Afrosartorialism

“Talents” is a space to showcase and learn about the work of emerging creatives in the fields of black fashion, photography, and fine art.

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My Name is Diana Ejaita, Berlin-Based textile designer and fine artist. All of my work is definitely influenced by both my Nigerian and European origins. I like to play with the geometrical, ancient african simbologies and organic forms which I encounter through researches and daily life. I like to play with optical effects using the forms as a kind of unconscious therapy through a mix of more rigid or softer patterns.

 

Repetition as well as superposition of layers is one of the techniques I like to use: one single form if used in the manual printing techniques and in a repetitive way gives as a final result a complex texture creating a pattern where each single shape defers from the other, it gives the a kind of “unity through the diversity”. The result can be pretty hypnotic although the forms are if we can say “minimalistic” or “simple”.

The original influence I got was through the study of Nsibidy, I liked to use something that seen from European eyes looked just abstract but if studied and questioned would reveal something deeper than an abstract form because each of them has a meaning it’s a kind of universal language that we all know but we just unlearned how to read.

I like to start my work by engraving wood and make stamps as some textiles tradition before industrialization and digitalization of production was done and I like that through that process it is possible to distinguish a more organic touch , the “hand made “effect which if mixed with a simple and more western clothing cut kind of brings a balance.

I am a big fan of black and white, I like when big contrasts are united and b/w use is the strongest way to obtain that. I am in love with all of the African textile tradition I love the dominancy of color the strong character it has but I really love b/w so as I am born in Italy and spend most of my life in Europe where the “freedom of color” is very shy I want to keep this strong character with the optical repetitive contrast.

 

WEARYOURMASK is a young Brand, the textile design almost happened as good accident, as a painter and silkscreen printer I loved to print on any surface and one of them occurred to be textile.. you can imagine how it developed. With wearyourmask project as well as with fine arts or graphic design works I work to unite the two cultures I was raised in ( Nigerian and Italian) and kind of take a proudness out of it,create my own poetry.