THE REMIX
THE REMIX
We made things. Beautiful, wearable, surprising things.
The Remix is a 55-piece collection of one-of-a-kind garments and bags created entirely from upcycled, reclaimed, and deadstock materials. Think towels turned into tote bags, old bedsheets reimagined as jackets, and discarded polo shirts stitched into shorts. We dusted off our sewing machines, raided closets and donation bins, and tapped into the magic of what already exists.
This project is about more than just clothes. It’s a practice in transformation, care, and creative rebellion. We designed style profiles for our collective members, thought deeply about how we want to be seen, and crafted pieces that reflect those wishes, all while reducing waste and rejecting the fast fashion cycle.
Each item holds layers of memory, texture, and intention. From Brooklyn belt factory webbing to vintage ‘80s charms, everything is made with love, storytelling, and a wink. Some pieces are adorned. Some are loud. Most are not for sale (except a few fanny packs), they’re offerings, examples, invitations.
The Remix is a remix of culture, craft, and care. It’s a celebration of process, adornment, and imagining alternatives that feel better, look better, and are better.
The Remix Fanny Packs
ADORNMENT
Adornment is done in collaboration with Tuft the World and can be ordered directly through Tuft the World’s website
SOFT SPACES: HOME GOING
SOFT SPACES: HOME GOING
We debuted a collection of original art pieces called Soft Spaces: Home Going.
This body of work that sits in the in-between, between memory and migration, between here and back home, between feeling like a cultural insider and always being just a little outside of it. As a collective of misfit creatives that share migration, our relationship to home is layered. When we’re away, our accents, our foods, our gestures mark us as Caribbean, but when we return, we’re cousins to our culture, close, but not quite. This project is about holding onto home in the ways we can, through the signs, sounds, and everyday materials that root us. In this next phase, we’re pushing deeper into the textures of belonging. Hand-painted signs and braided hairstyles become wayfinders, markers of direction, of self-determination, of knowing where we’ve been even when the path isn’t clear. Fruits like mango, cocoa, banana, and coconut show up again and again, not just as symbols of sweetness, but as reminders of labor, trade, and the ways our histories are tied to land and movement. We’ll be working with burlap coffee sacks, layering on print, paint, and collage, letting the roughness of the material speak to migration’s frictions, what gets carried, what gets left behind. Our figures, caught in moments of play or rest, challenge the idea that movement always has to be about struggle. Sometimes, migration is joy. Sometimes, it’s just being still and knowing you belong.
If you are interested in purchasing work from this series, email us, sales@mzicar.com for the pricelist and availability.
AR ENHANCEMENT OF ORIGINAL WORKS
We are blending analog and digital processes and experimenting with AR activations of some of the original works.
GALLERY
ABOUT DIAPHANOUS
Diaphanous: In it’s full iteration Diaphanous is a multi room experience. An immersive collection of art telling stories and guiding guests through a whimsical imaginative collection of experiences and material objects. This collection blends art, technology, and history to re-imagine and re-tell stories of the African Diaspora that have been excluded or marginalized due to racial and gender biases. Each offering embodies a theme of something or someone that could only exist now but reframed as if it did exist in a prior time, space, or dimension. we have proken d down this projects into a thematic catagories, Going Places, Ile Omi: House of Water, Soft Spaces and The Bottom End. This group of work is an extension of our Diaphanous series. You can learn more Diaphanous here.
NOTES FROM DIAPHANOUS
NOTES FROM DIAPHANOUS
Notes from Diaphanous is a collection of behind-the-scenes material culture and prototypes from the Diaphanous project. This exhibition at the Colored Girls Museum, running until Spring 2025, is part of the museum’s Intermission exhibition and features a motion-responsive installation, AR canvases, and detailed plans for the project. For this iteration of the exhibition, we will be focusing on soft spaces, channeling Sankofa through archival images, imagined photographs, and textile art that emphasize protection and preservation. Underpinned by the philosophy of Sankofa as a means to imagine the future, this exhibition is a blend of old and new technologies and protective practices.
Exhibiting at The Colored Girls Museum, Philadelphia, up until Spring 2025
ON HER MIND
ON HER MIND
For @blinkcincinnati We did a project mapped project on an existing mural. The mural features a little girl. We thought a lot about this little girl. Who is she? what is she thinking? Where is she now? She seemed watched but unseen. We focused on all those questions and decided to do a piece that was inspired by the possibilities for her and her community along with visual nods to tattooing (referring the RIP section of the mural). Lucky for us, we’ve got a tattoo artist in The collective so it was easy to draw from visual inspiration in that genre. On her mind is a soundtrack and visual journey that references ancestors present, parallel dimensions and all the things that can randomly pop into one’s head about future play and possibilities.
Here’s some project context:
Okay, so last minute we were added to the Blink roster to work with this unique mural. It’s actually multiple murals in one mural. The first layer says RIP RAPES and honors graffiti and tattoo legend Jason Brunson, aka Rapes One, son of prominent tattoo studio, Designs By Dana, founders Dana and Dot Brunson. We did not name this person so don’t ask… In 2017 Blink commissioned Lithuanian-born, Malaysian resident Ernest Zacharevic to create this mural, which is a portrait of a young girl living in the building (name unknown).
LIMITED EDITION PRINTS
To celebrate our Blink projection project ‘On Her Mind’ we teamed up with @diyprinting and @feigntofheart and have released 2 limited edition prints
GEE'S BEND
THE FULL SET
GEE’S BEND EDITION
The crew along with the Full Set (and her new quilt inspired nails) set out on a road trip last week to the incredible Gee’s Bend for the Airing of the Quilts Festival. It was all things color, fun, historic and magic. The stand out is the lessons in cooperative movement, the power of women and the glory of creative expression.
We sit on the shoulders of many.
Thank you @visitgeesbend for having us. Thank you @kendrasteppdavis and @toughdumplin for being down for adventures. Thank you @urbanarchivist and @museumofblackjoy for being a visionary.
CONNECTED
Earlier this year we did a creative project for a mural, Hardscape and Mini Documentary project Ms. Tootsie’s, and KeVen Parker.
So excited to share this with you. It’s a beautiful story or entrepreneurship, culture and food and hospitality bringing people together.
This was a Percent for the Arts project. Huge thanks to the a Benchmark Team and @helloyowie
It’s called ‘Connected’ located on the corner of Kater and 13th streets.
1301 Bainbridge St, Philadelphia, PA 19147
THE RIDE OUT
The Ride Out Project is a Mural and Mini Documentary project that explores and celebrates ride culture. The project focuses on motorbikes/ATVs, horseback riding, and bicycle riding as a community form and legacy in Philadelphia, particularly for the Philadelphia Black and Brown communities. This project elevates and honors these forms of community gathering and their multigenerational intersectionality. This project was done in collaboration with Murals Arts Philadelphia
Join us Saturday, June 29th 2024 for a screening and neighborhood party to celebrate the completion of this project. 1719 68th Ave Philadelphia PA 19126.
ILE OMI
Ile Omi: House of Water is a projection-mapped installation. It is inspired by intersectional African Diasporic culture, West African culture, and chronophysics, the field of physics that specifically deals with the concept of time and time travel. It showcases a thriving underwater community throughout various times. The imagined people are the descendants of the African souls lost during transatlantic slave voyages. The installation transports visitors to a futuristic world where these descendants have adapted to an underwater lifestyle and formed a thriving, communal society.
The projection mapping technology creates an immersive underwater environment filled with vibrant colors, textures, and sounds. The work contains a blend of iconography and images inspired by various traditional West African religions and Yoruba customs and imaginings of what a future derived from this experience would look, sound, and feel like. Visitors are invited to explore this underwater world and to witness the community’s rich cultural traditions, innovative technologies, and harmonious relationships with the surrounding marine ecosystem.
The project uses a combination of archival photography and AI-generated photographs, combined with a custom score to create an alternate reality where visitors can explore alternative histories and futures that were previously deemed impossible.
By presenting this alternate reality, the installation invites visitors to re-imagine the potential of humanity and to question the limitations imposed by history and circumstance.
Ile Omi is part of the Diaphanous series – An immersive collection of art, telling our stories and guiding guests through a whimsical, imaginative collection of experiences and material objects. This collection blends art, technology, and history to re-imagine and re-tell stories of the African Diaspora that have been excluded or marginalized due to racial and gender biases. Each offering embodies a theme of something or someone that could only exist now but re-framed as if it did exist in a prior time, space, or dimension.
additional support provided by Tough Dumplin, Garey Kennebrew and Shea Zephir
Thank you to our exhibition sponsors: Blink Cincinnati and Epson America
Thank you to our PAR-Projects and the season sponsors: ArtsWave, Ohio Arts Council, and Northside Bank & Trust Company.
GOING PLACES + DIY PRINTING
DIY PRINTING + MZ.ICAR Going Places
An Exhibition and Printing Play Date with DIY Printing Studio and The Mz. Icar Collective.
Where:
DIY Printing, 2511 Essex Place Studio #188 Cincinnati, OH 45206
When: on display til June 19th, 2024
These limited edition color screen prints are available here.
This is part of our new Diaphanous Series
The collective has been thematically working on envisioning best-case scenarios, visual pieces, and symbols that imagine the paths to get to those ideal scenarios. These collage pieces feature images from our archives. AI-generated images and illustrated pieces. Through this series of work, we are playing with new technologies, studying traditional West African spirituality along with diasporic ancestry, and using this to frame future paths.
We are thinking about how do we incorporate history, tradition, and technology as tools that help tell stories that inspire. Sometimes we just need to see ourselves in glorious alternative ways.
This collection of work envisions progress, movement, internal or external but mostly focuses on imagining how we get to our ideal scenarios.
