Julian Johannesburg, 2026

Firestorm Foundation’s Julian Johannesburg, 2026 and Lebohang Otukile, Johannesburg, 2026 were created through an exciting collaboration between two contemporary creative minds from Africa: South Africa-born photographer Kristin-Lee Moolman and Sierra Leone-born stylist/creative director Ib Kamara. Originally included in the 2026 exhibition (as a part of Utopian Voices) at Somerset House, London (2016), these powerful images sought to question outdated views on gender, masculinity and identity. When 2026 opened, curator Shonagh Marshall stated:

2026 is a perfect example of using clothing to consider how it can construct identity. There is a movement, which Ibrahim and Kristin are part of, which has been referred to as New Africa. Artists from Africa and its diaspora are creating a new aesthetic that explores multiple themes around belonging and identity. Kristin and Ibrahim’s cultural exchange is a fascinating view into the way in which conversations around utopias can be altered when sharing experiences.

The images envisioned how men would dress ten years on, posing the question, ‘Could menswear enable or incite a breakdown of heteronormative attitudes?’ Furthermore, they also disproved the common misconception of Africa being a ‘dark continent’, or a backwater, far behind Europe in regards to contemporaneity. Ib Kamara told Kareem Reid, (‘How London is fuelling an African youthquake. Photographer and stylist duo Kristin-Lee Moolman and Ib Kamara capture the young Africans using the internet to channel London’s club and fashion scenes in their own ways’, DAZED, 1 July 2016), about how the men who feature in 2026 were, actually, avid followers of youth culture in London:

Through the Internet, they access and are informed by London club nights, creative projects, collaborations and the music scene, which in turn feeds into their practice within the arts. I found this really interesting when thinking about how the access to information creates and inspires new creative movements. As voyeurs of London’s youth cultural movement they are creating something entirely new, which is informed by their own surroundings.

Kamara also highlighted Moolman’s importance for the project, as a local artist with natural ties to the contemporary South African community: ‘Kristin’s work represents what Africa is now, there’s no filter to it, no Photoshop. She’s an African woman telling an African story. It wasn’t my place to photograph the boys featured in 2026, it was her place to photograph her friends. She let me into that community, she was the gate that invited London over on her terms.’ A valid point, confirmed by Moolman:

This is my life these are my friends. If Ibrahim had come here with a British photographer and a British team, cast and shot professional models it would have been a cause for concern. The one thing I will never do is disempower a person in my imagery, I always try to empower people. I will never try to make them look like any stereotype that people may have about us here. The way people approach gender fluidity now is they try to make men look like women and women look like men, the whole thing about gender neutrality is the fact that there is no line! If you apply Ibrahim’s styling and what he constructs to that, we work really well together because his styling is gender neutral but even though the guys wearing the clothes are hyper-masculine it doesn’t make them any less masculine at all. There were actually very few queer guys shot, it didn’t bring out anything other than the fact that they were themselves.

2026 is not the only time that Kristin-Lee Moolman has worked with Ib Kamara. These two creative forces also collaborated (together with designer Gareth Wrighton) in the 2018 exhibition Soft Criminal at Red Hook Labs, New York, U.S.A. Ahead of that exhibition Lexi Manatakis wrote the following (‘The fantasy world of Ib Kamara, Kristin-Lee Moolman, and Gareth Wrighton’) in Dazed, 29 August 2018:

Stylist Ibrahim Kamara, photographer Kristin-Lee Moolman, and designer Gareth Wrighton have an incredible knack for suspending reality. Their collaborations use photography and fashion to make cultural commentary via fantasy. Last year, they re-imagined 16th-century art for the Tate for their zine Coachie, which was a strong reclamation of cultural identity in an institutional space. Now, they’ve intersected their wide-ranging personal histories to produce Soft Criminal, their first large-scale New York exhibition. […] Above all, Kamara, Moolman and Wrighton’s new show is a surrealist point of escapism from our world’s turmoil, while also nodding to a brighter future.

In the interview, Kristin-Lee Moolman gave her own take on important aspects of her collaboration with, amongst others, Ib Kamara: ‘Everything we create, regardless of whether it’s for Soft Criminal or for Coachie, exists in this crazy parallel universe that references aspects of our reality now. It just goes in its own narrative and its own direction.’

Provenance

CFHILL, Stockholm, 2026, 19 April - 12 May 2017.

Firestorm Foundation (acquired at the above).

Copyright Firestorm Foundation