SignificantHearts

Idea Store

2009-03-28T03:07:00.009Z

David Adjaye was born in Tanzania to Ghanaian diplomats with whom he lived in several Arab metropolises before settling in the UK to study architecture. "As much as I was enjoying all the places I was moving to, I was incredibly traumatized by” the “inability to have roots, but then I realized that it was a strength rather than a problem." An exposure to multiple cultures has not directly influenced the aesthetic of Adjaye’s design rather constant and extreme adjustments to different societies tested his confidence and drove him to make sense of complexities. Adjaye’s adeptness to solve problems and provide inventive solutions to “post-city architecture” won him projects. Adjaye’s public assignments in London are for educational and artistic spaces that breed cross-cultural communication. Adjaye’s progressive reassessment of the London library scored a commission to build two Idea Stores that host an array of educational classes.
Six years ago, David began studying and archiving images of the fifty-three capitals on the African continent for an exhibition to promote positive imagery instead of disease, famine and war. He confidently conveys a balanced world of creativity and practicality in the spirit of his work and desires to educate.

The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie

2009-03-28T02:55:00.009Z

Rana Salam is a Lebanese-born British designer. “It was thanks to the British that I found my Lebanese art and culture.” Rana's work reflects the intelligible marriage of popular culture and the Arab world. Her prowess to communicate a unique blend of cultures does not intend to arouse controversy as it mostly illustrates a celebration of Middle Eastern pop culture. “My plan is to have a foot in both London and the Middle East, and as a result find some sort of equilibrium between two different art forms.” Rana’s career flourished at the start of the War on Terrorism when she embraced kitsch Arabic art and popular design in celebration of its culture rather than producing work that revealed the sinister facet of the conflict. Last year Rana Salam and Malu Halasa published an anthropological handbook exploring the cloaked world of Syrian lingerie. The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie study’s a playful aspect of Syrian sexuality and bolsters the western perception of what lies under the veil. “It’s saying that these people have fun and joy in their lives, and the Middle East isn’t all just about war and repression.”

Third Culture Creativity

2009-03-28T02:48:00.008Z

Third Culture Kids are practical when translating diverse ideas and mediating disparities or divisions. Budding TCK artists will galvanize, presenting valuable qualities affecting kindred industries, and influencing the next generation of TCKs in various bustling cities. TCK’s often act as mediators rather than leaders as they realize there is not one way of doing things. As global markets merge, TCK’s conceptualize a utopia where cultures blend rather than clash. Contemporary art, architecture, fashion, and music; politics, finance, transportation, and education; technology, medicine, spirituality, and ethics are influenced by people who are able to communicate an amalgamation of foreign ideas through a particular lens. TCK’s are a direct product of globalization and therefore, in an ideal position to conceptualize and design the lifestyle of a freshly emerging universal sub-culture. At the forefront of the global age, TCK’s can refine terms of creative expression within cosmopolitan culture.

It is easy to find examples that standout as fresh amongst the artistic influences of TCK’s. As the world shrinks by the virtue of technological inventions in communication and cheap airfare, a new generation of TCK’s are even more culturally in tune assimilating their ideas not only to a singular party but a variety. They are developing in a world now influenced by President Barack Obama, where multiculturalism is becoming widely accepted. TCK’s will find a hospitable nest for fabricating their ideas. However, as the number of global nomads increase, the homogenization of their influence becomes increasingly pragmatic, and even the universal experience of TCK’s do not make them immune. As more influential TCK’s are branded and multiculturalism becomes a design concept, one can only take comfort that such bastardization is not new to the world of art realizing that the very few masterful products will bypass gentrification.

Un homard dans le Chateau de Versailles, quelle horreur!

2009-02-15T17:55:00.003Z

From scavenger to exorbitant ornament, Koon's Dali-esque (made to look like a plastic, blow-up, paddle pool toy) replaced a crystal chandelier in the King's quarter. Hanging from the hooks of a 17th century embellished boudoir, the cast iron bearded crustacean was happily suspended in the public eye. An installment of this century's largest artist tycoon went up over four months ago yet it's mind-boggling brazenness continues to astonish. The rather adorable misfit installations in the plush chambers of the French hauteur enraged a large chunk of conservative France despite the curator's justifications. On an unsavory October day, the Hall of Mirrors was swarming with all sorts of tourists and locals visiting the Chateux in hope to decipher what they heard was a scandalously modern display of pop art in Versailles' most visited chambers.

The most covertly audacious ouvres in Koon's entire installation was that of The Large Vase of Flowers in Marie-Antoinette's chamber where each and every one of the one hundred and forty fertile pistils representing purity, vanity and beauty were in actuality one hundred and forty little assholes. The polychrome and carved wood flowers conspicuously mimic the ornate Baroque style bedroom exceeding an expense that not even Marie-Antoinette could have afforded in her prodigal heyday.

Inspired Flight

2009-01-18T23:51:00.002Z

Incoming
INSPIRED FLIGHT
A platform for creative nourishment, an interactive medium of dexterous intercontinental articulations, focuses on crowning the novel ideas of an untainted generation.

Inspired Flight visualizes individual narratives of international artistic inventors in an unconventional and redefining "magazine". It loves music, art, style, design, film, architecture, photography, illustration, literature, animation, interactivity, technology and bona fide press enough to amalgamate them into a sensory experience.

www.inspiredflight.tv

Mama Africa

2009-01-11T11:05:00.000Z

Jocular acrobatic acts descend on Dar es Salaam. Hosted in a conspicuous tent in the Peninsula, the circus brings back memories of the elaborate Chinese circus post 40 years. Only this time, all the acts are African.

Directed by Zimbabwean Winston Ruddle and Mongolian Tsende Erdeneshw, Mama Africa delivers a delightful extravaganza.

Winston was inspired by the Tanzanian Boys, an acrobatic team in the 1980's who visited Zimbabwe during the time of it's unique street breakdance obsession. Later teamed with contorsionist Tsende in 2001 after performing with his own crew in South Africa, Botswana, Australia and Germany, the duo turned to Africa in search for virtuosic circus acts for European gazers. Training acrobatics at their Hakuna Matata Acrobatics school in Kinondoni, Tanzania, Winston and Tsende gathered a motley group of acts for Europe's Africa! Africa!, Germany's Mother Africa and their own Mama Africa circus variety shows.

Mama Africa's dance soundtrack, the late 20th century costumes of neon spandex, and the performers' perma-grins fuse to purvey a peculiarly attractive sentiment.