Love, creativity, battles, and identity: the Week 4 PhotoVogue collections are here to say something
The best art makes you feel something–and want to do something about it. The PhotoVogue NFT Collection continues to raise the bar with meaningful messages behind each new drop. Buying this art is a signal that you support their mission and their work. Explore and collect here.
Lukundo Lula Musonda is a multidisciplinary artist from Zambia, currently living in the United States. Her artwork is primarily inspired by cultural narratives and behaviors. In her work, she navigates the complexity of identity by exploring geographic influences and cultural beliefs — questioning the things that become tradition and form the status quo.
Lukundo’s NFT collection, To Zambia from Love, was inspired by a curiosity about where she came from. Her journey led her to an analysis of the seven official vernacular languages and tribes of Zambia. To Zambia from Love is symbolic of the current intellectual, social, spiritual, physical, occupational, emotional, and environmental journey that Lukundo finds herself on as a woman, a Zambian, an artist, an African, and human who is worthy of a greater piece of history than has been afforded her. Her NFT collection is an ongoing story, shaped by the wonder Lukundo discovers for the young and old people she calls her countrymen and by the ever-present question of where they would all be without the colonialism of their culture, languages, and history.
Jo Fetto is a photographer and director, currently based between London and Berlin. Their distinctive and anarchic spirit has led to widespread recognition of both their personal work, and their editorial and commercial projects. Their images and films draw on themes related to identity, gender and body politics. Jo approaches their art with a belief that photography often reveals more about the photographer than their subjects, embodying a dualism of technicality and subconsciousness.
Jo’s NFT collection, Sir, what?, is a window into the artist’s queerness, subversion, and rawness. Each piece in the collection, in its own production, embodies a celebration of the body and its fluids. Jo approached this collection with the intent to define their own origins, while also re-defining and saying goodbye to their masculinity, and searching for a new beginning.
Guilherme da Silva is a São Paulo-Milan-based photographer who has been taking photographs since he was a teenager. Finding subjects in his friends and people he meets online, most of da Silva’s work features members of the LGBTQIA+ community. As a queer person himself, developing his photographic process has been a journey of self-discovery. He pours himself and his personality into his images, viewing each portrait he takes as a self-portrait of sorts.
His NFT collection for the Voice x PhotoVogue residency is composed of portraits of his friends in São Paulo’s queer community. “Being a member of the LGBTQ+ community is a daily fight for our rights. Taking pictures of my friends is an exercise in self-discovery and, most of all, a way to show these faces who are, most of the time, denied by the system.”
Hakeem Shabazz-Norris is a North Carolina-based artist who doesn’t capture photos, but rather, moments in time. He approaches his work by placing people in situations and simply allowing them to be who they are. Shabazz-Norris is guided in his art by a desire to express that we are all humans & humans are art. Especially African-Americans.
Hakeem’s NFT collection, Self Journey, pays homage to the people in his life who have helped the artist on his journey. He made this collection to heal his younger self from harmful stereotypes impressed upon him by the world. As a young black man, he was conditioned by society to never fully express himself and embrace his creativity. This collection is a quest for justice for his younger self — it is the story of the artist’s journey of self expression and creativity.
Lisandro Suriel was born and raised in Saint Martin, an island where the Atlantic and Caribbean waters meet. As a child of the African diaspora, he found no formal institution ever introduced him to the idea that his history and identity might extend beyond being a descendent of slavery. His photographic journey arose from the need to reclaim his own history and identity beyond the traditional Caribbean narrative framed by a one-dimensional history of colonialism.
His NFT collection, Realms of Soualiga, is both a pictorial and textual exploration of afro-indigenous cosmology. Rather than exploring over-told narratives of colonialism and slavery, this collection focuses on alternative histriographies that exist at the root of Black Atlantic identity. Realms of Soualiga is a reclamation of indigenous mythology. It touches on themes of femininity, notions of Blackness, and introduces cosmological thinking from a marginalized perspective. Lisandro’s ultimate goal is to inspire a more just reality for BIPOC.
Jude Lartey is a Ghanaian artist, born and bred in Accra, Ghana. He preaches art & fashion through his visuals. His NFT collection, New Masculinity, explores and documents notions of masculinity in his homeland. He uses his iPhone to photograph people in his community with various attributes of masculinity: body physique, facial structure, vigor, etc.
His collection is a reflection on societal expectations of masculinity and the ways in which those expectations are limiting and exclusionary. The patriarchy has created barriers to progress and creates a toxic cycle that hinders equality amongst men who exist outside of socially accepted forms of masculinity.
Jooeun Bae is a collage-photographer. Born in South Korea, she moved to the US at the age of 15. Her artwork is inspired by the harmonious melding of her Korean roots, her American culture, and her own human nature. Mirroring her own growth process, her art is collaged together by mixing different elements to create something new. Jooeun tells stories with manually and digitally processed collages — the mediums allow her to make invisible things visible.
Her NFT collection, The Four Seasons, is a photo collage series that reinterprets a collection of paintings of the same name by Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Visually, the collection utilizes photographs of seasonal fruits and vegetables, adorned with facial features to highlight a hope for harmony.
Miora Rajaonary is a documentary photographer born and raised in Madagascar and currently based in Mauritius. Through her work, she strives to find new angles and stories on cultural and environmental issues in contemporary Africa. She left Madagascar when she was 18, returned at 25, and left again at age 28 — her migrant status is a big part of her life, her identity, and her art.
To Miora, migration is the reverberation of a development trajectory that is failing young people. Her NFT collection was born from the loss of faith in the institutions and the unfailing hope migrants have in themselves. For her collection, STILL, Miora collaborated with African students living in Mauritius. To create the photographs, Miora incorporated quotes she discovered during her research, which reflect the state of mind of young African migrants.
Valentine Bo is a Ukranian artist living and working in Indonesia. He is a multidisciplinary artist with practice in photography, drawing, architecture, and sculpture. His interests lie in various psychological phenomena that arise in modern society.
His NFT collection, Foreign Objects, explores human-caused environmental destruction. While living in Bali for the past four months, Valentine noticed that amongst the beautiful natural landscapes and seascapes was an increasing amount of plastic refuse. He created this collection to reflect on a very obvious problem that was affecting Bali’s residents — 90% of whom live within 1 km of a river. According to a study conducted by Bali Partnership, an estimated 33,000 tons of plastic enter Bali’s rivers every year.
Rydel Cerezo is a visual artist born in the Philippines and currently based in Vancouver on the unceded and traditional territories of Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. His work investigates the space between sexuality, religion, and race. He is interested in how these disparate themes metaphorically and visually coalesce.
With his NFT collection, Dove, Rydel explores how Queerness, Filipino Identity, and kink culture can combine to create subversive theories and expressions that grant the minority body freedom from colonial structures.
