, which means that some very dark indigos take on an almost plum shade. Chemical indigo dye technically works in the same way as natural dye, that is it oxidizes onto the fabric, but it is a flat, dead colour, lacking all the subtleties and beauty of living natural indigo.

You speak very often about the impact of imported synthetic dyes on cultural practices and traditional craftsmanship in Mali and you are equally passionate about bringing to light the impact of synthetic dyes on the environment. Can you briefly speak to some of those impacts in Mali in particular?

Mali is a real textbook case of a country that has a high rate of illiteracy and poverty, and very little in the way of public health or enforceable rules about the environment. What this has meant with chemical dyes is that these dyes are used directly in the waterways and in local drainage systems, with devastating effects. You can go down to the banks of the Niger River in Bamako and watch the dyers rinsing textiles and throwing the chemical dyes directly into the water, and nearby you will see all the fish floating up dead. If you drive through the suburbs you can see people dyeing using caustic soda and other very dangerous substances, and just tipping it into the open drains where the little children are playing. So it has very direct consequences for the environment and for health. When I was young one of my little cousins swallowed some caustic soda that her mother had set aside for dyeing, and it burnt out her stomach – she had to have many operations and was never healthy again.

Also, because anybody can use a chemical dye, these dyestuffs have radically affected the culture at a very basic level. To become an indigo dyer would have taken many years in old Malian society, and indigo dyers were revered as people who were in touch with a form of magic. They had status and their work was valued for many reasons. Now, cloth dyeing has lost all that status, in fact it is not really an enviable skill at all now because the constant exposure to harsh chemicals means that many people who do this work get very ill earlier in their lives, because they cannot afford the protection or the environment they need in order to dye safely. If they were using indigo, there would be none of these problems and no dead fish or sick children or poisoned water.

You are a Master craftsman steeped in Malian indigo dyeing techniques. However, you have worked and travelled extensively in Japan. Japan is also a country with a rich indigo-dyeing tradition. Is there a significant departure or variance in style and technique between Malian and Japanese dyeing traditions?

They are very similar traditions in many ways. The techniques of indigo dyeing are somewhat similar, in both countries dyers traditionally use a living indigo vat, full of bacteria, to make the colour. And then Mali was historically an animist country, before Islam came, and many people were still until recently practicing animists. Japanese Shinto religion is in many ways an animist religion, and both cultures see the indigo vat as something sacred because it is alive and able to produce this divine colour. In both cultures you bless the vat before you begin to work with it.

The thing that I find fascinating in Japan, and that I wish existed in West Africa, is that the Japanese have this reverence for their ancient techniques, such as indigo dyeing, but these techniques are not confined to museums, they are alive and continue to be practiced and the pieces they create continue to be used. And alongside this reverence for ancient techniques, Japanese artisans are continually engaging with new technology, adapting it for their purposes but without ever losing the passion for their craft. In West Africa it’s sadly the opposite – we have lost so much of our traditional knowledge, and there is no accessible technology anywhere on the horizon either. We are impoverished by this, we lose both ways, and the loss is very real and very big.

While you were in Japan you had exchanges and shared your expertise and experience with other indigo dye masters. Has your experience in Japan influenced your process, aesthetic or LU X E NO I R 18

how you engage with traditional Malian techniques?

I think yes, it has, maybe not directly, but it has reinforced my own aesthetic approach. In both countries there is a deeply-rooted belief that something is beautiful only when it completely fills the utilitarian role it was designed for. An object doesn’t need to be perfect to be beautiful – and there is great beauty in imperfection as well – but it must be functional. Without functionality, there is no beauty. Above all, I want to make textiles that people want to use, that are tactile, that fulfill their role perfectly, and are beautiful because of that. It could be a spiritual function as well, not just a physical one, because these textiles are dyed with this living colour and I believe that they have an effect on different levels on the people who live with them. That’s also an important function.

It is said that to be a Master dyer, you have to know how to make 12 distinct shades of blue. Each shade has a different name and is associated with a different emotion. Can you share with us what those shades and their associated emotions are?

I can give you the names of the different shades in Bamanan and in English, but for the emotions, I think these are really subjective. Always in traditional West African culture, the very dark blues were associated with wealth and even with royalty, because it took so much dyestuff and so many days or even weeks to get the fabric to this dark colour using natural indigo.

But I have maybe different associations. A new young vat will give strong vibrant blues, which are beautiful. The time when the vat is ready to use, after it has fermented for a week or ten days, is referred to as the indigo honeymoon, when the vat is strongest, like a newly-made relationship. I don’t have a favourite shade, but I love the very light blues my oldest vats make, they are almost at the end of their life when they make these icy baby blues and so for me this colour is like the end of a cycle, the last imprint before the contents of the vat returns to the earth, or garden in my case. But really, the emotions attached are like any colour, dependent on the individual and their associated experiences.

West Africa has a very rich textile tradition that has been underappreciated and quite frankly struggled because of cheaper commercial imports. However, there appears to be some semblance of a revival of traditional textile craft.

In Nigeria, we have Yoruba Adire really making an impact internationally and young fashion designers are embracing and giving renewed life to traditional textile-making techniques. Is it fair to say that Malian textile craft, including indigo dyeing, also appears to be going through a similar resurgence? Has the demand on your end been driven largely by external markets or internally?

Can I say, neither? I make my textiles because the process of making them is fundamentally important to my life and the way I view the world. This is my approach to something spiritual- I would make them even if there was no demand. I never had in mind that anyone would buy them when I first started, I was just compelled to do this. Having said that though, I think I have begun to have some success in Western markets, but it has taken many many years to be noticed and even now I have a lot of trouble connecting to the market with any ease. There is a very great gap between running a small atelier in Mali and getting those products to a showroom in New York in a way that is viable.

There is so much difficulty in working in Mali, I do it because

it is important to me to try to sustain these things in their own birthplace, not because it is particularly profitable. It would be much more profitable and even sensible to move my centre of production out of Mali. But I would lose something by doing that, something which is more important than money.

I think there has been a growing understanding and desire to connect with the artisan who makes the things you purchase, as well as a much greater awareness of the real costs of chemically-dyed cloth and mass-manufactured clothing.

These shifts are definitely beneficial to the commercial side of my work. I wish I could say that there has been a resurgence of interest in these crafts within Mali in the same way that is taking place in Nigeria and Ghana, for example, but it is not the case.

but it has started just this last month, and we already started planting baobab trees, so I am really pleased, even if it takes years to realise.

You have mentioned that you will be launching in Mali, a project to grow your own indigo on a larger scale, as well as grow indigenous strains of Malian cotton. The project will utilize local knowledge of the land and plants and also help to train spinners so that these materials and skills are not lost.

The project illustrates a sustained commitment to protecting an important part of Mali’s cultural heritage, but it is quite rightly so, genuinely sensitive to the importance of integrating the knowledge and skill of the local community. Can you tell us a bit about this project?

It’s a living colour, for me it is simply that. It’s alive.

And for our final question, Blue appears to be one of the most beguiling of colours. I once heard someone say that the unique thing about blue is that it is all around us, but somehow it feels forever out of our reach. We can never touch the blueness of the ocean or of the sky, and we can never reach the blue horizon in the distance when at sea. For these reasons blue has captured our collective imaginations and offers tantalizing prospects of entirely new worlds beyond our own. As a Master Craftsman who has dedicated his life’s work to traditional Malian indigo, what makes blue so special for you?

This is really my life project. Primarily this is about growing indigo, both for my own use and to be able to teach local people how to use it and reclaim it. But along the way there are other issues – for example the issue of food security, which is not often addressed in a holistic way in West Africa. In this project, we are trying to focus on local foodstuffs to build a kind of agricultural permaculture farm, with the main crop – indigo, being supported by all these other food crops and by small animals, sheep and goats and chickens.

That way, the members of our cooperative, who are mostly women from the local villages, have something to take to market to sell and to feed their families with. Nothing can happen unless the women are engaged with what is happening, unless these basic needs are taken care of and the people are permitted the luxury of knowing that they have this security.

From this, we can hopefully stop people cutting down the big trees in this region, because we will have given them another source of income, and then we can start reforesting this area. And there’s the indigo, which will be an additional source of income for everyone involved. Growing indigo will allow me to teach local people how and when to harvest it and how to process it. There is the hope that we will be able to process it not only for use in Mali but to make available to the growing international natural dyeing and alternative fashion communities. And then, hopefully, everything may come full circle and I can train local people to become indigo dyers themselves and together we can find new internal and external markets. I want ultimately to build a place, the House of Indigo, where international and local artisans and artists and farmers and thinkers and people who are interested in this project can come together and exchange knowledge.

Through all of this I hope we could show an alternative way of being in our particular African environment, of living with it and caring for it and giving back what we take, and at the same time maybe local people might begin to realise that they already have so much that is of value, both cultural value and tangible value, if they just have the means to leverage this value. It’s a big project and it needs a lot of hands to build it,

This interview would not have been possible without the kind facilitation of Mrs. Johanna Macnaughtan.

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A BurkinabĂŠ Tradition Reinterpreted

An interview with Hamed Ouattara

Aiwekhoe Iyahen

Photos by David Crookes for Design Network Africa

‘Art has a role to play in the development of Africa,’ attests Hamed Ouattara, ‘and my work reflects this conviction.’

Hamed Ouattara is a master of contemporary design. Working out of his studio in Burkina Faso, he specialises in producing modern, avant-garde, one-of–akind luxury pieces of furniture that pay homage to his cultural ties and highlights Burkina Faso’s rich artisanal metal-working heritage. His work is characterised by an environmentally conscious approach to the design process, and a unique style that beautifully marries his formidable skill as a metalwork craftsman with his creative flair as a modern artist. Using salvaged metals from disposed oil drums found in his homeland, Ouattara brings to life stunning expressions of creativity, resourcefulness and a contemporary interpretation of traditional Burkinabé metallurgy.

Inspired by the craftsmanship of his homeland and its immensely rich and diverse culture, Ouattara is changing popular perceptions about African design and elevating standards on socially responsive contemporary works. His pieces are as much wonderful manifestations of craftsmanship and functional art, as they are a form of social-anthropological commentary on the state of the environment, the value of traditional craftsmanship, evolving tastes and consumption patterns, amongst other things.

Ouattara’s work has been gaining critical recognition across the continent, as well as internationally and he has exhibited widely.

In 2015, some of his works formed part of Southern Guild’s exhibit at Design Miami/ Basel. The fair brings together the most influential collectors, designers, curators and critics from around the world in celebration of design, culture and commerce.

In July 2015, Hamed Outtara launched a new collection, comprised of two stunning, vividly coloured limited edition cabinets inspired by African textiles. The works represent a new creative venture for Outtara, but continue to adhere to what he describes as an authentic African design that is characteristic of his studio. There is also a philanthropic side to this latest venture, as part of its proceeds will go towards supporting a new Design School that he wishes to establish in Burkina Faso - the first of its kind in the country. Through the school, Ouattara hopes to contribute to the transfer of skills and knowledge to a new generation of Burkinabe craftsmen, artists and designers.

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We were privileged to conduct an interview with Hamed Ouattara recently, where he gave us some invaluable insight into his process, his latest work, inspiration and mission.

Hamed, you are an internationally renowned artist and designer. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got involved in the arts?

In a developing country such as Burkina Faso, vital, essential sectors always have priority and so it is really hard to be an artist and make a professional living from it. I think I have been lucky to be able to live by my passion. Since my childhood I have always been convinced that art has a role to play in the development of Africa. My painting and my design work reflect this conviction. My training and experience at l’école National Supérieur de Création Industrielle (Ensci) in Paris allowed me to support this passion and sharpen the tools I needed to make a living from my art. Perseverance paid off and doors to the world of art opened up.

You have repeatedly articulated a broader creative vision, which sees design as more than just a preoccupation with the aesthetic, but also an opportunity to encourage reflection on important issues. You have stated that your “goal is to provide a key point in a continent which suffers from imports and all kinds of imitation furniture, especially of poor quality and which does not reflect our culture.” How does your work speak to this?

Being a designer is a privilege in a country like mine, as it presents a fabulous opportunity to promote ideas and propose solutions for my continent via the medium of design. Design has the magic to turn heads, but it also stimulates questions of crucial importance in the development process.

Living in my country also allows me to understand diversity. I have to create, by taking into account such varied customs and rich cultures while also influencing people’s choices. The combination of modernity and tradition in my designs actually mirrors the changing society in which we live in and is also an interesting exercise from a sociohistorical perspective.

I do believe that through my work I bring the right kind of perspective for an appropriate initial local response to the specific issue of the poor quality imported products on the market. By using abundant raw materials in our local environment, and through recycling, it shows that we can have local, innovative designs that respond to a multiplicity of challenges we face locally, be it the wastage of scarce resources or pollution.

Your designs are handmade, one-ofa-kind luxury pieces, which reflect an authentic African voice. Where do you find inspiration to craft them and what is your creative process?

My inspiration is nourished by a deep love for innovation, with a particular interest in using the minimum possible resources and as such making as little impact on the environment. My creative process is inspired by my immediate daily life where everything has to be done. Transforming old oil barrels to high quality art works is an artistic challenge for me, but it is also a commitment to lend my support to a healthy environment through recycling.

Your most recent furniture collections have largely been made using salvaged metal. This seems to be your material of choice. Is there a reason for this?

My choice to work with this material is based on the great knowledge of metal work in Burkina Faso. Secondly, my choice was informed by an observation I made and a strong adherence to the principle of recycling. I noticed in my country, the immense proliferation of plastic packages that bring little to no added value and simply pollute our environment. My work seeks to show how we can respond to very serious environmental issues in a creative way, and it is also an extension of my principled commitment to recycle.

You are based in your homeland of Burkina Faso, where your designs are also produced. However, you have also travelled widely and exhibited throughout the world. How has your presence at home and exposure overseas affected your work - both your creative vision as a designer and from a commercial point of view?

Travels provide an opening to the world and are a source of enrichment, contributing to creation in the life of an artist. Discovering new horizons helps me to find inspiration and also provides an avenue to assess current trends as it relates to furniture design. On the commercial side, it is an opportunity to enter new markets.

You are one of a growing cadre of contemporary African designers who’s gained critical recognition abroad for your work. Has this altered perceptions and preferences at home? For instance, do you now see an increasing creative confidence amongst designers at home and how has the local/African market responded over time?

My success has been gained over time and is based on what I intuitively saw as another approach to design - a design process that supports our cultural values and incorporates and embraces artisanal creation. Building on this, my projects started to grab the interest of my immediate circle and this approach has obviously paid off because more and more Africans are now opting for local designs.

In July 2015 you launched your latest furniture design collection, comprised of two striking limited edition pieces of furniture called Gold and Indigola. Can you please tell us a bit about these pieces and your inspiration?

Gold and Indigola are pieces that mark my new design direction, reflecting my desire to give to the world a limited, numbered collection of unique pieces.

Through these works, I seek also to affirm the principles of design excellence, combining quality and a quest for perfection with the use of both traditional and modern tools. These particular pieces are also inspired by African textile designs, which serve to enhance the texture of the rusty metal I work with, while also giving the pieces a soul of their own.

side by side with the best in the world. I am confident in the future of design on the continent, because as new markets become within our reach, we will be increasingly requested. On this point, I recently designed and built sets of chairs and tables for the new restaurant of Alara Design Concept store of businesswoman Reni Folawiyo in Lagos, Nigeria, whose building was designed by architect David Adjaye. The store is already home of prestigious African and big foreign brand designers including my works.

At Luxe Noire Magazine, we like to end our interviews on a light-hearted note, so here’s a question. What is your favorite place to be and why?

In all my travels, Cape Town in South Africa remains my favorite place. For me, it has a very interesting and dynamic artistic scene.

You are working collaboratively with others to establish the First School of Design in Burkina Faso. Can you tell us a bit about this project?

Training is extremely important for me. Creating an Art School is a crucial contribution to a country that seeks to reveal the talents of tomorrow.

Young people used to knock at my door, looking for learning and career opportunities. Having already trained quite a lot of people in my studio, it was natural to think about establishing a school, in cooperation with all interested stakeholders. My contribution to this project is therefore to market my latest collection of unique limited edition pieces, in order to finance this new venture in Burkina Faso.

The “Made in Africa” brand is increasingly gaining prominence and appreciation all over the world. What future do you see for design in your homeland and the continent generally?

I am really happy to hear you say this because a few years ago this was not the case. As designers today, we play our part in order to go further and naturally, to have our brands exhibited

Hamed Ouattara is represented by Southern Guild. office@southernguild.co.za www.southernguild.co.za LU X E N O I R 2 5

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Teatime with YSWARA

Savouring African Teas and Rediscovering Legend

Aiwekhoe Iyahen

Photos by YSWARA

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When we think of craft, rarely do we permit our minds to drift to the mesmerising world of taste. We imagine well-worn human hands and machines creating beautiful objects we can touch and see but never smell or taste. Few recognise the skill that must go into creating the perfect teatime experience – the right balance of favour, colour, aroma and of course, emotion. Fewer still recognise that like wine, the terroir and altitude of a tea farm influences the taste of the tea and its subtleties. Indeed, the making of exceptional teas, just like whiskey, coffee or wine is a distinct craft requiring a unique set of skills.

YSWARA is an extraordinary African luxury brand mastering the ancient craft of tea-making and introducing the world to the tremendous diversity of African teas. The company produces richly infused, ethically sourced gourmet teas that are exclusively grown in some of the most verdant tea-growing regions on the African continent - from the rolling hills of Rwanda’s Rukeri Estate, to the misty peaks of Malawi’s Shire Highlands. Each of the rare leaves used by YSWARA, are handpicked, sun-dried and processed by African farmers on individual farms, using only natural methods.”

Once sourced, the company’s tea creations are artistically composed by YSWARA’s founder and tea connoisseur, Swaady Martin. Boasting the largest selection of fine African teas in the world, as well as expert knowledge of plants used in traditional communities, Swaady creates offerings for YSWARA that are unique in their harmonies of scent and flavour.

As the first company in the world to offer an exclusively curated experience of fine African teas, all of its collections naturally pay tribute to African elegance and refinement. YSWARA’s four signature collections, the Seven Wonders of Africa, Kingdoms of Africa, African Queens and African Values are all wonderfully composed to offer diverse experiences that reflect a unique identity. With over twenty-five distinct tea blends, each collection tells an intriguing story about taste and aroma, history and heritage.

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OUR S ELE C T I O N A list of four of our favourite teas and the legendary stories that inspired them.

The Tea: Makeda Queen of Sheba Collection: African Queens The Flavours: Champagne infused Rooibos & berries The Story: Ethiopia, 10th century BC

Few queens have had their story told so many times as Makeda, Queen of Sheba.

Immortalized by the Christian, Hebrew and Muslim cultures, Queen Makeda judiciously reigned over a wealthy and prosperous land during the 10th Century BC. Having heard of her counterpart King Solomon’s wisdom, the Queen of Sheba travelled to him bearing gifts and seeking answers to her faith. Upon witnessing the queen’s grace and passion, King Solomon answered that he would give her anything but his own kingdom – such was her influence.

Inspired by one of the most powerful female monarchs of the ancient world, Yswara’s Makeda Queen of Sheba tea is a soothing yet stately mélange of rooibos, raspberries and Champagne. Its fruity palate accented with fine champagne carries you on an ethereal journey that is pure luxury.

The Tea: Ooni of Ife Collection: Kingdoms of Africa The Flavours: Lemongrass, Buchu and Citrus The Story: Nigeria, 600 BC

Ancestor to all Yoruba people of Nigeria, Oduduwa founded the city of Ile-Ife, cradle of the world and was the first of a dynasty of kings upon which the Gods bestowed holy power. His descendants, the Oonis of Ife, serve as God’s representatives on Earth. Considered as ‘first among equals’, they possess divine wisdom but the mortality of man.

The ancient and modern blend majestically in YSWARA’s Ooni of Ife tea. This fragrant, rooibos and lemongrass-led infusion brims with the robust vigour and the spicy promise of a land where the incredible is true. Intense indigo cornflower petals proclaim the beauty of being bold, while orange and sunflower blossoms and delicate hints of toffee and cream, unite this blend in a burst of velvety, sweet delight.

The Tea: Omoluabi The Collection: African Values The Flavours: Rooibos, chocolate, caramel and Whiskey.

The Yoruba people of Nigeria bestow the honour of Omoluabi upon an individual of impeccable character who represents the paragon of existence, dedicated to the development and vitality of the community. More importantly, the respectful title of Omoluabi goes beyond its bearer to celebrate the community that has so capably and conscientiously shaped such an individual.

A beautiful blend of Rooibos, coconut, hints of chocolate and whiskey makes for an exquisite concoction. This is a truly balanced and successful marriage, as no flavor masks the other. Simply a work of art!

The Tea: King Lalibela Collection: Kingdoms of Africa The Flavours: Green Rooibos, Orange and Cameroonian Penja pepper The Story: Ethiopia, 13th Century

Born at the turn of the 13th Century, King Lalibela was named after the event of his birth, meaning: “even the bees recognize his sovereignty”. His ascent to the throne was preceded by exile and poisoning, but this period brought him great enlightenment. Lalibela is said to have seen the great city of Jerusalem in a vision and then attempted to build a new version as his capital in response to the capture of old Jerusalem by Muslims in 1187. It was only once he had built 11 monolithic rock-hewn churches that he was anointed king and began his reign as the Emperor of Ethiopia.

This uplifting melange of honeybush, rooibos and orange blossoms honours King Gebre Mesqel Lalibela’s medieval majesty, while almond and vanilla essence imbued with spicy cinnamon mirror the regal beneficence of the holy city that bears his name.

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Masks and Masquerade

On the Past, Present and Future

Aiwekhoe Iyahen

Masks and the practice of masquerade have always occupied a place of importance in most sub-Saharan African traditions. In West Africa in particular, masks have been used to define relationships — between individuals, communities, the environment, or the cosmos — and sometimes, to challenge the status quo. For centuries, masqueraders such as the Egungun have fulfilled multiple functions – guiding the passage of the deceased to the spirit world, performing cleansing ceremonies for communities prior to the rainy season, or delighting crowds with acrobatics and magical displays. However, once removed from their original performance context, masks were transformed into museum objects, stripped of their deeper cultural significance and their larger meaning and messages were often lost.

From April to September 2016, the Brooklyn museum in New York City will play host to an exhibit ‘Disguise: Masks and Global African Art’. The exhibit seeks to prompt a conversation on the past, present, future and power of African disguise, by juxtaposing contemporary works against historical objects. With African masquerade as its theme, the display showcases the work of twentyfive contemporary artists, using play and provocation to invite viewers to think critically about their world and their place within it. By putting on a mask and becoming someone else, artists reveal hidden realities about society, including those of power, class, and gender, to suggest possibilities for the future.

In this section we explore the work of two contemporary artists, Zina Saro-Wiwa and Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou. Both artists, in their works, speak to the history, place and meaning, both personally and collectively, of masks and masquerade.

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Zina Saro Wiwa Zina Saro-Wiwa’s interest lies in mapping emotional landscapes, often exploring highly personal experiences, carefully recording and making tangible the space between internal experience and outward performance, as well as bringing cross-cultural and environmental/ geographic considerations to bear on these articulations. The slippery dynamic between “truth”, “reality” and “performance” lies at the heart of her performance work - the relationship between the personal and political is an encompassing theme.

Zina is the daughter of Ken Saro-Wiwa — a Nigerian writer, famed activist, and Nobel Peace Prize nominee who was executed for his efforts to safeguard human rights and the environment in the Niger Delta region. Although the region has for decades been synonymous with oil production, and its ravaging effect of corruption, violence, militancy, and environmental degradation, Saro Wiwa’s work isn’t concerned with speaking to these issues in the usual fashion.

In a recent interview with Houstonia magazine, she explains that her work looks to explore the Niger Delta in a different way and to challenge the idea of what environmentalism is. For her “there are many battlefronts, it’s not just about oil slicks. It’s about the emotional, spiritual, psychological — these are all fronts where the environment or pollution might impact you.”

Her series ‘Men of the Ogele’ is in keeping with this mission as it captures Ogoni masquerade as a unique cultural practice and powerful political statement, while at the same time deconstructing and examining the practice and practitioner – hammering into our subconscious the often forgotten fact that masquerade like the people who practice it, is a dynamic art form and its meaning, ever evolving.

‘The Invisible Man’, another of her series, is a deeply personal work - infusing personal meaning and stories into huge masks most commonly associated with a collective cultural identity and performance.

Men of the Ogele, 2014 - (Photographic Series) Men of the Ogele is a photographic series taken in Ogoniland, located in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region. An hour or so east of the city of Port Harcourt, Ogoniland is a rural area consisting of six kingdoms and 111 villages. Like many parts of rural LU X E NO I R 44

Africa, it has its own masquerading culture. Most masquerades were created way before anyone can remember when or how they emerged. Traditionally tied to farming cycles, a masked performer would perform for audiences surrounded by drummers and flautists at specific times of the year, like yam harvest or New Year. Masquerades existed and still exist to augur good luck for planting seasons, for entertainment and also as a form of social control. However in the 1980s and 1990s a new form of masquerade emerged in Ogoniland. Inspired by the political situation in the Niger Delta, a growing Ogoni consciousness spawned a masquerade called “Gbaaloo” which means “United” in Ogoni language. But the phenomenon is nicknamed “Ogele”.

Ogele groups were formed by young men and the masquerades featured large, tall, very heavy masks made of wood that were often painted with car paint.

Markedly distinct from the facemasks of previous generations, these tiered masks tell stories that reflect the political and sometimes psychological situation of the time they were created. The mystical permeates Ogele, as the young men have a practice of disappearing into the forests for up to three years to “dream” the design of the masks and the accompanying songs and dances.

the highly politicised reading of Ogoni and Niger Delta life.

The Invisible Man, 2015 – (Sculpture and Photographic Series) The Invisible Man is a neo-Ogoni mask created by Zina Saro-Wiwa. Inspired by the newer “Ogele style” masquerade masks that started appearing in Ogoniland in the late 1980s and 1990s, the mask depicts the men that have disappeared in Zina’s life through death or through their own design. Worn by women only, brother, father, lovers and illusive Ogele dancers feature on the Janus-faced mask. The black and white face representing the sadness of loss, the lined pink face the anger associated with abandonment.

Zina’s use of masks showcases a very personal narrative, one imbued with a wide range of emotions, be it love, loss and happiness. Once more it causes us all to pause and reflect on our understanding of African masquerade, its place both collectively and individually and of course its ever-evolving contemporary function.

Ogele groups are comprised of at least six men. There is the dancer who dresses in a colourful oversized bodysuit made from found materials and scraps as well as the heavy mask, and then there are the musicians. As a group they move around villages or are hired for special occasions and political rallies.

Though these men move in a group, Saro-Wiwa’s images often focus on individual members, deconstructing the phenomenon both physically and emotionally.

A difficult network of organizations to track, the men of the Ogele have never been photographed before and these pieces form part of a body of work about masquerade that Saro-Wiwa is creating in the Niger Delta for the Seattle Art Museum. Playful, passionate and vulnerable, Saro-Wiwa’s images upend the usual presentation of African masquerade and dismantles the notion of ‘African tradition’. They suggest an emotional and living relationship between the mask, the mask wearer and the performance, breathing humanity into the interrogation of such African cultures.

The unmasking of these secret societies gives us a rare glimpse into the hearts and minds of Ogoni men and challenges

Images on opposite page: © Zina Saro-Wiwa 1: Men of the Ogele, 2014.

2: The Invisible Man, 2015.

3: The Invisible Man, 2015.

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Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou

Egungun Project (Photographic Series)

Photographic portrait studios have been a thriving part of the creative landscape in most African cities since the early 20th century. From Bamako to Dakar, Lagos to Accra, these studios captured portraits of people and their lives and gave glimpses into the societies in which they existed.

The works of some studios are regarded highly, not simply because of the period during which they were taken, but also for their unique aesthetic expression and quality. Today, photographers such as, Mama Casset, Augustt Azaglo, Seydou Keïta and Mountaga Dembelé are well known internationally and occupy an important place in the history of the medium.

In a major series of individual portraits, Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou explores dynamic tensions, between this world and the next, by capturing the individual personalities and quirks of the Egungun.

In his classic, colourful studio style, he confronts the Egungun’s “betwixt and between” quality, as ancestral visitors, temporarily made manifest to aid and guide the lineages to which they belong.

Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou is a pre-eminent photographer from the Republic of Benin whose portraits exhibit influences from the stylistic traditions of these studios. Based in Porto-Novo, Leonce was trained by his father, the world-renowned photographer Joseph Moise Agbodjelou. Having developed his own unique style, Leonce shoots with medium format in an outdoor studio. His carefully composed, colourful portraits capture rapidly changing traditions. One of his most stunning works on this subject centers on photographing the Egungun masqueraders.

For Agbodjelou the public performances of the Egungun tap into an immensely powerful narrative of localised Yoruba memories, personalised histories and ritual and play a fundamental role in upholding the ethical values of the community. In his raw stills, he illustrates the otherworldliness of the Egungun, highlighting for us all, their power and elusiveness as liminal visitors from another world.

Egungun are both named and unnamed ancestral forbears of Yoruba-speaking lineages, found in the republic of Benin and in the Yoruba kingdoms of SouthWestern Nigeria. Beginning in the 11th to 14th centuries a.d., the masqueraders started to appear at funerals to mark and guide the passage of the deceased to the spirit world. Annual festivals are held in Yoruba-speaking communities at the beginning of the rainy season to cleanse towns, but Egungun can also appear at any time to avert major misfortune or affliction that threatens the local community.

Images on opposite page: © Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou

The Egungun occupy a range of roles that vary from recently deceased and historical forbearers, to acting as community executioners of criminals and witches. Less important junior performers, such as onidan (miracle workers) oloki (acrobats) and alaba (wearers of cloth) can also entertain festival onlookers with magical feats and impressive acrobatic performances. Visually alone, the performances are spectacular – with performers and figures adorned with incredible textiles and costumes all combined in a sumptuous display.

All Egungun images © Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou. Courtesy of Jack Bell Gallery, London.

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From Object to Subject:

A conversation with Tatiana Etienne

Aiwekhoe Iyahen

Photos by Tatiana Etienne

In our fast-paced world, it is easy to overlook the nobility of vocational pursuits that require patience, passion and study as a prerequisite for creation. Too often, we see exquisite objects we love and enjoy, but somehow we remain detached from the endeavor that brings them into being... that is, until an object grabs our attention with its superb design and a gripping story.

Designer Tatiana Etienne’s debut furniture collection SPINE is a cornucopia of compelling objects that seduces our attention with its sophistication and subtlety. An intensive study in elegant design and beautiful craftsmanship, the minimalist collection pulls us into a reflective state by telling a tale of the designer’s creative path and opening up conversations about that which has been so beautifully made.

SPINE is a distinctive collection of twelve limited edition pieces of furniture inspired by, and eponymously named after the hidden axis.

Although influenced by cultures and traditions from various parts of the world, the collection finds its conceptual genesis in the cradle and backbone of all humanity - Africa. Etienne spent three years gathering inspiration on the continent in order to create SPINE. Moulded into life by exceptionally skilled South African craftsmen, the elegant collection features copper, bronze, leather and marble against sumptuous oak, walnut, mahogany and African zebrano wood. The graceful leitmotif of the spine is woven through each piece and tells a series of captivating stories about design, functionality and inspiration. Most importantly however, the collection forces us as observers to create our own stories and attach our personal meaning to what lays before our eyes – moving the pieces from Object to Subject.

Luxe Noir had a chance to interview Tatiana Etienne recently and we were able to learn more about her personal path and the journey to create SPINE. Tatiana, you’ve been described as a gifted and inspiring designer with eclectic roots in Africa, Europe and the Caribbean. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your path to becoming a designer?

I am an Island Girl! Born on the small island of Martinique, I grew up in Haiti where I was surrounded by vibrant colours, rhythm and liveliness. I believe that these memories influence the work I do today.

My father was a Diplomat and this allowed me to meet diverse people from a very young age.

My mother had an art gallery where I would spend most of my time. I vividly remember how fascinated and intrigued I was, surrounded by all these paintings

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and I very quickly decided to pursue an artistic career myself. I first moved to Paris where I studied interior and product design at Camondo School of Design and after travelling and working in different areas of the design industry in Beirut and Montreal, I came back to Paris where I worked under Christian Liaigre as an interior architect. After five years of learning from the best, I naturally felt the urge to fly on my own and start my debut collection.

Your debut collection is called SPINE and is inspired by same. How and why did you choose this as the theme for your collection?

I’ve always been intrigued by this mysterious and hidden axis that keeps most beings erect and alive. The spine plays an extremely important role in our lives. It combines rigour with flexibility, multiplicity of roles with unity but also symbolizes a higher consciousness. The spine brings to the most demanding interiors an exacting reminder of what keeps us all standing proud and tall.

You spent over a year working on SPINE. You travelled around the continent and worked with artisans in South Africa to create the pieces for your collection. Can you walk us through your process from inception to creation?

While carrying out research for what would eventually become the collection, I became fascinated by the significance of the spine in different cultures. First, I spent days in the Egyptian section of the Louvre in Paris, then travelled to Botswana to carry out observations in the wilderness, before heading to West Africa, specifically, Freetown, Sierra Leone.

It was in Sierra Leone that I started to connect the dots and let myself be guided by my intuition until shapes started to crystallize. The elegance and pride that oozed out of the human postures immediately inspired my pieces. The colour combinations and textures I observed there, also set the mood of my collection.

From there, it was clear in my mind and heart that I had to continue the journey of the SPINE Collection on the African continent. I therefore decided to head south and have it produced in Cape Town. I was already familiar with South African craftsmanship as I had the chance to design a residential project in Llandudno, four years ago.

How, if at all, has your experience working and travelling on the continent inspired this collection and affected your vision as

a designer more broadly?

Africa and its dynamism continue to play an extremely important role in my self-growth and entrepreneurial journey.

I have been learning every single day I have been on the continent. From injustice to innovation, I often say that Africa has made me smarter.

For SPINE, you’ve collaborated with Sierra Leonean visual artist Mambu Bayoh in order to tell a story, to create a new artistic narrative and “provoke thoughts on notions of uprightness” amongst audiences and patrons. How did this creative collaboration come about?

I strongly believe in collaborations.

1 + 1 = 3.

I first met Mambu Bayoh in Miami. He was exhibiting at Art Basel. I immediately fell in love with his work and his artistic way of capturing life. I asked him one question, “What does the Spine represent to you?” From there, we knew immediately that our paths were meant to cross and we started creating. We travelled to Sierra Leone together to create magic.

Our complementary skills led us to inspire each other and a lot of my pieces were inspired by his photography.

“From object to subject” is a phrase you’ve used to capture the mission of your work, a general philosophy, if you will.

Can you explain what you mean by this and has this guiding philosophy led you to a signature style as a designer?

Objects evoke emotions and our relationship with them is intimate.

Far from being a luxury or an add-on, I strongly believe that objects are central to a good society. We feel like, and in a sense we are quite different people, depending on what’s in front of our eyes.

It is often the quality of the design environment that determines whether we feel at ease or anxious. We mould ourselves to respond to the spirit that emanates from the objects around us. We become what they are.

My role is to help us be better versions of ourselves, through what I know best: Design.

What’s next for Tatiana Etienne?

This is the beginning. I will continue carrying out my research, creating and expanding my SPINE Collection throughout the world.

You have said in past interviews that to be defined solely as a furniture designer would be to acknowledge only one part of your vision. What is your broader creative vision and what other creative pursuits interest you?

Whenever I design a piece, I go through different stages of expression: research, observation, sketching, photography and writing are all part of my creative process. I find these approaches essential to comprise truth in every aspect of what I do.

As a magazine entitled Luxe Noir, we’re often asked to explore a variety of topics, including personal notions of luxury.

This naturally makes us curious about perspectives on this topic, particularly of those whom we feature. So, we must ask.

How does Tatiana Etienne define luxury?

I don’t believe in Luxury as most people see it.

Luxury for me, is about experiences that fill you with pleasure with your own life.

They are experiences that enrich us spiritually, mentally and physically and are best enjoyed in private or with a few select others.

Luxury in material terms is a combination of “simplicity” and “serenity”, necessary and affordable to all. I believe this definition goes totally against the notion of luxury as we hear it today.

Finally, a question on craftsmanship and design as a social act. How does your work seek to redefine the relationship between people and the things they choose to consume and live with?

As I mentioned, objects elicit emotions and our relationship with them is intimate. We are who we are in certain respects because of how we respond to the circumstances and things that surround us and how those objects make us feel. As a Designer, it is ultimately my job to design objects that help us to be better versions of ourselves.

You have just finished the showing of your SPINE collection in Cape Town and Johannesburg in August of this year and it not only received rave reviews but has also been completely sold out. That’s a huge accomplishment, but unsurprising, given the stellar quality of your work.

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EVA Floor lamp, Bronze and Leather

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JEANNE Floor lamp, Walnut

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NESTA Floor lamp, Walnut and Copper

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NINA Dinning Table, Marble and Oak

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NZINGA Bookshelf , Walnut and Copper

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Laolu Senbanjo

The Sacred Art of the Ori

Aiwekhoe Iyahen

Photos by Suzanne Abramson

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“Everything is my Canvas” Laolu Senbanjo is a Nigerian self-taught artist whose work has adorned everything from sneakers to clothing, buildings and the human skin. His distinctive style is inspired by his Yoruba heritage and is a cathartic expression of a connection between the artist and his subject.

The Sacred Art of Ori, a form of body art developed by Laolu, is a deeply spiritual practice rooted in Yoruba culture and cosmology, which sees individuals transformed into vibrantly decorated works of art. Using the human skin as a canvas, Laolu’s intricate drawings are as much performance art as they are sumptuous visual displays. His paintings are a ceremony between the artist and his muse. Its intent is to empower, enlighten and transcend - painting the spirit and soul of what he sees. The artist states…..

“In Yoruba language, “Ori” literally means your essence, your soul, your destiny and also comes with a mantra. When I work with a muse, the muse, their Ori and I become one. My Art form is physically drawing what’s on the inside, what’s in your soul, and your essence and being; on your canvas, which is the skin. It’s the deepest most spiritual experience I’ve ever had with my Art as an artist. It’s amazing and energizing. The connection is phenomenal.”

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Maki Oh

Story Telling Through Adire

Aiwekhoe Iyahen

Photos by Maki Oh

It’s really very difficult trying to jot down all the reasons we love Nigerian fashion designer Amaka Osakwe’s label, Maki Oh. Its signature elegant silhouettes are not only dreamy, but we absolutely adore the creative ways in which Osakwe always manages to express her cultural heritage in her designs, setting her label apart from the rest of the field.

Maki Oh’s stunning collections are born out of a characteristic attention to detail and craftsmanship. Emphasis is always placed on telling a story - A story that unceasingly weaves modern form with traditional symbols and artistry.

Osakwe’s collections are always heavily inspired by and crafted using the traditional textile arte process, Adire.

Adire, for the uninitiated, is a fabric produced and worn by the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria. The textile, which emerged firstly in the late nineteenth century, is the final product of an extremely labour intensive, hand made process where basic resist techniques are used to create motif designs contrasted against a deeply saturated indigo blue background.

Being inspired by the traditional aesthetics of Adire, not only means an appreciation of form and colour, but also meaning. In keeping with tradition, the label’s prints provide commentary on an issue – a practice that is common in much of Sub-Saharan Africa, where historically, motifs, colors and embellishments on garments were used to pass on messages. Osakwe is methodical in carrying out research on these practices, merging them with her own expertise and aesthetic and creating pieces that are genuinely bespoke in construct and craft.

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In March 2016, Maki Oh released its Fall Ready-to-Wear collection and in keeping with past practice, it tackles difficult subject matters and brilliantly captures cultural nuances through design. The collection examines black female identity through the linguistic variations and interpretations of the popular Nigerian word “enh” which is akin to “Oh” in English. For the designer, “enh” is a simple expression that carries a multitude of meanings depending on intonation. She mirrors the complexity of this word with the experiences of being a black African woman in a world that constantly seeks to limit her dimensions. Maki Oh created the Fall 2016 collection with resistance in mind, culminating in a celebratory acceptance of this existence, with all its denied but intrinsic beauty and nuance.

Silk chiffon, pearls and ribbons are used as markers of hyper femininity.

The shapes take direct inspiration from traditional Nigerian women’s wear, particularly the different voluminous blouses worn with wrappers. Black female resistance is represented in appliquéd camouflage that contrast with the light feminine fabrics. Varying representations of eyes are repeated heavily throughout the collection, including a traditional Yoruba Adire print of ‘inner eyes’ that represents selfreflection and realisation. The eyes are also observing, an indication of ‘we see you’ as well as the inward ‘we see ourselves’.

The colour palette for the collection draws from the richness of Nigerian landscape—from the lush greens, to the earth tones of Nok terracotta, punctuated by bursts of pastels. The hand-painted and hand-dyed indigo Adire motifs that echo themes of knowing and sight, may be mistaken as being indistinguishable and repetitive but it is this limited perception belying a deeper complexity that is the thread running through the collection - from the nuanced definitions of the word ‘ehn’ to the designer’s representation of black womanhood.

In 2014, Maki Oh was shortlisted for the LVMH Young Fashion Designer Prize and her designs have been worn by the who’s who of the international fashion set. The label counts Michelle Obama, Lupita Nyongo and Kerri Washington as fans and they have been seen wearing her designs repeatedly. We really can’t blame them, as what’s not to love about a fashion designer who creatively pays homage to her heritage and takes her craft seriously.

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Opposite page, from left to right: 1: ‘Ehn’ — ‘Yes’ 2: ‘Ehn’ — ‘I guess...’

3: ‘Ehn’ — ‘Carry on’ 4: ‘Ehn’ — ‘I agree’

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AAKS:

Akosua Afriyie-Kumi’s Fresh Take on a Traditional Ghanaian Craft Aiwekhoe Iyahen

Photos by AAKS

Ghanaian accessories brand AAKS represents all that we love about fashion and design emerging from the continent in recent times.

Combining traditional Ghanaian craftsmanship with modern design and execution, AAKS produces exquisitely made, handcrafted accessories that stand out for all the right reasons. From Ghana, to South Africa, the United States of America to the United Kingdom, AAKS bags are popping up and are increasingly the talk of the town because of their distinct, contemporary interpretation of authentic African craftsmanship.

AAKS is the brainchild of young Ghanaian entrepreneur, Akosua Afriyie-Kumi, who is introducing the world to the remarkable weaving techniques of the women of Ghana.

Handcrafted in a small village in Bolgatanga, a district in the north of the country, AAKS accessories are inspired by the unique spirit and durability of traditional baskets historically found in the northern region.

As an ethical company, the brand isn’t only committed to preserving and using authentic traditional craftsmanship in all of its designs, but also the fair treatment of the artisans who make them and the sustainable harvesting and use of raw materials for their products. At the core of AAKS’ design philosophy is truly a critical attention to craftsmanship, authenticity and ethical values in the production process and a strong sense of identity and quality.

Since launching in 2014, the label has delivered its Spring/Summer 2014/2015 and 2015/2016 collections, both comprised of a series of stunning hand-woven bags. The silhouette of each bag in the collection is unique and tells a different story through detail, colour and shape. The brand’s creative director and founder, Akosua is connected to every stage of the design and production process to oversee and ensure that the end result is imbued with the spirit and soul worthy of the AAKS stamp. Inspired by tradition, but reinterpreted in a modern, fresh way, the collections are characterised by exuberant colour combinations and modern shapes.

AAKS has been featured in various magazines, from Vogue to Elle and The Times, and the label’s accessories can be found in stores in Canada, South Africa, France, Kenya, Germany, UK, USA and of course Ghana. Its Founder and Creative Director, Afriyie-Kumi has also been short-listed as an emerging designer from Africa by Vogue Italia in 2015 and featured by Elle Decoration South Africa and Elle Spain.

She has led panels for the Guardian UK Small Business Network and was recently recognized in the Future of Ghana under 30 Top 30 list.

We had an opportunity to interview Akosua recently to get some insight into her story, her exceptional company and her journey as a young African designer and entrepreneur.

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AAKS is a Ghanaian brand gaining worldwide recognition for producing exquisite handmade bags that beautifully blend traditional weaving techniques with modern utility and design. Akosua, as the Founder and creative mind behind this special brand, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your journey towards starting your very own company?

I am Akosua Afriyie-Kumi, a fashion and accessories designer from Ghana.

Having graduated with a BA honours Fashion Degree from Kingston University in London, I embarked on a journey to Ghana to start my own fashion business before I turned 30!

I established AAKS after seeing a gap in the market for beautifully handcrafted bags. In Ghana, I grew up around basket bags. I used to give these bags away as gifts and also used them for storage. I remember having a lot of ‘I wish it was more like this, I wish it was more like that’ moments… I wanted the bags to be softer, almost foldable and also more colourful.

I wanted a blend of colours which were tasteful and modern with a beautiful finish and detail.

Building on this idea I started doing some research into fibres. I knew raffia was soft and could be used to weave and create the bag I wished to have.

More importantly as an organic, natural, renewable and biodegradable material it held an inherent ethical value which I was attracted to and which was very much in line with the vision and ethos I had for my brand.

AAKS is strongly committed to preserving traditional craftsmanship and weaving techniques, particularly in Ghana.

Can you tell us how your company’s partnership and creative collaboration with weavers in Northern Ghana has evolved thus far?

The AAKS brand is a true reflection of my surroundings, the people, colours, energy and dynamism of Ghana or Africa in general. There is so much inspiration and ideas that I get through observation, photography and travelling around the continent which influences my design aesthetic.

Creating something hand crafted has always been the goal of my brand.

When I think of the artisanal weavers I work with in Ghana, words such as empowerment, passion and lasting come to mind. The weavers bring such passion and skill to each and every creation and we hope our customers get the sense of love and ownership put into each bag.

Weaving also encourages and empowers the women and men I work with to become independent, through good and steady work. This has really helped me to think of and see my brand in a different light. I have learnt to slow down and really appreciate beauty in everything around me.

How has having your company’s production process based in Ghana affected your business model and the general ethos of your brand?

Building a fully African-made luxury brand presents tremendous challenges, which I am trying to overcome everyday.

I came to Ghana from London, with preconceived ideas and expectations of how swiftly things would be. It struck me when I had to build relationship with weavers first, before work. I had to plan my day around weather patterns and ceremonies such as funerals and weddings. This was a very different approach to work with which I would say I wasn’t used to so it was extremely difficult to begin and adjust to. However, I have now been able to work around all our differences and it is part and parcel of what I do.

AAKS is part of a new generation of dynamic African brands focused on producing luxury, handmade, mindful products that embrace local traditions and craftsmanship. The market seems to be responding positively to that. Do you view your embrace and modern interpretation of authentic African craftsmanship as being a big part of your success and brand’s appeal?

I think and hope so. Africa is a burgeoning creative hub. There are great skill sets here, which haven’t been explored fully and artistically.

Traditional techniques such as tie-dye, weaving, batik making are being revived internationally and it’s appealing to a new African man or woman. African brands are responding with unique twists on our own traditional techniques and what better way to do so, than to be on the ground, experiencing it yourself.

African designers should and can benefit from our own expertise. Made-in-Africa products help to showcase local skills and craftsmanship. It also supports in a very real and tangible way local industry and employment.

All of the bags in your current collection are colorful, vibrant, beautifully designed and absolutely gorgeous. Can you tell us a bit about your inspiration for the collection?

Our recent collection explores the finite shapes of 8 exuberant hand-woven

bags that convey a sense of spontaneity.

The celebration of the design process embraces unusual colour combinations that bring to life the impeccable craftsmanship of artisanal work in Ghana through unique stylish pieces.

Our key pieces are the Palma colour block cross-body bag, our Are tassel clutch, Manni Colour block tote and Sese Bag which all incorporate our classic, stylish silhouettes. All our pieces are finished off with leather handles and cotton/linen drawstring inner linings.

We know from social media that you’re up to something very special for your next collection. Can we get a sneak peak into what one can expect?

Its going to be bright, a bit loud with much more smaller bags coupled with a great lifestyle shoot. I am very excited!

AAKS has been shortlisted as an emerging designer from Africa by Vogue Italia and your bags are now stocked

by Anthropologie, a major international clothing and retail store, as well as others around the world. That’s pretty impressive for a relatively new company. What’s next for you as a designer and where are you hoping to take your brand in the future?

Thank you!

We hope to continue making bags for a while and then branch into other exciting sides of fashion, either interiors, unique fine art accessories pieces or clothes.

We haven’t decided fully yet, but we are excited for the future nonetheless.

Luxe Noir has identified you as a Tastemaker, for obvious reasons. You are an artist, designer, socially conscious individual and a successful entrepreneur.

What or who inspires you and how do you nurture your creativity?

I am inspired by a lot of things, but generally the ordinary everyday African man or woman who chooses self-determination in the face of often crippling adversity is my icon. The man or woman who strives to put food on the family table, truly all the unsung heroes on this continent who are just ordinary everyday people and lastly, my big family.

For more information on where to shop, please see www.aaksonline.com LU X E N O I R 7 5

A JOURNEY TO BOLGATANGA WITH AAKS A Visual Story In a small tranquil village in the northern region of Ghana, hamlets lie scattered over the savannah as far as the eyes can see. A group of local artisan weavers sit under a huge baobab tree laughing away. On closer inspection one can see piles of colourful raffia and in between chatter and laughter these women are hard at work. Their hands move so skillfully, with an innate knowledge, tending to the ancient craft of weaving that has been handed down for generations.

Using skills and techniques that are unique to this part of Ghana, this craftsmanship is the foundation of AAKS. This is where AAKS handbags are made. Crafted using ecologically harvested raffia sourced from family farms in Ghana, it takes approximately one week to complete a handbag. Each bag is made by hand and bears the print of those who fashioned it. The beauty and individuality in each product, the natural variations in texture and colour are all part of the design and part of AAKS’ unwavering dedication to modern style and interpretations using traditional methods.

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My Heritage, My Inheritance

Maxhosa by Laduma

Aiwekhoe Iyahen

Photos by Trevor Stuurman, Maxhosa by Laduma and Ulrich Knoblauch

Every year across South Africa’s Eastern Cape, hundreds of Xhosa boys and young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three attend circumcision schools in remote rural areas. They gather in preparation for an ancient initiation rite known as Ulwaluko, which is seen as an essential step in the life of every Xhosa man. The process involves seclusion, ritual food and drink, education and of course, circumcision. It is for the Xhosa, an important learning and bonding experience and for men in particular, it represents a portal into manhood.

Laduma Ngxokolo, like many Xhosa boys, went through this initiation. In keeping with Xhosa tradition and upon his return home, he was guided through a six month protocol, where his old clothing were given away and he was expected to observe a strict dress code. Referred to as Amakrwala, initiates during this period are required to dress formally.

Substantial amounts of money are used to procure new formal clothes, often from British brands, which continue to be the standard for many South Africans. For the Amakrwala, the new clothes symbolize both the birth of a new person and their metamorphosis from boyhood to manhood.

Raised to feel an immense amount of pride in his Xhosa culture, Laduma says he was deeply uncomfortable in his new clothes which completely detached initiates from their traditional identity upon their return home. It was this discomfort that motivated the young designer to craft a line of knitwear that reminded the initiates of their roots and important traditions and heritage. His original line, started in 2010, has since been built into ‘Maxhosa by Laduma’, a widely popular award winning premium knitwear label that celebrates traditional Xhosa aesthetics.

Recognizing the special significance of Xhosa beadwork and its crucial place in Xhosa culture, Laduma spent years exploring traditional Xhosa patterns, symbolism and colours as inspiration for his modern interpretations. Using mohair and merino wool, sourced, hand dyed and made exclusively in South Africa, his knitwear designs are contemporary and sophisticated and clearly reflect the rich cultural heritage on which they are based. Laduma by Maxhosa is not only a reflection of the Designer’s personal style, but a manifestation of his heritage, and his rich inheritance.

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Maxhosa

by L adu ma MBIOSA S ha w l Every year Design Indaba awards, the MBIOSA prize to the designer of the Most Beautiful Object in South Africa.

The winner of the prize is selected after a nation wide search and a series of expert nominations. The object chosen for the MBIOSA prize must not only raise questions about beauty and the power of design, but it must be exquisitely made, visually striking and reflect social significance, economic impact and sustainability.

In 2016, designer Laduma Ngxokolo, founder of Maxhosa by Laduma, was awarded the MBIOSA prize for his 2016 Autumn/Winter Xhosa inspired shawl.

Knit in contrasting panels in striking black and white wool, the shawl boasts the characteristic Xhosa aesthetic that Ngoxolo is famed for. Reflecting traditional Xhosa beadwork motifs and patterns, the shawl seeks to celebrate and promote the rich heritage of Xhosa culture. The MBIOSA shawl can also be styled in countless ways. Inspiration for its versatility comes from traditional Xhosa dress, which typically are constructed from rectangular fabrics and worn as turbans, waist wraps, blankets and more.

“Water No Get Enemy”

Makoko Floating School: A Prototype Building for African Water Cities

Aiwekhoe Iyahen

Photos by Iwan Baan

On the surface, Fela Kuti’s popular political Anthem, “Water No Get Enemy” speaks to the unyielding and powerful force that is water. In his song, Fela chants melodically of a mutative and ubiquitous resource we cannot live without - something that both sustains and destroys all at once. Without delving into the myriad political interpretations that can be attached to his lyrics, one thing is absolutely clear, water in a figurative or real sense is power and we are all at its mercy. Perhaps it is this that best characterizes the relationship between the inhabitants of one of Africa’s biggest cities, Lagos, and the turbulent waters that laps its shores.

Lagos is, in a sense, a classic water city.

It is comprised of several small islands, sandbanks, and mangrove swamps set around a lagoon along the Atlantic coast. With an estimated population of 21 million people, it is the largest urban agglomeration in Sub-Saharan Africa and one of the fastest-growing cities in the world. Low-lying and situated on Nigeria’s South-West coast, it is particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise, erosion, heavy rains and flooding.

Furthermore, it is estimated that 3,000 citizens migrate from the countryside to Lagos every single day.

Modern Lagos, like a lot of African cities is also a place of great contrasts. An economic powerhouse, it is home to both Nigeria’s expanding class of tycoons and political glitterati, as well as the country’s oldest slum, Makoko. Both the wealthy and the poor share the common struggle of finding innovative ways to tackle the challenges of rising sea levels and coastal erosion. The city’s elite have resorted to an aggressive land reclamation strategy, constructing enormous self-sustaining artificial peninsulas that seek not only to change the skyline and coast, but protect a growing cosmopolitan, affluent class from the ocean’s surges. These projects however, have come under increasing criticism for the significant environmental cost and long-term impact they will have on Lagos’ lagoon ecosystem.

Down the coast from Eko Atlantic City (what will be Lagos’ most exclusive coastal elite enclave), sits a water community at the other end of the economic spectrum, Makoko. The adaptive challenge and response here is decidedly different from that of Eko Atlantic, but perhaps just as remarkable.

Often called the ‘Venice of slums’, Makoko is a city built on stilts in the belly of the murky Lagos lagoon. It is a poor water community built out of necessity, but one that has thrived for over 100 years with flourishing fishing and sawing industries.

Makoko alone provides a third of Lagos’

fish supply and most of its timber. It is a highly dense and urbanized area with no roads, no land, and no modern infrastructure. Although unplanned, it is nonetheless, an innovative, functional, adaptable and economical response to the complex challenges of coastal urban sprawl in a developing city. While Makoko’s strength is that residents have adapted to life on the water, challenges with infrastructure and proper planning and regulation persist.

In recent times, Makoko has been the target of controversial evictions and systematic destruction by the Lagos State government. As the demand for premium coastal property increases, so too does the value of the land upon which Makoko sits. Past campaigns to destroy the slum are as much about doing away with what officials consider to be unsightly, unsafe, unsanitary slum dwellings, as they are about the gentrification of Lagos’ coastline.

As part of its African Water Cities Project, NLÉ, an Architecture, Design and Urbanism practice led by Nigerian architect Kunle Adeyemi, in collaboration with the Makoko community, constructed a prototype building that seeks to address both the concerns expressed by the State, as well as those of the community. The building, in a sense, is meant to show to both residents and the government alike, possible infrastructure based solutions for the future.

The Makoko Floating School is a unique floating structure, built for and by the historic water community in the lagoon heart of the city. As a pilot project, the school takes an innovative approach to addressing the community’s social and physical needs in view of the impact of climate change and the challenges of rapid urbanization. Its main aim is to generate a sustainable, ecological, alternative building system and urban water culture for the teeming populations of Africa’s coastal regions.

The Makoko Floating School has garnered significant international attention for the innovative solutions it presents to the unique building and planning problématique faced in a rapidly urbanizing coastal city. The school has been shortlisted for several international awards, including Design of the Year in 2014. Most importantly however, the international attention which the building has received along with the sheer pragmatism of its homegrown design solution, has also fostered a much needed public debate on the necessity of considering diverse approaches to the development of Lagos’ water communities.

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THE P RO JE C T

Makoko Floating School is a prototype structure that responds to the growing challenges of climate change in an urbanising African context. It is a movable ‘building’ or ‘watercraft’ currently located in the aquatic community of Makoko in the lagoon heart of Africa’s second most populous city - Lagos, Nigeria. It is a floating structure that adapts to tidal changes and varying water levels, making it invulnerable to flooding and storm surges. It is designed to use renewable energy, to recycle organic waste and to harvest rainwater.

An estimated 100,000 people reside in Makoko in housing units built on stilts. In many ways, Makoko epitomises the most critical challenges posed by urbanisation and climate change in coastal Africa. At the same time, it also inspires possible solutions and alternatives to the invasive culture of land reclamation.

Until now Makoko has been served by one English-speaking primary school, built on uneven reclaimed land, surrounded by constantly changing waters. Like many homes in Makoko, this rendered the original primary school building structurally precarious and susceptible to recurrent flooding. Sadly, the inability of the building to effectively withstand the impact of increased rainfall and flooding frequently threatened local children’s access to their basic need of an education.

In response to this and in close collaboration with the Makoko community, NLÉ developed a prototype floating structure that serves primarily as a school, whilst being scalable and adaptable for other uses, such as a community hub, health clinic, market, entertainment centre or housing. The prototype’s versatile structure is a safe and economical floating triangular frame that allows flexibility for customisation and completion based on specific needs and capacities.

for sixty to a hundred pupils. A staircase on the side connects the open play area, the classrooms and a semi enclosed workshop space on the 3rd level.

The simple yet innovative structure adheres to ideal standards of sustainable development with its inclusive technologies for renewable energy, waste reduction, water and sewage treatment as well as the promotion of low-carbon transport. Furthermore a team of eight Makoko-based builders constructed it using eco-friendly, locally sourced bamboo and wood procured from a local sawmill.

Recycled empty plastic barrels found abundantly in Lagos were used for the building’s buoyancy system, which consists of 16 wooden modules, each containing 16 barrels. The modules were assembled on the water, creating the platform that provides buoyancy for the building and its users. Once this was assembled, construction of the A-frame followed and was completed by March 2013.

Following three years of intensive use by the community, the original prototype building for the Makoko Floating School was officially decommissioned in 2016, prior to sustaining some damage from a passing storm. Plans are currently underway to upgrade the prototype structure. The new construction will be an improved, more permanent and sturdy iteration that will be able to serve the Makoko community on a more sustained basis in the years to come.

The 220m A-frame or pyramid building is 10m high with a 10m x 10m base. It is an ideal shape for a floating object on water due to its relatively low centre of gravity, which provides stability and balance even in heavy winds. It also has a total capacity to safely support a hundred adults, even in extreme weather conditions.

The building has three levels. The 1st level is an open play area for school breaks and assembly, which also serves as a community space during after hours. The 2nd level is an enclosed space for two to four classrooms, providing enough space LU X E NO I R 90

Images provided by NLÉ.

The Future is Now

The Engineering Craft of Ifeanyi Oganwu

Aiwekhoe Iyahen

Photos by Galerie Armel Soyer

Ifeanyi Oganwu is the Founder of Expand Design, one of London’s coolest design firms. Specializing in architecture and furniture design, the firm investigates the correlation between base materials and opportunities presented by state-ofthe-art fabrication techniques. Through an exploration of various manufacturing processes and digital design tools, the firm works on unearthing unidentified typologies and exploring new aesthetic domains.

Oganwu’s characteristic minimalist style, coupled with his multicultural background and his multidisciplinary training as an engineer and artist, all inform his company’s modernist ethos and futuristic vision. Expand’s renegade, experiential approach to craftsmanship is perhaps also a reflection of its founder’s experience working is some of the most prestigious, avant-garde design studios - be it John Ronan Architects, Chicago; Zaha Hadid Architects, London; and a collaboration with the fashion design studio of Hussein Chalayan.

Beyond being pieces of art that are aesthetically pleasing and functional, Oganwu’s works are also serious investigations into the manufacturing and engineering process. His method is iterative, meaning digitally transposed ideas are repeatedly refined into viable concepts that synthesize topology of the object with structural investigations.

Working collaboratively with material specialists, the final material of each design drives the selection of specialized manufacturing. For instance, his office chair and desk suite, ‘Double Agent’, were made in the UK by experts in fiberglass and composite work for the automotive and aeronautic sectors, while his table, Ren, originated from a single block of white Carrara marble that was milled and later hand finished by Italian artisans.

In addition, the mirror polished and hand-formed aluminium assembly of the stool, Splice, was executed in the UK by car-body specialists and perhaps best exemplifies Oganwu’s fascination with digital design and engineering.

Recently, we had a chance to talk briefly to Ifeanyi Oganwu about his fascination with art, culture and technology and its influence on his work.

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Ifeanyi, you have a truly unique background. You have Nigerian origins, you were educated in the United States and you’ve worked in various places across the world. You are also an engineer, an architect and an artist all at once. How has your multidisciplinary training and your multicultural background influenced you approach to design if any at all?

Adopting an interdisciplinary approach allows me to think transversely while bringing multiple points of view from my international perspective to the table.

Both are proving to be invaluable assets in our ever shrinking global village.

You started your design practice ‘Expand Design’ in 2008, a few years after graduating from college and after a series of collaborations and jobs with some rather high profile design houses and architects. Can you tell us a bit more about the unique mission of your own practice and the vision for your firm?

I’ve learned a lot from my various experiences, especially in engineering where applying research to everyday practice was encouraged. As I’ve maintained this approach, projects originate from an experimental spirit at the studio, which I started in 2008 on a part time basis, until the ‘No More Play’ collection was launched in 2010. During that period, I was able to complete the Zebra table and carry out design and fabrication of the first collection. Many parts of the studio’s practice remain interconnected in the sense that new projects at times present an opportunity to extend groups of research, like in the marble projects or Splice series for instance. I’ve also cultivated an ecosystem where tangential trajectories can be explored.

As you know, this issue of Luxe Noir magazine is dedicated to exploring notions of craftsmanship and the process of creating. As a designer, you are known for producing highly sculptural, engineered pieces of furniture that push the limits of the manufacturing process, of materials and of course, form. Your finished pieces are as much design statements in and of themselves, as they are a running commentary on materiality and the process of making. How has digital design and new technology influenced and facilitated your work and creative process?

The relationships between digital design and emerging manufacturing technologies are central to the output

of the studio. I’ve observed their transformative potential throughout my academic and professional experiences, and would argue that a practice like mine would be very different were it to exist fifteen to twenty years ago. During project development, digital design tools allow me to materialise data resulting from relationships choreographed between form, structure and function. A long time ago digital tools were merely representational agents whereas they are now more generative leading to quicker turnaround times with prototypes or mock-ups.

from its core are assembled to create another multifunctional construct, thus keeping waste to a minimum.

Additionally, I’m experimenting with recycled silver on the collection of wearable structures which I’m excited about and look forward to sharing soon.

I also make a point to seek local expertise when making projects. As a result, I’ve been able to work with teams in the UK, Italy, France and recently in China where I was commissioned to participate at the Bi-City Biennale in Shenzhen.

You have an impressive portfolio of really outstanding pieces of work - from the elegantly curved Splice, to the impressive Double Agent desk and of course, the exquisitely detailed Contoured Crater desk. Out of all your projects, what has proven to be your biggest design challenge and why?

Each project brings a unique set of challenges as the scales and materials vary. The design considerations for Contoured Crater desk led to a gravity defying structure, whereas Splice explored the structural plasticity of metal over a compact volume. In both projects there is a singular approach to material, which unravels something new. More recently I’m exploring wearable structures at a smaller scale and challenged by the attention to detail demanded by working at that scale. As the studio evolves, it’s also challenging to even out the progressive complexity of the projects with simplified outcomes.

Famed curator, Okwui Enwezor has in the past spoken of the process of making as having some political utility. He calls it “a renegade practice, a form of investigating new tropes, new concepts and new industries.” His comments were made in the context of the Vitra Design Museum’s excellent exhibit, “Making Africa – A Continent of Contemporary Design” - an exhibit which you were part of. As someone whose work is very much about pushing the boundaries of design, do you see your work as having some political utility?

Okwui’s comment was made in relation to developing alternatives to mass production and in not being complicit in generating waste. From this point of view, you could say the political utility within my work addresses sustainability and material economy which are central to the design of the marble projects or the Crater desk for instance. In Crater, the resulting offcuts extracted

Ifeanyi Oganwu is represented by Gallery Armel Soyer in Paris and his works have been widely exhibited in Europe as well as the US, Nigeria and China. In 2015/2016, the Vitra Design Museum included his Splice stool in the travelling exhibition ‘Making Africa, A Continent of Contemporary Design’ which will visit Guggenheim Bilbao and the Centre of Contemporary Culture in Barcelona.

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Splice stool, 2012. Aluminium.

Full circle bench, 2010. Composite material.

Milky splice, 2012. Composite material.

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Splice intersects the worlds of handicraft and digital design methodologies, assembling 6 primary aluminium panels that are hand-formed over a CNC-milled 3D template. The resulting surfaces and curvatures create a broad range of distinct reflective zones and distortions over a very compact volume. The design is characterised by a sweeping form that embraces the user positioned on its concave elevation. Apertures lighten and distinguish the construction, contrasting a highly reflective exterior, to the vacuity of its interior. Holes take effect as handles and improve resonance by reducing vibrations usually associated with metal.

Full Circle arouses curiosities and invites multiple modes of habitation as an abstracted daybed or bench. It is a multi-user design with a sweeping form that has emerged from an exploration of the space between two common chairs using advanced modelling processes. While the overall volume is devoid of ninety- degree angles, gently curved surfaces are accentuated throughout. A central mane bifurcates into a sensuous back support that re-embraces the overall form and consequently generates a continuity between seat and bulbous base.

Milky Splice, on the same foundation of Splice, is characterised by pearlescent swells of color originating from the interplay of light and surface curvature, revealing subtle shades of red, purple and white. The outcome is a rich constellation of color maps across a very compact volume.

Ren is sculpted from a single block of exquisite white Carrara marble using cutting-edge CNC milling technology and is hand-finished by artisans who use time-honoured processes unique to the Carrara region.

An extraordinary iteration of a traditional office chair and desk, Double Agent Suite is designed to streamline the work flow of a 21st century executive. Expansive yet intimate, the desk blends winged work surfaces by means of a fluid landscape that is interrupted by a raised central hub and cavity. The accompanying chair proposes a seamless part to the whole relationship with disparate elements fused into a continuous volume.

Bulgy Inverted Bookshelf, 2014. Stainless steel.

Ren table, 2010. Carrara marble.

Ren defies the distinction between tabletop and base. It varies in thickness and is marked by unexpected twists, bulges and detailing on the underside.

Agent double desk, 2011. Composite material.

Bulgy Inverted explores the question of adaptability by proposing a reversal of Ifeanyi’s original wall-mounted console, Bulgy. Here, the relationship between the draped curved surface and the striated planar sheets drive the overall form of the freestanding construct.

Ifeanyi Oganwu took inspiration from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater House in Pennsylvania.

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The 99 Series + The World is 9

An Introduction To The Work of Aida Muluneh

Aiwekhoe Iyahen

Photos by Aida Muluneh and David Krut Projects

Aida Muluneh is an award-winning Ethiopian artist based in Addis Ababa. My first sighting of her work was in April 2015 in Washington DC, where her striking photographs formed part of a riveting exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of African Art entitled ‘The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists’. The travelling exhibit, which originated at the Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK) in Frankfurt, Germany, was the brainchild and special project of internationally acclaimed curator, Simon Njami.

Bringing together forty of the best known and emerging artistic talents from eighteen African nations and the African diaspora, the groundbreaking exhibit examined the individual thematic sequences of the Divine Comedy. While the metaphorical language of Dante’s Divine Comedy has been a source of inspiration for Western visual artists for many centuries, its concepts transcend Western traditions and resonate with diverse cultures, beliefs and political systems. Using their own widely differing cultural, personal and religious backgrounds as a point of departure, the artists in Simon Njami’s monumental exhibit provide a probing examination of faith, morality, identity, politics, and form and the continued power of art to express the unspoken and intangible.

Muluneh’s contribution to the exhibit was a compelling set of seven photographs known as “The 99 Series”. Received positively by the public and critics alike, her dazzling photographs portray her personal interpretation of the inferno. Coming from Ethiopia, where religion is deeply rooted in the way of life and culture of its people, the artist naturally sought inspiration for her work in the depictions of hell in Ethiopian orthodox churches. However her photos don’t serve to reinforce the religious narrative on the subject, but boldly interrogates an established view on existence and the human relationship to it.

In her 99 Series photographs, Muluneh captures a stylized image of a woman wrapped in cloth, covered in white paint and black dots, and a collection of red hands appearing to be pushing and pulling her visage in different directions. The artist explains that the textile is representative of oppression, and the mask is symbolic of the inauthentic lives that people sometimes lead. In an interview she states, “People use the word purgatory to mean a state of expectantly waiting for something to happen.

The inferno is not down below; it is here, ever-present, next to us, in our memories and in our minds. It is made of delusions, of prostration, of hiding behind masks to validate our existence and hidden agendas; it is a mask we wear to fool ourselves and others in an attempt to get ahead, yet we are void in our survival.”

In 2016, Muluneh released a brand new body of work, ‘The World is 9’. Eagerly anticipated, the series is again comprised of a stunning selection of the artist’s signature stylized images. Through it, Muluneh questions life, love and history, and whether we can live in this world with full contentment. “I am not seeking answers here, but asking provocative questions about the life that we live – as people, as nations, as beings.” The title comes from an expression that Muluneh’s grandmother had repeated, in which she stated, “The World is 9, it is never complete and never perfect.”

In April 2016, Muluneh had her first solo exhibition of ‘The World is 9’ at David Krut Projects in New York. In September 2016, that body of work will be presented by the gallery David Krut Projects at the FNB Joburg Art Fair in Johannesburg, South Africa. Aida Muluneh is also the Founder and Director of the Addis Foto Fest – an exciting week-long festival that seeks to support the development, dissemination and promotion of images from Africa. The Fourth Edition of Addis Foto Fest will be taking place in December of 2016 in Addis Ababa.

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Aida Muluneh, 99 Series, 2014, Digital photograph, 80 x 80 cm, edition of 5.

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Aida Muluneh, The More Loving One, 2016, Digital photograph, 80 x 80 cm, edition of 7.

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Aida Muluneh, Dinkanesh, 2016, Digital photograph, 80 x 80 cm, edition of 7.

Emeka Ogboh’s Lagos Soundscape:

On Nostalgia, Memory and the Present

Aiwekhoe Iyahen

Photos by Emeka Ogboh and Steve Irby

I was just 6 years old when I got my first taste of Lagos. As one can imagine, this was a real treat for a child with an overactive imagination who grew up on the outskirts of a new suburb in Edo State and who genuinely believed that the city was on the other side of the universe. My parents, bless their hearts, had decided that during the summer break it would be good idea to tag along with my dad on business trips to Nigeria’s former capital and Africa’s most populous city.

I can recall vividly, the anticipation and packing that had to be done for what would be our few days in the city and then the five-hour drive to our destination. We would stop once or twice on our journey, to refuel or purchase some fruits from roadside vendors and then continue to what was undoubtedly the highlight in the life of a 6 year old.

Lagos back then was an overwhelming sensory experience for a child and even though I’ve visited the city numerous times, it remains the same for me today.

The sight of people hustling hard to make a living or busily going about their daily tasks, the contrast of lagoon slums against a sprawling skyline connected by meandering highways jammed with traffic all remain indelible memories. I’ve lived outside of Nigeria for over 20 years now and still, the sights and sounds of Lagos remain in my mind as clear as day.

One can therefore imagine the shock I experienced, when walking through a gallery in New York City, I was confronted with sounds that could only come from one place, Lagos. The distinctive cries of hawkers, the unrelenting shouting of yellow Danfo bus conductors announcing their intended routes and the familiar phrases only Nigerians will understand were all to be heard in that gallery space in a foreign land. Taken aback and reacting like a true Nigerian, the first thought that came to my mind was of course… “Aah aah, but wetin be dis?”

Thankfully, I wasn’t losing my mind.

What I was in fact listening to was an installation piece at the Africa Center.

Through an immersive experience, the installation I was witnessing, used sound as an emotive force, transporting visitors like myself to Lagos, while stirring up visual and aural memories of time and place. Acclaimed artist Emekah Ogboh was the man behind this brilliant work.

Emeka Ogboh is a Nigerian artist who works primarily with sound and video to explore ways of understanding cities as cosmopolitan spaces with unique characters. His work contemplates broad

notions of listening and hearing as its main focus and his sound recordings also consider the history and aural infrastructure of cities, Lagos, Nigeria in particular. These Lagos recordings have produced a corpus of work entitled “Lagos Soundscapes,” which he has installed in different contexts.

The installations often require a phenomenological immersion and an engagement with imagination and the imaginary, such that the viewer encounters Lagos without being physically present in it.

It is quite unusual for the public to understand and listen to sound as art, particularly the sound of cities, which are generally dismissed as noise.

However, Ogboh through his work has managed to capture our attention with his Lagos soundscapes because they force an interaction between our present and our past recollections – his work, always presented melodically, encourages a genuine examination of how nostalgia and memory intersect in the conceptualization of the present.

For members of the general public like myself, Ogboh’s city soundscapes are also aural-anthropological works that capture through sound, how cities like Lagos have changed over time.

In a recent interview on his artistic process and on what he appreciates about the sounds of the city of Lagos in particular, Ogboh has said: “Its intensity and diversity, so much happening at the same time and on different layers. A lot of people would consider Lagos’ soundscape as being very noisy, and they’d call it noise. But I stopped calling it noise since I started listening to it. When you record sounds out in the streets and bring them to your studio, it gives you room to be relaxed and listen to it – you are not right there in the action. Because when you are out there in the street, you’re probably trying to get somewhere, you are in hurry and not really paying attention to the soundscape… you can hear it but you are not really listening. When I relocated the soundscapes to my studio, I started hearing and feeling them as compositions, something that could be musical. And when you feel the multilayer aspect of it, you start paying attention to individual elements in the soundscape like the bus conductor, the hawker, the vehicle noise or the sounds of the horns… you start breaking it down into different components, elements, and it looks like a symphony or orchestra. So it has a kind of musical connotation for me, it can feel like poetry and not a chaotic noise.”

Emeka Ogboh has exhibited both in Nigeria and in numerous international venues, including the 56th Venice Biennale. Recently, the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington DC commissioned a sitespecific piece by Ogboh titled “Market Symphony”. “Market Symphony” draws on the commercial cries and urban ambiance of Balogun, a sprawling open-air market in Africa’s largest and most populated city. This soundscape will let visitors experience the distinctive sounds of this vibrant Nigerian metropolis and the traders who drive its daily economy, transporting them from the hush of the gallery to a commercial hive approximately 5,407 miles away. Ogboh’s “Market Symphony” at the Smithsonian in Washington DC is set to open in February, 2016. We can hardly wait to listen to his composition of sounds from one of Nigeria’s most iconic bustling locations.

Photo of artist by Auswahl Tomaschko.

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“Anything You Give Me Boss, Will Do.”

A Photo-Essay by Lindokuhle Sobekwa

Lindokuhle Sobekwa was born in 1995 in Katlehong in Johannesburg, South Africa.

He currently lives and works in Thokoza. In 2012 he was introduced to photography in high school through the Of Soul and Joy Project. He then joined Live magazine as a part time photographer. His work documents social issues that affect township communities.

Sobekwa has exhibited at the Kalashnikovv Gallery in South Africa and in galleries in the Netherlands and Norway amongst others. In 2013, he was part of the group show ‘In Thokoza’ organized by Rubis Mécénat Cultural Fund at the Ithuba Arts Gallery in Johannesburg. His photo-essay on the highly addictive drug nyaope, entitled “Anything you give me Boss, will do” was published in 2014 in South African newspaper the Mail & Guardian.

The following are some photographs from Sobekwa’s compelling photo-essay with an accompanying written piece by art critic Sean O’Toole.

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THE UNFLINCHING WITNESS

BY SEAN O’ TOOLE

is commonplace across many urban and poor black settlements across South Africa. This statement needs clarification.

Despite South Africa’s transition to a nonracial democracy in 1994, many facets of formal apartheid remain in place, notably the quarantined living circumstances that still define South African cities. In a 2013 speech President Jacob Zuma referenced many of these communities during a sombre appraisal of the country’s social problems.

South Africa has a long tradition of news reporting. It is worth briefly recounting as a way of contextualizing Lindokuhle Sobekwa’s essay on township drug abuse. The country’s first newspaper, a pro-government mouthpiece, was established in 1800, although it was only 24 years later with the launch of the SA Commercial Advertiser that an independent press was born. During the years of high apartheid (1948-90) news reporters and photographers often found themselves at odds with government.

This in part had to do with the country’s muckraking traditions of reporting, but it was also an outcome of witnessing the impoverished material circumstances of everyday South Africans against the backdrop of a cruel system. Despite his youth, Sobekwa undoubtedly slots into this vigorous and unapologetic tradition.

His essay on nyaope users unflinchingly witnesses the complexities of present-day South Africa, where the country’s youth face bracing poverty and widespread unemployment.

“Alcohol and drug abuse in particular are slowly eating into the social fibre of our communities,” Zuma told a gathering in Newcastle. It was Youth Day, nominally a day of celebration, although the subject of speech suggested otherwise. “Drug and substance abuse have serious implications for the millions of citizens because they contribute to crime, gangsterism, domestic violence, family dysfunction and other forms of social problems.” Parents, he added, were at a loss and in pain as children as young as eight were being snared in the net of drug abuse. But what drugs?

According to the 2014 World Drug Report, cannabis remains the most common illicit substance used in South Africa. It also noted that there has been an increase in the use of methamphetamine and heroin, a low-grade variant of the latter typically mixed in with cannabis and antiretroviral drugs to make nyaope.

Youth unemployment is a major social problem in South Africa and is a key socio-economic challenge. Around 3.2 million youths are unemployed. This represents nearly two thirds (63%) of the productive workforce aged between 15 and 34, a 2014 report by the Brookings Institution revealed. Tellingly, given the somnolent action depicted in Sobekwa’s essay, these very high figures include youths who are not actively looking for a job. They are sometimes referred to as “discouraged work-seekers”. With economic growth sluggish, prospects for future work remain slim, leaving many youths to improvise.

Informal work is however perilous and, without a family network for support, youths from impoverished circumstances are forced to live contingent lives. Sobekwa’s essay offers a study of personal collapse seen against the backdrop of larger economic circumstances. Although set in Thokoza, where he was born and was schooled, the situation Sobekwa depicts

But drug abuse is merely part of a complex set of problems defining life in Thokoza, an apartheid-era settlement created in 1957 outside Alberton, southeast of Johannesburg.

Sobekwa was born in 1995 in Natalspruit, a settlement just north of Tokoza.

His father, who died in 2004, was a carpenter. His mother continues to work as a domestic help. He spent his early childhood living with relatives in the Eastern Cape, a rural Xhosa-speaking enclave, before returning to Thokoza in 1999 to pursue his schooling. He attended Buhlebuzile Secondary School in Thokoza. Uninterested in football, he joined the choir and participated in Zulu dance classes. Although born five years after the violent clashes initiated

by Zulu-speaking hostel dwellers on largely Xhosa settlements in Thokoza and Katlehong, Sobekwa says aspects of his neighbourhood’s “previous predicament” continue to endure.

He witnessed them first-hand at school, mostly as clichés spread around the schoolyard. “Xhosa people are liars and Zulu people are cowards,” he offers as an example. But, he adds, for the most part,

calm prevails. Conflicts in Thokoza, as elsewhere across South Africa, now tend to focus on national rather than local ethnic identities. The larger Ekurhuleni region – an amalgamated metropolitan area established in 2000 that encompasses Thokoza – is a notorious hotbed of anti-immigrant violence. But neither these two social problems, ethnic rivalry and xenophobia, are the focus of Sobekwa’s essay. Rather, it is the scourge of low-grade drug abuse that has increasingly beset black settlements across South Africa.

While its constituent elements of nyaope are hardly new, the origins of this drug are hard to track. The first reliable mention of nyaope is from 2006, by journalist Hazel Friedman, who writing under a pseudonym in the book Hijack!, describes nyaope as “all the rage with the youngsters in Soweto, Mamelodi, Soshanguve and Atteridgeville,” black settlements surrounding central Johannesburg and Pretoria. Also known as “whoonga” and “Taiwan”, Sobekwa heard of nyaope in 2009. His decision to focus on this addictive street drug grew out of an encounter with a nyaope user on a Thokoza street in 2013.

Already a participant in the ‘Of Soul & Joy’ photography project initiated by Rubis Mécénat a year earlier, Sobekwa was walking with his camera when a neighbourhood youth asked him to take some photographs with his crew.

“I was nervous, but I told myself if they try anything I would run away with my camera,” says Sobekwa. “I held my camera very tightly.” That evening, reviewing his photographs, he was struck by the access he had been given. “I showed them to my mentor who said it could be a good project.” Central to the success of this essay is the unrestricted access Sobekwa was given a shack owned by a youth named Mabuthi. His makeshift dosshouse is a place of retreat, of narcotic pleasure and fitful sleep. It is also where the users photographed by Sobekwa return after days spent begging for money and foraging for scrap metal to sell. Sobekwa quickly learnt that working with his subjects required improvising. When they wandered off, so did he. When they said no, he left. “You can’t work according to a pre-planned schedule,” he says.

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street kid, like this abandoned person, a social outcast,” says Sobekwa. Although many of his photographs focus on the uncomplicated domestic habits of drug users – idleness, argument, drug use, and collapse into narcotic sleep – he also followed them around Thokoza’s flat industrial landscapes. Along the way he met a white drug user, Jerry, who he also photographed (but did not include in this essay). The repetition of the routine, of constantly entering and exiting Mabuthi’s shack, created a bond of sorts between the photographer and his subjects, a bond of intimacy not dependency. “I learnt a lot from those guys, not just how bad they are,” says Sobekwa.

Urban drug abuse is not a new phenomenon in South Africa, but during the apartheid years its frequency was heavily policed and localised. As a result, there are no significant bodies of photographic work locally portraying the degradations that come with sustained drug abuse. Still, Sobekwa’s candlelit interior studies possess affinities to earlier studies of social hardship. I think particularly of Drum magazine photographer Jürgen Schadeberg’s 1955 photograph of a four young gamblers squatted on a street corner in Sophiatown, a former slum in central Johannesburg. Sobekwa’s work evidences the same attention to mood, pose and lighting.

members of the Afrapix collective of photographers, active during the 1980s, viewed photography as a means to express solidarity with social activism.

Lewis Hine is an older expression of this belief. “Photography has always been a tool to teach people about life,” says Sobekwa. “I learnt history through photographs. Mandela. June 16. I believe that photography can be a tool to teach people.” Working with his mentors, he purposefully set out to produce an essay that would not only teach but also dissuade. “Don’t do drugs. It is hell. I have seen a lot of ugly things that happen when people use nyaope.” Although compelled by an anti-drug message, Sobekwa’s work is not propaganda.

His photographs speak of the subtle complications of circumstances in a community he personally knows and lives in. Perhaps it is this that accounts for his essay’s defining quality: the raw dignity he allows his subjects.

Photographs of drug addiction share with pictures of poverty a certain generic sameness. Bare circumstances mirror bare lives. A key difficulty for any photographer here is avoiding repetition and sameness. Photographers essaying drug abuse have found various ways around this. Nan Goldin, for instance, chose to hone in on particular protagonists, notably Greer Lankton and Cookie Mueller. In the manner of Larry Clark in Tulsa, Sobekwa’s Thokoza essay is defined by its focus on a fragile family, a family created by circumstance rather than biology. But, in distinction to both Goldin and Clark, Sobekwa’s essay ‘Nyaope’ is not an autobiographical portrait. He is not implicated in these photographs; he is not a nyaope user.

Rather, and this is crucial, he considers himself a dispassionate observer, a documentarian motivated by a belief that his photographs might have an educational value.

“I hope people, especially youth, will learn a lot form the project: how dangerous this drug is,” he says. The twinning of photography with social purpose is hardly new. In South Africa,

Sean O’Toole is a journalist, art critic and editor living in Cape Town, South Africa.

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Sibusiso Bheka

“At Night They Walk With Me”

Aiwekhoe Iyahen

Sibusiso Bheka was born in 1997 in Thokoza, South Africa. In 2012, he was introduced to photography in high school through the Of Soul and Joy project. His work documents the township of Thokoza by night, capturing surreal moments just before light disappears. In 2013, Bheka’s work was exhibited in the group show “In Thokoza” organised by Rubis Mécénat Cultural Fund at the Ithuba Arts Gallery in Johannesburg. In 2014, he exhibited his work at the Addis Foto Fest in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in a group show “Visions of Africa”. Most recently, in 2015, Bheka’s work was part of the “Free from my Happiness” exhibition curated by Tjorven Bruyneel and Bieke Depoorter at the International Photo Festival of Ghent in Belgium.

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MAGICAL REALISM: SIBUSISO BHEKA

BY SEAN O’TOOLE Johannesburg, a restive city of can-do aspiration and everywhere sprawl, was founded in 1886, nearly a half century after the invention of the camera. The camera, with its ability to arrest and flatten moving reality, has been a useful tool in recording this city’s awkward lurch from get-rich mining encampment to cauldron of cosmopolitan possibility.

Curiously, though, given the great many photographs made about this city since its start as a tented encampment of prospectors and labourers, the story of Joburg told by photographers has tended to be a daytime one. Partly this had to do with the limitations of technologies available to early photographers, but given the endurance of this omission into the present one has to wonder. Is Joburg defined by natural light and daytime enterprise? What about its other moods and character traits, the one’s that emerge at night? To be precise, what about Joburg after dark?

Photographed in late twilight and early night, Sibusiso Bheka’s essay ‘At night, they walk with me’ sets out to answer these questions, albeit on this young photographer’s own terms and not in the grandiloquent way summarized in the introduction. “I was watching TV and saw some amazing nights shots,” offers Bheka on his project’s origin. “They showed the beautiful lights of Joburg at night. I had an idea that I’d like to do something like that, but I wanted to do it in a township style.” Of course, Bheka is not the first South African photographer to make the night a subject of enquiry. Late one night in the mid-2000s, while making his way east across Joburg’s CBD from the Market Photo Workshop, Sabelo Mlangeni saw a group of women sweeping and bundling rubbish into plastic bags. He recognised a relationship between these “invisible women” and the clean city that greeted morning commuters. Shortly afterwards, he began to document the lives of Joburg’s black women street cleaners.

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Mlangeni’s photographs, which link across time to the photos of black working women in the city from the late 1800s, offer one way of knowing this city after dark. Much like during the day, Joburg after dark is a place of labour and minimum wage. But Joburg after dark is also a time of diversionary pleasures, when the sobriety of a city characterised by discipline and work, also exploitation and alienation, yields to other things.

Sometimes violence, as is suggested by Peter Magubane’s celebrated nighttime photo from 1956 showing township thug and knifeman Boy Mangena lying dead on a pavement outside a cinema in Alexandra. But the city by night is when family’s get together, children are told stories, and televisions pimp information with entertainment. For many, especially on Friday and Saturday nights, it also a time of pleasure, of drinking and dancing. The reputation of the Drum magazine archive partly derives from the commitment of photographers in the 1950s to show black life in Joburg as involving more than just struggle.

But the night is a far richer subject than even this. The dark and its many associative qualities make it a time of myth and intrigue. It is this imprecise territory, the night as a place of projection and unseen otherness, that is the subject of Bheka’s essay. Begun in 2013 during his participation in the ‘Of Soul & Joy’ photography project, initiated

by Rubis Mécénat, his essay revisits a childhood impulse. “I used to be one of those kids who enjoyed playing outside at night more than during the day,” says Bheka, who was born Kathlehong in 1997 and lives with his mother and grandmother in Phola Park. Evening is a sociable time in the townships as workers return from work and the silence that pervades these labour compounds by day abates.

It wasn’t that Bheka only played at night. Growing up, he would regularly explore Thokoza on foot. “I would go to those places where my parents told me I am not supposed to go,” he says.

To fulfil a simple childhood impulse: to see what was being prohibited. “There is a dam nearby, which I used to go with my friends and try to catch fish,” he reminisces. “There is also a train station that I was warned not to cross the tracks of.” During these wanderings he would scavenge for pieces of metal to sell to a scrap metal dealer. “I used the money to play video games.” These early mappings of Thokoza later played an invaluable

role in his photography project. “I got to know where the dangerous places are, where to avoid, especially at night. If an area doesn’t have electricity, it isn’t safe.”

The relationship between light and safety in Bheka’s photographs is worth pausing on. “It is safer to make photographs where there is light,” he says, but in the same breath admits, “I avoided places where there are a lot of people because you get robbed.” Light is only a possible beacon of safety in his photographs, not a guarantee of it. The light sources in Bheka’s essay vary: from the last filigree of daylight on the horizon to various forms of electrical sources. Electrical light pours from the hatch of a “spaza shop” (convenience store), spills from an open doorway to a cement-block RDP home (government-built starter home), is filtered by curtained windows (most with burglar bars), and seems strangely isolated in the impossibly tall streetlights.

A hangover from the apartheid years, these were nicknamed “UFOs” for their strange hovering appearance. They were once amongst the few indicators of electrification in townships, where coal was the dominant fuel. Up until 1990, access to electricity was a privilege linked to race. Less than a third of South Africans, most of them white, enjoyed the benefits of electrification. By 2008, 70% of South Africans had access to electricity.

Bheka’s essay describes this turnaround, although it is not his focus.

Bheka’s subject is mythical, not infrastructural. He recalls being reprimanded and told not to play at night.

“I was told if you play at night you are playing with ghosts,” he says. In part, his essay is playful exploration of “the idea of ghosts, whether they exist or not”. In a community where rural superstitions are less than a generation old, the existence of a spirit world is an important anchor in a context created out of desperation, in a region where hospitality is often lacking. But stories of spirits and ghosts achieve more than creating continuity with the older customs of the village, for adults they are a way to negotiate the real-world context of cramped townships, where neighbourliness rubs up against poverty, struggle and criminality. A ghost story is a good way to keep a child off the streets, out of harm’s way.

In his 2009 book Native Nostalgia, journalist Jacob Dlamini recalls the ambiguous mix of community and threat posed by the same dusty street where he lived in Katlehong, a community bordering Thokoza in the east. Close to

his home there was an open plot of land, which he describes as “a place of anxiety, a notorious mugging spot, especially on Friday nights when labourers would be returning home with their pay-packets for the week, fortnight or month.” He adds, “Our street was a terrain of encounters between neighbours and strangers, mostly friendly but sometimes violent, even deadly.” This ambiguity endures.

It also underlies Bheka’s essay, which explores the changing attitudes of Thokoza youths to the use of public space amidst the endurance of hardship and criminality.

“To be honest, growing up as a child was tough,” concedes Bheka. “You witness a lot of things happening in Thokoza.” He says xenophobia has been a constant feature of his upbringing. Of course, none of these facets of Thokoza’s character are pictured. But they are nonetheless imprinted into the time signature of his photographs. Bheka’s photographs only describe a defined period of dark, an early dark. None of his photographs were made late at night. “That is a dangerous hour,” says Bheka. “At that late time there is too much alcohol drinking. I have never thought of photographing at that time.”

Despite the optimistic claim his subjects make to public spaces at night, Bheka’s photographs are defined by a prescribed working method. “I usually work alone because people know me here, but if I have to go on the outside section of Phola Park where I live, then I get people from school to join me.” Bheka is completing his studies at Buhlebuzile Secondary School in Thokoza.

blurring and ghostly auras that surround his human subjects are integral to the meaning of his photographs, not mere by-products of shooting at night. They are expressive attributes, not simply examples of photography’s on-going struggle to record events in low light.

“When I show people who live in my neighbourhood my pictures, they don’t believe it is actually Thokoza,” he says.

This constitutes praise for Bheka, who likens his photographic method in his essay ‘At night, they walk with me’ to storytelling. “It is like a novel about an old lost town,” he says. A forgotten place that has been found and reimagined by an alert young mind.

While Bheka’s essay invites sociological readings directed at the meaning of electricity, crime and the changing role of public space in South Africa’s slowly transforming townships, he is not a documentarian in the manner of Brassaï in 1930s Paris, or Weegee in New York of the same period. His is a playful and autobiographical project.

Many of Bheka’s photographs include him as a protagonist. “The reason why some of the pictures are staged is so that you don’t get that actual feeling of real events,” he says. “I am trying to describe my neighbourhood in a way I see and experience it. I am kind of creating my own scenario of what you would see in Thokoza – its atmosphere. I want you, when you look at the pictures, to experience the atmosphere.”

Understood in this sense, the strange off-colours, long shadows, constant

Sean O’Toole is a journalist, art critic and editor living in Cape Town, South Africa.

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T RAVEL NOT ES

Where Do You Call Home?

The Plight of the Afropolitan

Nana Boateng

Photo by Ekhosuehi Iyahen

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“Afropolitans – You’ll know us by our funny blend of London fashion, New York jargon, African ethics, and academic successes. Some of us are ethnic mixes, e.g. Ghanaian and Canadian, Nigerian and Swiss; others merely cultural mutts: American accent, European affect, African ethos. There is at least one place on the African Continent to which we tie our sense of self: be it a nation-state (Ethiopia), a city (Ibadan), or an auntie’s kitchen. Then there’s the G8 city or two (or three) that we know like the backs of our hands. We are Afropolitans: not citizens, but Africans of the world.”

- Taiye Selasi, The Lip Magazine, 2005.

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Last year, writer and photographer, Taiye Selasi, made this compelling plea in her remarkable TED Talk: Don’t ask me where I’m from, ask me where I’m a local. Many first, second, third generation Africans living in their adopted homes will identify with the difficulty of answering a simple question: where are you from?

Although Selasi was born in the UK to Ghanaian and Nigerian parents, she grew up in the States and self identifies as “a local of New York, Rome and Accra”. Any other categorization such as Ghanaian-Nigerian or British, would not represent who she really is, she says.

Well, I’ve lived outside of Ghana for a total of 25 years and yet, the response “Ghana” rolls off my tongue quite easily and with a smile. It might be partly because the typical response is “oh, I love Ghana, the people are so friendly, they have a strong democracy, the country is doing so well, are you related to the Boateng football players, etc etc”. I love it and can’t be bothered to correct some of these myths.

Every now and then, I get a follow up question: where in Ghana are you from?

Ah, then it gets tricky. I have to tailor the response based on who is asking. To a non-Ghanaian, I might just say Accra is home and that’s where my parents live.

To a Ghanaian, I will say I’m Asante and for extra credit say, “Bari Kese” – the town in the Ashanti region where my mum comes from (Ashanti’s are matrilineal).

Then I cross my fingers and hope there are no follow up questions because I’ve never been to Bari Kese and like Selasi, this categorization (even though it means something to me on a sentimental level) would tell you very little about me.

“Where do you call home?” is a question that has engaged my friends and I for some time now. A friend of mine says home is where she happens to be living at any point in time. Its a great mindset for inherent nomadics and especially for the 20-30 somethings who are out and about and discovering the world. At a certain stage though, many people do start to yearn for roots; they get tired of legal/residency/work permit issues; they want familiarity and or simply want to be where everybody knows their name.

So for many Afropolitans [and I broaden that definition to include the Luo man who was born and raised in Nairobi or Hawaii (I see you, Barack! Or the Zulu girl born and raised in Cape Town or

Harare), it does make sense to define yourself by your local cultural experience.

BUT, this identity only works if the feeling of belonging is reciprocal. What I mean is, the place you call home should also accept you as one of theirs. This is not always the case even in some cosmopolitan cities. For instance, even though Selasi identifies with Rome, I wonder if the “Romans” see her as one of their own or whether they constantly ask her where she’s from?

Recently, I was having a conversation with a friend who’s family moved to France from Ivory Coast when he was 11 years old. Against the backdrop of the Paris attack, I was trying to gain some insight into the seemingly failure of French assimilation for certain migrant groups. He is very grateful that he moved to France at an age where he had already formed a strong African (and black) identity. He said, for many first, second, third generation migrant groups, France is the home they know but they do not completely fit in. They do not identify as Europeans; they do not always feel free to practice their culture or religion and there’s always that feeling of “them versus us”. These seething sentiments are contributing factors to rapidly increasing radicalization of young people in Europe to join ISIS. I believe that people generally need some sense of belonging. It can be one place or multiple places but the relationship has to go both ways – You are feeling the home and the home is feeling you!

roommate from Japan is married to a Congolese. They live in Japan and are raising two children who are trilingual!

The kids attend the French school, speak Japanese at home and learn English as a third language by spending summers in the US. Ultimately we want our children to connect with the motherland/fatherland and/or connect in a local environment that fully accepts them as one of their own. It is not always easy and we may not get it right. But, it is worth the effort.

Eternal peace and love.

There are many instances where the motherland – your mother’s land – simply does not resonate and the place you call home also does not resonate. Then what do you do? My feeling is, if this really matters to you, make a concerted effort to connect with your mothers land or fathers land or find a new place to genuinely connect with. There are many cosmopolitan cities that may just resonate with you. I find it interesting that even Barack Obama who is certainly not confused about his national and cultural identity, still makes efforts to connect with his father’s land. It matters to him.

Like myself, many of my friends are raising little children outside the motherland. We want our children to appreciate their cross cultural upbringing while having a clear sense of national/ cultural identity(ies). It’s a tough balancing act, for example, a decision to expose the little one to the mother tongue or the foreign tongue. My college

Nana Boateng is a proud Ghanaian with a multicultural background: born in Italy, raised in West and East Africa, studied in Washington DC and London and eventually settled in the city of GOLD, Johannesburg!

She is also the Founder of the blog, the Afro Optimist. www.theafrooptimist.com.

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THE DIGITAL GENERATION: MEET THE CREATIVES CHANGING THE WAY THE WORLD VIEWS THE CONTINENT The continent is full of passionate people who are eager to share their stories with the world. Young Creatives from Lagos to Nairobi, Cape Town to Cairo are taking to Instagram, Facebook and blogs to document their personal lives, communities and interests. They are, through their work, changing the status quo, upturning clichĂŠs and popular narratives about their communities and their identities. With huge followings online, tastemakers and game-changers are emerging, giving voice to a new plugged-in generation that seeks a more authentic representation of their lives, their struggles and their homeland. For them, social media is so much more than agglomeration of pretty pictures.

It’s a platform to share ideas and stories about the continent, by people from the continent. It is all about reclaiming a voice and being a voice all at once.

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South Africa: I See a Different You Instagram: @iseeadifferentyou

I See a Different You is a creative trio from Soweto on a mission to show the world the dynamic African continent as they see it. Their work emerged as a way to counter negative stereotypes about their hometown. The trio are modern-day storytellers, presenting captivating visual images in film and photos. Their stories are taking the creative world by storm, for the freshness with which they present narratives about their communities and their own lives. For the trio, it also about owning their own voices and sharing them with the world. They say, “as Africans our story has always been told by others and as I See A Different You we want to tell our own stories through Art.”

Nigeria: Yagazie Emezi Instagram: @yagazieemezi

Yagazie Emezi is a multi-disciplinary artist and photographer based in Lagos, Nigeria.

She studied in the United States before returning to Nigeria to work as a Visual Curator for Bialere, a digital platform showcasing the work of young African Creatives. Her photography focuses primarily on documentary, fashion and travel around the African continent. With a knack for story telling and her trademark frankness, she provides honest insight into her life in Nigeria. She is, in her own words, on a personal mission to change the way people think about modern Africa.

Kenya: Mutua Matheka Instagram: @truthslinger

Mutua Matheka is an artist born and bred in Machakos and fine-tuned in Nairobi, Kenya. His work re-visualizes the city of Nairobi and other African urban spaces from new intriguing perspectives.

Mutua’s photographs are perhaps a form of activism and are worth much more than their aesthetic value. For the artist, the primary purpose of his work is to shape how people in cities see themselves within the urban space.

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Johannesburg

Capital of Cool 26.2041° S, 28.0473° E

Aiwekhoe Iyahen

Photos by Martin Hofmann

5 FACTS Johannesburg is emerging as Africa’s hippest hub for art, design, music, and fashion. Unlike any other city in South Africa, Jozi as she’s fondly called, possesses a boldly African spirit and youthful vibe.

Here are 5 facts you need to know about this capital of cool:

1.

Johanesburg is South Africa’s biggest city. Before the Dutch settlers arrived to establish a small gold mining town, the Ndebele people lived in settlements spread out across the area. It was only in the 19th century that the small town of Johannesburg was officially established, upon seizure of the land from the Ndebele

by Dutch settlers. The city as we know it today, has been rebuilt four times. First, it was a tented camp, then a town of tin shanties, then four-story Edwardian brick buildings and finally a modern city of skyscrapers.

2.

Johannesburg is one of the greenest cities.

Boasting the world’s biggest man-made forest, it is estimated to have over 10 million trees. Projects are underway to plant even more, particularly in historically disadvantaged areas.

3.

This is a place for the Young! 42% of Johannesburg’s population is under the age of 24. The 2015 Youthful Cities Index has also ranked Jozi as the most popular place in Africa for young people aged 15 to 29. The index considers factors like creativity, employment and entrepreneurship.

4.

The city’s cultural scene is undeniably vibrant and youthful. Cool neighborhoods are popping up in the postindustrial blight of the inner city, giving space to a vibrant, entrepreneurial, creative class from across the continent.

5.

Jozi is authentic! This isn’t a leisurely city full of tourist traps or sweeping mountain or beach views like the kind you’ll find in Cape Town or elsewhere in the country.

This is a city with a dynamic spirit. It’s urban, it’s gritty, there’s pain and there’s happiness, there’s extreme poverty and immense wealth, it’s lively and it’s bold.

Jozi isn’t putting on a tourist show for anyone. It just is!

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Zanzibar

A World Away

Aiwekhoe Iyahen

Photos by Michiru Ito and Aiwekhoe Iyahen

If you’re looking for a quick getaway for a few days, Zanzibar is it. From its endless pristine beaches, to a historic old town, wonderful food, friendly people and rich culture, you’re sure to be occupied for how ever long you choose to spend here.

Known for its relaxed but exotic vibe, travelers who visit this fair isle often make it their final stop to recuperate after hiking Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro, or after safari expeditions through the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater.

Part of the United Republic of Tanzania, Zanzibar sits just off the coast of the continental mainland and is an archipelago made up of two main islands, Zanzibar and Pemba islands, as well as several other islets. Stone Town, its capital city, has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is an intriguing place to explore the confluence of African, Arabic, European and Indian cultures.

Zanzibar’s local people are an incredible mixture of ethnic backgrounds, indicative of her colourful history. Islam is the dominant religion, and practised by most Zanzibaris, although there are also sizeable Christian and Hindu communities.

Now that you have the basics on Zanzibar, here are a few recommendations for what to do when you visit this very special place.

1. Stay at a local guest house There are no shortages of well-appointed hotels to choose from in Zanzibar – particularly if you’re looking for a classic beach holiday away from everything.

However, if you want a more authentic Zanzibari experience, we recommend you stay at a traditional guest house or hotel inspired by local culture and customs. In Stone Town, you will find a wide selection of these, which are well-managed and appointed and priced to suit every range.

Guest houses and hotels located within Stone Town can give you an opportunity to immerse yourself in your historic surroundings and take in a bit of culture in this intriguing city.

2. Explore the hidden alleyways of Stone Town Stone Town is small, but it has an incredibly rich history. Also known as Mji Mkongwe, it is the oldest part of Zanzibar City and is a prime example of an ancient Swahili coastal trading town in East Africa. Its urban fabric and townscape remain largely intact and it contains many fine buildings that reflect a unique confluence of African, Arabian, Indian and European cultures that have existed together for more than a millennium.

Stone Town may be small, but it has lots to see and do. It’s important to remember that like most old cities, it wasn’t built for cars. As such, you will have to find your way on foot, through a labyrinth of alleyways, nooks, hidden squares and passages. It may take you a while to figure out the layout, so if you want to really explore the town on your own, you’ll have to plan ahead because you will need more than an afternoon here.

3. Catch the sunset or listen to prayers on a rooftop There are some really great rooftop bars and restaurants located in the middle of Stone Town, which provide amazing panoramas of the city and life below. You can choose to watch the sun go down and cast its shadow over ancient rooftops at one of these bars, or alternatively you can sit quietly and listen to the call to prayer from numerous minarets dotting the skyline. We visited during the holy month of Ramadan and couldn’t resist taking some time out each day to listen to prayers at the designated times.

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4. Learn more about spices One cannot possibly visit Zanzibar, the ‘Island of Spice’ and not be intrigued by how this has shaped the island’s history.

If you aren’t interested in history, but are interested in food, this is an important opportunity to learn more about all the wonderful condiments and essential ingredients used in spicy Zanzibari cuisine. Aside from nutmeg, vanilla, peppers, cloves and all manner of spices, you may even get to taste a completely new fruit which you’ve never heard of or seen before. In short, don’t miss what could be a wonderful introduction to the wonderful world of spice.

5. Visit sandbanks and other islands in the archipelago And last, but definitely not least is our number 5 recommendation, which happens to be our favorite thing to do in Zanzibar – sail around and visit the various islets and sandbanks just off the coast of the main island. If you’re staying in Stone Town, this is a perfect way to fit in some quality beach time.

While there are lots of organized tour companies offering half or full-day excursions, a personalized and private experience is always best. One can hire a traditional dhow or a speedboat with a local fisherman to take you to various sandbanks. Doing so will afford you the opportunity to spend as much time as you want on the most pristine sandbanks, moving at our own pace and with maximum privacy. The local fisherman we opted for was also able to tell us about each islet and sandbank we visited and we got to watch the sun go down on a sublime slope of sand in the middle of the Indian Ocean, with no one else around. A pretty spectacular experience by any standard.

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Oh Ye Mighty Drakensberg

A Journey through South Africa’s Barrier of Spears

Aiwekhoe Iyahen

Photos by Martin Hofmann

Mountains have always occupied a special place in my heart. Perhaps it’s the assurance of breath-taking scenery after an arduous uphill hike. Or maybe it’s the silence and solitude they provide, away from all the world’s madness. When one thinks of travel on the continent, rarely ever do we stop to consider the possibility of a mountain break. After all, the abundance of spectacular safaris, bustling metropolitan cities and sublime beaches are all too alluring.

For those who prefer to try something a bit different, South Africa’s premier mountain wilderness is a treasure. Rising a dramatic 3000m above sea level and stretching some 1600km across the eastern part of the country, is southern Africa’s highest mountain range, the Drakensberg Mountains. Referred to as Ukhahlamba or “the barrier of spears” by the Zulus, this mountain range, with its awe inspiring cliffs, lush forests and cascading waterfalls is a vast escarpment that separates South Africa’s Kwaza Zulu Natal province from the landlocked kingdom in the sky, Lesotho. The highland range is also the source of many streams and rivers which flow out to the Indian and Atlantic Oceans surrounding South Africa’s magnificent coastline.

For elating scenery - massive spires, rock buttresses, wide grasslands, glorious waterfalls, rivers, pools, fern-carpeted forests - the Ukhahlamba Drakensberg is unrivalled. Wild and unpopulated, it is a paradise. Whether you choose to take your time on easy walks or opt for a more challenging three or four-day trip through the mountains, hiking here is a real treat for outdoor enthusiasts. The marvel of this place is that you’re unlikely to encounter vehicles, settlements or even other people.

If the prospects of fresh air and natural wonders doesn’t do it for you, perhaps an incredible collection of ancient rock art painted by South Africa’s earliest inhabitants, the San people, will. Ukhahlamba is indeed one of two UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Kwaza Zulu Natal and it holds an incredible collection of ancient rock art painted by the San who would have lived in the Drakensberg for more than 4000 years. With over 20,000 individual rock paintings recorded at 500 different caves and overhang sites, Ukhahlamba is home to the largest and most concentrated group of rock paintings in Africa, south of the Sahara. The ancient paintings represent the spiritual life of the San people and depict everything from animals (mainly eland antelope) to LU X E NO I R 158

humans, therianthropes to ox-wagons and mounted men with rifles.

There are ample bases from which to explore the region for day treks or longer.

Guided hikes and scenic tours are offered and the Kwaza Zulu Natal (KZN) Wildlife Offices sell books, maps and provides information on various KZN Wildlife camps.

The following is a photo essay from a recent hike through the Drakensberg, with an overnight camp in a cave surrounded by ancient paintings from thousands of generations past. We hope this will inspire you to get out there and enjoy all that this spectacular mountain range has to offer.

MARRAKESH IN DETAIL: SNAPSHOTS FROM ONE OF NORTH AFRICA’S MOST BEGUILING CITIES Located in the foothills of Morocco’s snow-capped Atlas Mountains, Marrakesh is truly an enchanting place. A former Berber stronghold, the city has stood for close to a thousand years as a cultural, religious, and trading center for the Maghreb. Evocative, Marrakesh conjures up images of sandstone buildings, dusty streets and towering minarets against deep blue skies. Known as The ‘Red City’ thanks to the hue of the thick walls surrounding the old town, Marrakesh is a place to engage the senses and there’s no place better to do so so than in its famous souks.

These vibrant markets are a whirlwind of colour and noise, as throngs of people weave between tightly packed stalls exhibiting pyramids of brightly coloured spices, richly woven rugs and a thousand other goods. Smells waft through the souks, and the clamour of voices haggling and the cries of vendors competing for customers provide a constant backdrop to this ancient city.

It is almost impossible to walk through Marrakesh for more than five minutes without finding some architectural wonder to marvel at. From the exquisite gardens to the intricately carved archways to the ornate mosques - this is a place that displays its history in its man-made environment. The Medina in particular is a sight to behold: designated a UNESCO World Heritage Centre it is a wonderful mix of Arabic and Moorish architecture.

In our snapshots we share a series of images that capture the essence of one of North Africa’s most beguiling cities.

We focus on the ever-evolving face of Marrakesh’s medina, where the ancient craft heritage of generations of craftsmen and artists provides a compelling background to life in this bustling, ancient city.

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APPENDIX This represents a list of all the artists and designers featured in Issue I of Luxe Noir Magazine and their websites.

AAKS www.aaksonline.com Aboubakar Fofana www.aboubakarfofana.com Aida Muluneh www.davidkrutprojects.com www.addisfotofest.com Emeka Ogboh www.emekaogboh.com Hamed Ouattara www.studiohamedouattara.com Ifeanyi Oganwu www.armelsoyer.com www.expand-design.com Laolu Senbanjo www.laolu.nyc Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou www.jackbellgallery.com Lindokhule Sobekwa www.rubismecenat.fr www.ofsoulandjoyproject.tumblr.com Maki Oh www.instagram.com/maki.oh Maxhosa by Laduma www.maxhosa.co.za Makoko Floating School www.nleworks.com Sibusiso Bheka www.rubismecenat.fr www.ofsoulandjoyproject.tumblr.com Tatiana Etienne www.tatianaetienne.com YSWARA Teas www.yswara.com Zina Saro-Wiwa www.zinasarowiwa.com

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