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Hana Fujimoto is a London based artist and textile designer. She is half Japanese and this cultural heritage plays a strong role in her identity and the work she makes. Her work is multidisciplinary and seeks to portray a personal and emotive journey through daily practice and rigorous research. Abstraction and unexpected humour are key themes in her work.To get to know her, her work and her view better, we asked her some questions,
What is your main inspiration and how do you translate it into fashion pieces?
My main visual inspiration is always taken from the mundane everyday life. Walking is a crucial part of my visual research. I walk everywhere and collect found items, take photographs and take notes from my stream of consciousness.
I then translate this information into abstract paintings and small sculptures, which then inform my design work. Abstraction and painting is always the key theme in my practice and my visual development holds the same importance as the final pieces.
I previously come from a fine art painting background so I always see my work as art rather than fashion; hence my final project being a collection of costumes for performance art.
Your designs are all very colourful. What is your relation to colour?For me, colour is mood and emotion. Colours seem to trigger an emotional response from people and that is always my objective: to provoke an emotional response. I create my colour palette through rigorous primary research then meticulously create my own colours from scratch by dying all my fabrics and making print pastes from pigments.
What do you want to say throughout your designs? What is your message?
My designs are an expression of a personal and emotional journey. All I want my work to do is to convey some sort of emotion that people can connect to in their own interpretation.
Although I take my practice very seriously, humour is always present in my work because I think art should be accessible to everyone and I want people to see that it’s not always so serious and makes the world a lighter place.
What is your goal as an artist?
I enjoy exploring my potential through various mediums whether it be painting, printing, sewing or something else. Making art and being creative for me is a compulsion and an on-going journey without an end destination.
What does the future hold for you?
The future is uncertain but for now, I am training to become an art teacher and I currently work in a special needs school. I am always continuing my practice and plan to create a new body of work soon for a group show. I have yet to spend my grant from winning the MullenLowe Nova Prize, so this will fund my next project.
Interview by Isabeau van Maastricht
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Homo has been a project in the works ever since the dawn of humankind. Officially launched in May 2018 the inclusion and possibility conversation goes back much further. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, the brand is led by Nicholas Komor and has a twofold mission: to reclaim and reframe the word “homo” and change the way we perceive each other.
Operating in a world thick with pop-up social causes aiming to change the status quo, “Homo” goes further than clicktivism. As Komor explains, “We aren’t a cause and we aim to evolve as humans do. We feel strongly the most important thing for humans right now is the need for unity, and so we want to provoke a human conversation. And what that means right now is just trying to get a handle on the word so we can start the healing process.”
Komor continues, “We chose the word Homo for this brand, because on its own it serves as the single-most unifying, lowest common denominator term for all of us who inhabit this planet together. We created Homo as a medium to remind people that we are all human, Homo sapien, and that everyone is Homo. It’s an absolute outlook.” The legacy of the word homo has hybrid roots in both Latin ( homō for man ) and Greek ( homos for same ), with the binomial classification Homo sapiens coined by Carl Linnaeus in his 10th edition of Systema Naturae, 1758. The first appearance of the term homosexual is found in an argument by Karl-Maria Kertbeny in 1869 against an anti-sodomy law. And in 1886, psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing published the widely popular Psychopathia Sexualis coining “homosexuality” as a sexual perversion, making him ultimately responsible for guiding people towards today’s pejorative slang-term “homo.”
Why hasn’t there been a Homo yet? Because of its negative connotation, the word homo remains blacklisted in many databases due to its ability to be used maliciously as slander. Because of the Lanham Act provision prohibiting the registration of trademarks that may “disparage . . . or bring . . . into contemp[t] or disrepute” any “persons, living or dead,” the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) reluctantly granted trademarks for “Homo” and “Everyone is Homo” in November 2016.
This same provision would come under national scrutiny in the June 2017 Supreme Court case Matel v. Tam, in which the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Simon Tam, lead singer of the rock group “The Slants” who had originally been denied a trademark for his band because of the disparaging term. The growing list of denied attempts to claim Homo elsewhere currently includes trademark systems for the United Kingdom and Italy, social media platforms Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter, and Nike’s customizable platform, Nike-iD. Komor states, “We really have a problem on our hands here, as a human race.”
Taking lead from the USPTO provision against disparaging terms, Homo has launched an online clothing shop featuring hand-dyed distressed t-shirts, casual knits, and a line of garments under their artist series, of which the first release is a one-of-a-kind graffitied Homo t-shirt. “Everything we do has been designed to be an opportunity to provoke a conversation, and yet it’s all underpinned by our unifying message and DNA,” says Komor. The Homo DNA is simple and states: 1. We are all born of the same matter; 2. We are all born to be unique and individual.
Demonstration of Homo’s visual protests can currently be seen materialized across all touchpoints of the brand, including the ‘belly-button’ logo, the skin-tone brand colors, and the temporary tattoo card that is added to each shipment of unique, hand-made goods.
In addition to regularly releasing limited edition pieces under Homo’s artist series, next steps for the brand include collaborations with individuals and companies to make a conscious effort to reclaim Homo together. Komor adds, “In order to reclaim [Homo], we need to break it and rebuild it.”
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Until the 29th of July 2018, the exhibition ‘Future Bags’ is held at The Museum of Bags and Purses in Amsterdam. This exhibition is in collaboration with a group of young designers from the Interactive/Media/Design programme of the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (KABK) who were assigned to design ‘the bag of the future’.
The students needed to think about what kind of new materials and technologies there would be available by the year 2050 and consider new forms of function, interaction, and social identity. They also had to ask herself questions as; ‘’Will hyperconnectivity mean the disappearance of bags altogether? Will our bodies themselves become ‘the bag’?’’
The exhibition focusses on topics like technology, interaction, hyperconnectivity and fashion and will be visualized by drawing, video clips, research into materials, and prototypes.
The Museum of Bags and Purses has a collection of more than 5.000 bags and purses and is the largest museum about this subject in the world. Next, to the ‘Future Bags’ exhibition, you can also see Margaret Thatcher’s iconic bag, Madonna’s Versace bag and many more unique and iconic bags and purses.
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RECYCLED GLOSSIER PACKAGING
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Glossier - the famous beauty brand - collaborated with designer Kim Markel to create a furniture collection made out of the recycled glossier packaging. “Empty Glossier jars and stone dust, a byproduct of quarrying, have been turned into furniture”. The classic millennial light pink shade of the packaging creates a magical unapologetically gauzy tableau that makes you wonder if the furniture is even real or that you are walking through a gigantic dollhouse.
Showcased at the Sight Unseen OFFSITE design fair in May, the furniture collection includes pieces like a cabinet, chairs, mirrors, (side) tables and a vanity table, that are all composed of Glossier’s waste bottles and other reclaimed plastics.
“The packaging is broken down and bonded with other plastics in large molds, then cured and sanded until an imperfect, slightly dissolved, a candy-like effect is achieved,” says Markel to the curator of the design fair. “It takes over 50 jars to make a single chair.”
The approach of recycling plastic from a well know the company to create something totally different adds an extra layer to the traditional product design process of problem-solving. This method could result in a greener world in the future.
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EVENTS
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TREND SEMINARS
The HOUSE OF COLOURS
Home & Interior 2020
August 14, 2018
NEW YORK
AW 19-20 ENLIGHTMENT
August 15, 2018
NEW YORK
SUMMER 2020 COLOUR &TREND PREVIEW
August 15, 2018
NEW YORK
Details & Bookings
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TALKING TEXTILES
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TALKING TEXTILES #2
The wild and vibrant second issue of TALKING TEXTILES is organised around the culture of cloth. In this trend magazine, the mood is up and creativity is on the loose, celebrating the revival of textiles. This issue is filled with remarkable developments in textiles, art, clothes and interiors, from artisans and artists to mills, manufacturers, designers and innovators as well as talented graduates. With colour, textile and yarn forecasts by Li Edelkoort, a whirlwind of floating fibres, harvested yarns, tubular colours, woven fences and knitted architecture will fuel readers’ creative energy.
€60 plus shipping & handling
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MORE TRENDS
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TREND TABLET
Trendtablet explains how trends grow, evolve and flow, and helps us better understand and perceive how they interact in our daily lives. this tool accessed for free is open to comments and new ideas, please contribute and be part of our network .Enjoy!
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ANTI_FASHION
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This much-talked-about and thought-provoking manifesto by the world’s most respected trend forecaster covers the 10 main issues that indicate the fashion industry has reached breaking point. Edelkoort courageously confronts marketing and advertising, as well as challenging education, materials, manufacturing, retailing, designers, fashion shows, the press and consumers alike. This means that the economy of clothes will take over from the turnover of fashion. Therefore trend forecasting has changed as well, taking its leads from social change and finding creative ideas within lifestyle trends and consumer behavior. A break-through philosophy focusing on textiles, garment-making and the imminent revival of couture. It’s time to simply celebrate clothes!
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BLOOM FAITH
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Confronted with the adversary of human designed disasters and manmade political scandals paralyzing our planet and countries, people’s only recourse becomes faith, an almost forgotten principle. To have faith in the spirit of survival, to have faith in creative forces able to rebuild society, an intrinsic need to believe in the human race, especially in moments of bewildering despair. We need to trust our instincts to build a better future, full with genuine love towards ourselves and others, even those at fault. Being able to forgive, to understand, to comprehend, to taste the fear in others. To pledge an awareness of altruism, script a gospel of compassion. Desire needs to be embedded in empathy.
Recognizing their inspirations and yielding to innate creative urges, artists and designers will build up the needed confidence to create new matter, landscape other horizons, design decorative objects, weave unusual fibers, draw non-existent flowers, created with the deep conviction that aesthetic expressions will resonate with others and are able to heal and care for people. Faith grows from future generations, professing their reliance on inner strength, convinced to reroute society the way they see it; convivial, cooperative, concerting, concerned, a society where truth remains an important quality and flexible forms of constancy help to compose the rhythm of existence.
Lidewij Edelkoort.
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