Camo Coat v2: The Garden Collection

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  • 137% contributed

Afrofuturity opens portals to ever-unfolding constellations of possibility in representation and empowerment. 2024 heralds the start of Octavia Butler’s prophetic sci-fi novel, Parable of the Sower, a text by which I’ve long been inspired in teaching and practice. In honor of this moment at the story’s beginning, I plan to develop Camo Coat v2: The Garden Collection, a series of abstracted, kaleidoscopic textiles that engage the significance of this text through photographic commemoration of sites, specifically gardens both formal and personal, made through activation of these ancestral mycelial networks “in search of our Mothers’ gardens.”* This project centers the creative work of Black women like Butler who have planted seeds of freedom dreams and paved the way for liberation theories and global postcolonial movements rooted in holistic traditions and in the matrilineal adventures and badassery from which I am descended by blood and by choice.

 

About This Project

The diary of Octavia Butler’s protagonist, Lauren Oya Olamina, begins on July 20, 2024, an important date that will be marked during this campaign. Her middle name evokes Oya, Yoruba orisa of whirlwinds and storms, as she sets off on a perilous journey through a post-apocalyptic California on fire, traveling northward to freedom, to the creation of a new world she calls Earthseed, and, ultimately, “to take root among the stars.”

The Camo Coat Collection serves as a conceptual and practical engagement with contemporary “dazzle camouflage” and ideas of protection and healing, especially for Black queer femme individuals in the urban landscape. It arose first in the Osanyin Commemorative Portrait Series of NEH Fellows amidst the flora of Emory University campus, as an archive of this historic gathering in Black aesthetics and sacred systems, specifically referencing Osanyin, the orisa of forest wisdom often depicted as half human and half tree. A spiritual camouflage translated to garment in coded pattern, the original Camo Coat Collection featured eight ensembles launched with monograph AFRIFUTURI 02022020 on this palindrome date with a beautiful community at Blanc Gallery in historic Bronzeville. The project responded largely to Chicago, to surveillance and the art of the shapeshifter, to movement and navigation within city and rural spaces, and to sites of respite and inspiration from lakefront skylines to prairie grasses.

CCv2: The Garden Collection introduces a series of site-responsive textiles as the first of this ambitious project’s three main phases, including research and travel, textile design and fabrication, and public launches. The initial goal for the campaign is to cover costs for Phase One of the project, which is the most critical piece of what will become the future CCv2 Collection. It entails travel to specific gardens in the U.S. that have important references to the Parable story and to my ongoing practice centering themes of trace, reclamation, and healing through body, textile, and architecture. At each location, I will create photographs which I will then develop using African fractal design concepts into commemorative textiles for the collection, as well as a series of Black portraitures mapping the points of journey. 

Travel will include California and Massachusetts, with additional destinations here in Chicago. Locations in California include the desert gardens of the Huntington Library in Pasadena where Butler lived and where her archives are housed, and a pilgrimage to the historic Noah Purifoy Sculpture Garden in Joshua Tree (referencing years of teaching his work as part of the Black Arts Movement and Black West and inspired by his sculpture and activation of the body in performance). On the other side of the country, in Massachusetts I will visit the MFA Boston which has acquired the Hip Hop Flounce Camo Coat from the original collection (modeled by Tonika Johnson of Folded Map) and photograph gardens in the vicinity, then to Western Mass for the historic Olmsted-designed campus at my alma mater Smith College (which includes Paradise Pond and campus Underground Railroad connections), and the healing gardens of chosen family centered at Bela Vegetarian Restaurant in Northampton, MA.

If I reach my initial fundraising goal early, ideally before the long-awaited Parable start date of July 20, then I will initiate a stretch goal to support the next phases of the project, which includes travel to other key reference locations in Morocco where I have been invited to a residency which will include photography within the Jnane Tamsna property gardens; to Senegal in a focus on water, West African textile, and embroidery during Dakar Fashion Week; and potentially to support future costs associated with the creation of and public launch activities for the official CCv2 Collection.

CCv2: The Garden Collection will be presented in 2025 along with next steps as supported by the additional phase stretch goals. Exhibitions may include Black women in Afrofuturism at the SFO Museum which, as an airport and center of international transit, will bring full circle the California connection with the Parable story’s travel from south to north. Ultimately, I plan to organize the CCv2 Collection ensembles launch featuring The Garden textiles. 

*In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens is the title of Alice Walker’s 1983 collected writings and originally an essay published in 1972, the year of my birth.

Thank yous

Contribute any amount or choose from the levels below.

• $22
  A personal thank you on social media + sneak peek ($22.00 is tax deductible.)
• $44
  Above, plus your name listed on project webpage and exclusive access to "The Garden," a 1-hour virtual design visit about the project’s development ($44.00 is tax deductible.)
• $88
  Above, plus 1 original textile print postcard from the new collection with handwritten thank you ($78.00 is tax deductible.)
• $111
  Above, plus a pair of paper solar glasses featuring new "CCv2: The Garden" textile collection design (launch souvenir) ($81.00 is tax deductible.)
• $222
  Set of four "CCv2: The Garden" textile print postcards (2 to keep, 2 to share) with handwritten thank you, plus solar glasses, access to The Garden, your name on webpage & social media thanks ($162.00 is tax deductible.)
• $444
  Furoshiki fabric square (20”x 20”) known as Shakuyonhaba, based on 1,200-year-old Japanese tradition of fabric gift wrapping, plus postcard with handwritten thank you, solar glasses, access to The Garden, your name on webpage & social media thanks ($314.00 is tax deductible.)
• $888
  Limited Collector’s Edition AFRIFUTURI 02022020 Box from launch, plus postcard with handwritten thank you, solar glasses, access to The Garden, your name on webpage & social media thanks ($0.00 is tax deductible.)
• $1111
  Wan Chuku Mystical Yam Mound Mini-Sculpture (1 of 2 created at La Becque Residency): 11” tall, custom wrapped by artist, plus postcard with handwritten thank you, solar glasses, access to The Garden, your name on webpage & social media thanks ($0.00 is tax deductible.)
• $2222
  Wan Chuku Mystical Yam Mound Miniature: 24” tall, matching the original in late arts visionary Peggy Cooper Cafritz Collection plus postcard with handwritten thank you, solar glasses, access to The Garden, your name on webpage & social media thanks ($0.00 is tax deductible.)
• $8888
  Pair of original Wan Chuku’s Mystical Yam Mounds (5’ and 4’ feet, free-standing soft sculptures) plus postcard with handwritten thank you, solar glasses, access to The Garden, your name on webpage & social media thanks ($0.00 is tax deductible.)

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D. Denenge Duyst-Akpem

Make a Wave Awardee

D. Denenge Duyst-Akpem is transnational “space sculptor,” whose award-winning teaching, art, and writing bridge modalities of ritual, design, ecology, and Afrofuturity. Her practice reflects an ongoing engagement with site, body, visibility, identity, and the politics of Black femme labor within …

View D. Denenge Duyst-Akpem's profile

• 5 updates
• 87 supporters

• Update 1: CCv2: The Garden Collection Reaches Campaign Goal on July 20, 2024!

  Posted on July 20, 2024

  

   

  Octavia Butler

  Greetings, Everyone!

  I'm thrilled to share that with your generous support, CCv2: The Garden Collection campaign has reached its goal today, July 20, 2024 which also happens to be the date that the story in Octavia Butler's prophetic Parable of the Sower begins! It's a fortuitous moment, and I am so grateful to each of you for your donations, for sharing the campaign, and for the encouragement along the way! Deepest gratitude and appreciation for you, for this community.

  Because the campaign runs through August 4, I will be continuing the campaign with a stretch goal, as 3AP artists do when they meet their goals early. Phase 2 will support additional sites and production of the collection. More on that to come but for now, I'm elated and so excited to share this journey with you! 

  I've posted images of commemorative Word Art inspired by this date and a reading from the book's first page to my Instagram @DenengeTheFirst and @TheCamoCoat.

  Warm regards,

  Denenge

   

  Update 2: Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

  Posted on July 20, 2024

  

   
  Update 3: Stretch Goal Reached!

  Posted on August 02, 2024

   

  Dear CCv2 Garden Community,

  It is my joy and honor to share that the stretch goal has been reached! $8,000+ on the first day of the 8th month! The numbers are numbering. ;) I'm deeply grateful and humbled to witness the support, love, and encouragement that so many people have shared during the course of this campaign and leading up to it with the original #02022020 collection. Thank you all so very much for donating and being part of this project. I'm excited to share the next steps with you as I embark on this design journey. 

  The campaign ends this Sunday on 8.4.2024. Thank you to Sara Slawnik, Director of Programs, Mesha Arant and all of the 3Arts and Studio Thread teams for their expertise and support through this campaign. 

  More soon and wishing you a beautiful start to August!

  Warm regards,

  Denenge

  Update 4: Campaign Success + Lion's Gate 8/8

  Posted on August 08, 2024

  

   

  Dear CCv2 Garden Community,

  Happy Lion's Gate 8/8! I hope all of the dreams you envision on this day will manifest abundantly!

  I'm happy to share that my campaign has concluded, and we have reached beyond the campaign stretch goal! I am thrilled and humbled by your generous support, and thank you so much for being part of this project, for helping to bring it into being.

  I will be sharing more updates in the very near future. For now, here is a still from an animation series I created and remixed today and over the past couple years based on the numbers 2 and 8 for palindrome and other significant dates since the original Camo Coat Collection launch on 02.02.2020.

  Warm regards,

  Denenge

  Update 5: Full Moon Eclipse Thank You!

  Posted on September 17, 2024

  

   

  On this Full Harvest Moon Lunar Eclipse, I send rays of moonlit gratitude to all who have supported the CCv2: Garden Collection through the 3AP Projects campaign @3ArtsChicago in the spirit of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and the journey to “take root among the stars”. 

   

  As one of the gifts to donors, I am sharing thanks to each person in a social media post just uploaded now to @DenengeTheFirst and @TheCamoCoat, speaking the magic of your names in honor and blessing on this night to the tune of Whitney Houston's "For the Love of You" whose gentle riffs seem to fit the sentiment of the moment.

   

  I offer my humble thanks for the support you have shown me and my practice, some of you over decades that we have been in community and family. I am grateful for you and to you, and look forward to sharing more steps along the way as well as the other gifts as part of the campaign. Stay tuned!

   

  To those who have supported through words of encouragement and acknowledgment, to those whose wise counsel and friendship have allowed this new form of my work the space and love to emerge: Thank you.

   

  To the Anonymous donors and those who elected out of social media notation: I appreciate you and thank you.

   

  Sharing here some lunar musings in sonic and visual form.

   

  Asé

   

  p.s. And if you weren't tagged in the post but would like to be, please reach out with your IG @ 

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