'Under Construction' is an improvised performance with found objects and primary colours in an afrofuturist metropolis. This series explores the intricacies of belonging experienced by artists living between hemispheres and engaging with street/counter culture. With rapid infrastructural development and the changing face of African urban spaces, many remnants of our histories are being demolished and/or reclaimed. African diasporan youth are increasingly returning and engaging with this space in a bid to self-preserve, document, and prevent the destruction of traditional architectures of being. The performer upcycles construction materials as art objects, fusing elements of visionary fiction and expressing the everyday process of 'teleporting' across time and space. They intermittently 'insulate' themselves from eerie colonial mnemonics by mimicking nature, while reconstructing and reasserting themselves in their found surroundings. In panafrican spirit, this series also pays homage to black street fashion/cultures in the West that have engaged in similar processes of drawing inspiration from ancestral memory and the city space, all while resisting appropriation. 

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PHOTOGRAPHY & CREATIVE DIRECTION: ETHEL TAWE (@artofetheltawe)

STYLING & MODELING: GOULED AHMED (@xawaashking)

LOCATION: ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA