Camo Coat v2: The Garden Collection
3ARTS MATCH
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.
- $22A personal thank you on social media + sneak peek ($22.00 is tax deductible.)
- $44Above, 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.)
- $88Above, plus 1 original textile print postcard from the new collection with handwritten thank you ($78.00 is tax deductible.)
- $111Above, plus a pair of paper solar glasses featuring new "CCv2: The Garden" textile collection design (launch souvenir) ($81.00 is tax deductible.)
- $222Set 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.)
- $444Furoshiki 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.)
- $888Limited 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.)
- $1111Wan 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.)
- $2222Wan 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.)
- $8888Pair 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.)
D. Denenge Duyst-Akpem
Make a Wave AwardeeD. 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 …
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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 ButlerPosted on July 20, 2024
Update 3: Stretch Goal Reached!Posted on August 02, 2024Dear 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 8/8Posted 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 @
Update 6: CCv2: The Garden Collection UpdatesPosted on February 10, 2025
Dear 3Arts Artist Projects Community,
Happy Year of the Wood Snake and celebrating the new possibilities that this new energy brings in 2025.
This is a long and detailed share after the last few months of whirlwind travel, discovery, and revelations across the United States and across continents. It's taken a moment to collect myself and gather my thoughts especially with all we are living through at this time.
Phase One of CCv2 supported in large part by the 3AP campaign was a tremendous experience with travel to the gardens detailed in my description and additional ones I made to sure to visit along the way including the Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts; Smith College campus gardens and green house in Northampton, Massachusetts; the Huntington Library and Gardens in Pasadena, California where Octavia Butler lived and where her archives are held; Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum and Joshua Tree National Park in California; and the Getty Museum and gardens including an unexpected exhibition there titled Lumina on the use and creation of light in art through history, particularly in illuminated manuscripts which was my focus in undergraduate studies. Also, by chance coinciding with my visit, I was invited by dear friends Buki and Ezra—filmmakers with whom I stayed and have worked on Afrofuturist projects like The Golden Chain which premiered in Chicago with Black Radical Imagination series and has traveled worldwide including Whitney permanent collection—to the opening of Astra Lumina, a magical light show activating the South Coast Botanic Garden.
Your generous support went toward Phase One (the U.S. components), and while Phase Two was included for the Stretch Goal, I cobbled together my own funds in order to support the opportunity for two garden-related residencies including one in Spoleto, Italy with the Center for Art, Design and Social Research led by Chris Bratton (who I last saw two decades ago when he was a Dean at SAIC during my MFA!). This call for the Laboratory for Planetary Arts came up suddenly in September with a session specifically focused on the historic gardens at Villa Pianciani maintained by a professor of ecology and granddaughter of the family. I was accepted and spent a week there with an incredible cohort of artists/practitioners from around the world, each working on individual and group projects to activate the site and consider/study the histories of the landscape. It was Divine timing for sure because traveling to Italy allowed me to visit the Venice Biennale for the first time in all my decades of work as an artist/in the art world, and in my two days, I decided to give my focus to the African pavilions and specifically Nigeria Imaginary, the spectacular exhibition including the work of Yinka Shonibare MBE RA who I had assisted 22 years ago for the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina. Signs and symbols indeed. I was able to enact a gesture of honor for his work and its indescribably importance to my life/practice by prostrating fully before the work, something that is done traditionally as the highest praise for an elder/luminary. The emotion was high and even the gallery attendants were crying with me, sharing that they had been deeply moved throughout the run of the exhibition by the power of this presentation and people’s engagements with the work.
It was vitally important to address Shonibare’s work in this way, as an activation in my own body and in honor of the site, of Venice and its histories. I have offered this gesture of bowing to one other artist, Barbara Chase Riboud’s monumental work, and at the Serpentine in November 2022, I bowed before her Women of Venice installation of three pillars (Femme Noire Debout de Venise / Standing Black Woman of Venice) so it was fitting to bring these connections together in the context of my practice and for upcoming writing, noting also the numerological symbolisms that connect every part of this journey and the reunions it has included.
I was also able to make the trip to Morocco to spend a week after being invited as a Creative-in-Residence at the renowned resort Jnane Tamsna, founded by visionary designer Meryanne Loum-Martin and her husband botanist Gary Martin who has designed all of the gardens and property layout in connection with historic ways of attending to the land and sustainable methodologies. I toured the gardens with him and also had the opportunity to photograph extensively indoors and outdoors, do photo shoots with the Chicago-specific Camo Coat that I brought with me across the world to these locations, and to photograph portraits of Meryanne as part of my ongoing series commemorating extraordinary women and in connection with the Osanyin Commemorative Portrait Series of NEH Fellows in Atlanta, Georgia which started this whole camouflage and protection project back in 2014.
This is a tumultuous moment in history—always—where Octavia Butler’s writings are more prescient than ever, prophetic and right on time. After dancing on the Pacific Ocean coast in Santa Monica (44 years since my feet last touched the waters of California’s coast), offering rituals in honor of my late mother at the beach in the state she was born—my Motherland—I was devastated in January to witness from afar the fires that consumed so many people’s homes, historic neighborhoods—Altadena where Butler lived—and destroyed the very area where I had just recently been standing. In reaching out to offer what I could to friends, loved ones, extended community, I felt Octavia’s writings even more present. For those in California and those who have loved ones and connections there as we all do in some form or another, I pray for healing and rebuilding.
I’m still slowly going through thousands of photos to create video travelogs posted on IG @TheCamoCoat so check me out there for updates. I created a video to share with you but this platform doesn't allow video uploads so here is the link to the post on Instagram: ttps://www.instagram.com/p/DFwqN_0OZVA/ It provides a small glimpse into the design inspiration journey to Huntington Gardens, Astra Lumina, and Joshua Tree along with Butler quotes shared by activist YK Hong and the Slow Factory (fashion activism) connected to the February 1, 2025 entry in Lauren Oya Olamina's journal in Parable of the Sower. Please check out the video if you can!
I have also begun work on the textile designs of CCv2: The Garden Collection and will soon share more about the campaign giveaways! In exhibition news, the Osanyin Camo Cape from the original collection will be featured in May 2025 at SFO Museum in San Francisco, California for an exhibition highlighting women of Afrofuturism.
Versions of the future based on the past Butler referenced for the Parable series may have been written, but we still can choose how to move forward and manifest our futures in expanded ways. Cheers to light, “lumina”, and the hope it brings for a new day. Thank you so much for being part of this journey with me, for your support in every way.
Warm regards,
In solidarity,
Denenge
Update 7: *Additional NotePosted on February 10, 2025
*I wanted to share an additional note with regard to the Phase One and Two funding. I share this as per the 3Arts program so that you are appraised as to where the funding has been utilized in connection with the project description and plan.:
Phase One was for the U.S. portion of the trip and to produce the first iterations of the textile designs and campaign giveaways, so part was to go toward developing the physical collection. The plan for the U.S. component included two cities and gardens in Massachusetts and locations in California (Huntington in Pasadena, Joshua Tree both national park and Noah Purifoy), and I also made it to the ocean to include this in the work as well. Even for the savvy planner, travel is expensive, and there were some issues with a major plumbing and construction emergency at one place I had intended to stay for a longer period in Los Angeles so I had to move to a hotel for a few nights on the fly. As can happen in life, difficult surprises and exciting opportunities come up, and the funds had to be managed creatively to allow for changes in plan. But I am very proud of everything I was able to accomplish across multiple states and cities towards this life-affirming project. As Octavia wrote, God is Change.
The additional $2,225 of the Stretch Goal for Phase Two was towards the international component, at the time of the campaign centered on the invitation to Morocco residency (which did not provide stipend or travel but all lodging and two meals a day provided at Jnane Tamsna), then with the surprise opportunity the Laboratory for Planetary Arts with CAD+SR in Spoleto focused on gardens for which I paid travel and applied for and received a 90% scholarship. There are other cities and states I visited with gardens, flora, and fauna that will be included in the designs which I found ways to fund in order that I could cover as much territory as possible as efficiently as possible and as expansively for the sake of the larger project.
I also made sure that while I was in each location, city, and country, that I visited as many of the well-known and noteworthy gardens and art historical sites as possible such as the Yves Saint Laurent Museum and Jardin Marjorelle, the famous blue gardens, and the Secret Garden in the Medina recommended by Meryanne Loum-Martin of Jnane Tamsna who offered many important connections within the city of Marrakech. I was also able to visit the shop of Hassan Hajjaj, the renowned photographer whose Kesh Angels series transformed how we think of African photography and is a key part of my Survey of African Art course, and the couture shop of Maison Artc who was featured in the VA London exhibition Africa Fashion for which I consulted in early development workshop for the original London exhibition. The Original Camo Coat is featured and discussed in the catalog, and I presented on the project at the VA London Africa Fashion Conference in November 2022. The National Art Library at VA also acquired one of the limited edition AFRIFIFUTURI 02022020 book boxes. (For those in Chicago, the SAIC Flasch Artists' Book Collection also has a copy you can visit to check out.)
There is much more I am slowly detailing in travelog posts at @TheCamoCoat on IG as I go through the photos, video, and other mementos from the journey.
Thanks again for your support and more soon!
Update 8: *NEW* Herbal Healing SeriesPosted on February 12, 2025
Greetings, CCv2 Garden Community!
Happy Full Moon! I'm writing to share a new series just launched--my first YouTube channel--titled Herbal Healing Series, an extension of the larger Camo Coat project, brand, and mission to consider garment and accessory as vectors of healing and protection. Part of the ecology and sustainability focus of my work highlighting gardens includes research into plant healing. For many years, I have collected herbs from organic farmers and practitioners locally and globally to support my own healing process through illness, surgeries, and daily life. I've amassed quite a beautiful few cabinets full of herbs, some of which I've not yet had the opportunity to try but had acquired in order to explore further, and I've been wanting to create a video series as both archive and educational opportunity.
This series provides a way for me to educate myself on what is in my cabinet collection and to share this holistic knowledge with others. While I am certainly not a medical doctor nor am I prescribing in any way--this is for "entertainment purposes only! Please see your doctor for support specific to your conditions."--the series will allow for a journey through not only floral and vegetal remedies and supports but also a way to highlight primarily women-owned farms and other resources that have been deeply transformative in my healing journey from which others may also benefit.
Many of the flowers and plants I will be sharing are also featured in the photographs from gardens during my 3Arts campaign-sponsored travels and will find their way into the new CCv2: The Garden Collection designs (and the campaign giveaway items!), continuing with the textile healing and protection theme. More connections on that will be shared.
For now, check out my first series episode on Chamomile and Calendula here, and please like, comment, and subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdGEJsOzgRw
As always, thank you for your tremendous support and enthusiasm for this project and journey, and thank you for being part of the Camo Coat Community!
In light,
Denenge
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Thank you to the following for contributing to 3Arts with the recommendation that we support this project.
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