ILE OMI: HOUSE OF WATER
ILE OMI: HOUSE OF WATER
Ile Omi: House of Water is a large scale, multi-channel immersive video 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 video installation 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 communities rich cultural traditions, innovative technologies, and harmonious relationships with the surrounding marine ecosystem.
The project uses a combination of archival photography, 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.
GOING PLACES
GOING PLACES
An Exhibition and Printing Play Date with DIY Printing Studio and The Mz. Icar Collective
These limited edition 10 color screen prints will be available on our site this 4/20.
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.
CLEARLY FOR WARBY PARKER
CLEARLY
We are so excited to announce our recent work with Warby Parker.
This piece entitled ‘Clearly’ was created for the new Marietta Georgia location.
You can check it out in person at the brand new store location located at 3625 Dallas Hwy #615, Marietta, GA 30064
SHE IS HERE
SHE IS HERE for BED STUY WALLS
We decided to play a little bit on this one. This piece is entitled “She is here: A Declaration for Bed Study” we had a ton of fun painting our third outdoor mural in Brooklyn. This mural features our lines triangles and a few of the characters we’ve been developing through our soft space series.
A declaration for Bed Stuy
We had the honor of creating this piece last weekend for @bedstuywalls it was such a pleasure. Huge thanks to @miki__mu and @artface7 for organizing such an incredible event and pulling together so much talent!
Right across the street from 626 Lexington Ave. Brooklyn, NY 12233
TRANSITIONS
TRANSITIONS
Over the summer we were invited by Sprocket Murals to create a mural in York, Pennsylvania. We did a little bit of research and realized the area is in quite a bit of transition. We wanted to channel this into this new piece and title transitions and with it, we decided to incorporate our signature triangles representing balance along with portions of various faces blending one into the other.
QUANTUM LEAP
QUANTUM LEAP
“Quantum Leap” is a bold and dynamic 10x22ft mural that embraces a future-leaning perspective while paying tribute to the vibrant individuals who energize the heart of Philadelphia. Through a vivid interplay of colors, we celebrate the city’s resilience and authenticity. This artwork weaves a narrative of travel, migration, and constant movement, deeply embedded in the city’s ethos. By juxtaposing the present city skyline with visionary architectural elements, the piece beckons viewers to envision a boundless and progressive urban landscape. “Quantum Leap” encapsulates the essence of Philadelphia’s spirit, portraying the convergence of past, present, and future that fuels its perpetual transformation.
This interior mural was commissioned for 1735 Market Street Philadelphia PA
Thank you @silversteinproperties for the commission.
LET'S PLAY
LET'S PLAY
Let’s Play is a celebration of this gathering space at the Shipyard in Green Bay. It features the branding colors and font in a geometric arrangement, as well as some of the endangered species in the area, including the gray wolf and whooping crane, and white-tailed deer. The patterns in the design are inspired by the Menominee people and serve as an acknowledgment of the land in which the space exists.
OTHERWORLD
SOMETHING YOU CAN FEEL
When Otherworld approached us to create an installation that took up a whole room and considered all sensory nodes. We were over the moon.
A lot of the experiential places are very digital and we decided we wanted to take an extremely analog approach to this project. We wanted to be slow, deliberate, and purposeful. We considered the process and the experience of making the piece as well as the experience of the. We wanted something that really encouraged viewers to engage in something tactile. So we set out to do a very ambitious tufted project. We proposed a piece called ‘something you can feel’. It’s comprised of multiple panels of hand-tufted drips, pom, poms, hair door, knockers and plastic orbs with the scraps for my pom poms. It even includes upcycled crocheted fabrics. We’ve been on a big world-building kick and often spend a lot of time imagining various futures this piece and bodies it through its mural, which is black light responsible along with the tufted panels. We wanted to concentrate on slow transitions. The lighting in the room transitions from bright light to black light. The music is considered in this piece and every corner of the space offers a different experience as each corner has a soundtrack that is more dominant depending on where you stand in the room.
It seems as though it’s been increasingly challenging to find grounding as a society as a people, and we decided we wanted to create a piece that encourages that form of grounding. We definitely utilize technology, but we focused on very traditional methods and wanted to encourage a cozy space with a future-leaning ethos our future includes the babies but it also includes the elders and this is depicted in the mural featured on the piece.
Much gratitude to Otherworld both the Columbus @enter.otherworld and Philadelphia @otherworld.philly teams for the opportunity huge thank you to the @fkbstudiofor the assistance and support on the project. And massive gratitude to our adjacent member, Gina Giles of @artfully.gigi Huge thanks to all of our friends and family that came through Drank tea and pom pommed with us throughout the winter. We hope to do it again soon.
MZ & DORITOS
MZ & DORITOS
We are in full swing of mural season and have barely had a moment in the studio. All the wonderful projects are blooming including this one. In route to another project we had to pop by our studio to pick up this beautiful press release package of our partnership with Doritos. We couldn’t be more thrilled to help celebrate this year’s change-makers and elevate all of the cool work they’re doing and celebrate it with this beautiful packaging. The artwork’s theme is all about Thriving!
This limited edition bag is available nationwide at Walmart. While we were on the road, we noticed it hadn’t hit stores in Green Bay or Milwaukee, but we’re getting messages from across the nation of folks picking up this bag in local stores. Grab a few if you can.
Here’s a link to the project!
GEM OF THE LAKE
GEM OF THE LAKE
Did you know that? Erie, Pennsylvania is known as the gem of the lake. We had the honor of creating this mural in celebration of this legacy in Erie, PA.
Through this project we learned that young children are walking really long distances to get to school due to lack of busing and so the city decided to create a mural initiative to promote, limit the blight and have beauty throughout the city that all people could enjoy.
For this piece, we tapped into the energy of water, and the literal depictions of gems and wanted to reframe the narrative of Gem on the lake to be a celebration of the people being the gems of Erie.
And it’s augmented.
It’s located on the @1020_collective building in Erie Pennsylvania
Random:
- Gems take a long time to paint.
- there are bunnies everywhere in Erie, just bouncing all around. They kept us company the whole time
- Boom lifts are Tetris/math/puzzle equations and operating them should count as credits towards math…just staying
This project was supported by @erieartsculture and done in conjunction with #viewsfestival