One of three student works shown
The denim shred bag is a one-of-a-kind tote that belongs to me. It has been my go-to bag for three years, and it's saturated with the essence of who I am and my lived experience. After diligently working on my portfolio, I was given the opportunity to enroll in the AP Studio Art class and use fashion as my medium. Enduring life in a small town as a gay, effeminate Black man with immigrant African parents has left its mark. My intersectional identities were fragmented, oscillating in and out. Converging them and understanding who I was, without the pretense of pleasing an audience, was my goal in designing the type of person I would become before entering college. The concept of the shred bag, inspired by the Studio Art assignments, would not leave my mind. It was an esoteric bag that contrasted brilliantly with homogeneity and reflected my praxis of identity. While collecting the materials, I quickly discovered that sourcing denim would be expensive. An upcycled bag was an easy second choice. I took to social media to gather old jeans.
Upcycling has been a pillar of my work as a designer. When I learned how to sew during quarantine, I used old curtains with my teacher’s many-year-old sewing machine. Now, I source a lot of my fabric from a deadstock facility in Brooklyn where I volunteer. Whether it was out of necessity or when it became an artistic signature, being scrappy with materials has been how I work best. The shred bag is an embodiment of my lived experience and artistry. Author Audre Lorde’s The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House was an inspiration for the shred bag project. She argues that the practice of understanding differences in a society is a mutualistic relationship where both parties must be receptive and amenable to each other’s worldview. The failings in understanding equality for all as equitable negotiations lie in the processes often used: speech. Art resides on the opposite spectrum and meets people halfway between their world and a potential experience.
The denim shred bag is a one-of-a-kind tote that belongs to me. It has been my go-to bag for three years, and it's saturated with the essence of who I am and my lived experience. After diligently working on my portfolio, I was given the opportunity to enroll in the AP Studio Art class and use fashion as my medium. Enduring life in a small town as a gay, effeminate Black man with immigrant African parents has left its mark. My intersectional identities were fragmented, oscillating in and out. Converging them and understanding who I was, without the pretense of pleasing an audience, was my goal in designing the type of person I would become before entering college. The concept of the shred bag, inspired by the Studio Art assignments, would not leave my mind. It was an esoteric bag that contrasted brilliantly with homogeneity and reflected my praxis of identity. While collecting the materials, I quickly discovered that sourcing denim would be expensive. An upcycled bag was an easy second choice. I took to social media to gather old jeans.
Upcycling has been a pillar of my work as a designer. When I learned how to sew during quarantine, I used old curtains with my teacher’s many-year-old sewing machine. Now, I source a lot of my fabric from a deadstock facility in Brooklyn where I volunteer. Whether it was out of necessity or when it became an artistic signature, being scrappy with materials has been how I work best. The shred bag is an embodiment of my lived experience and artistry. Author Audre Lorde’s The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House was an inspiration for the shred bag project. She argues that the practice of understanding differences in a society is a mutualistic relationship where both parties must be receptive and amenable to each other’s worldview. The failings in understanding equality for all as equitable negotiations lie in the processes often used: speech. Art resides on the opposite spectrum and meets people halfway between their world and a potential experience.
