Divine Fabrics Collective

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Sean “Mega "DesVignes, Camonghne Felix, Aziza Barnes and Safia Elhillo are four diverse writers who make up Divine Fabrics Collective. They speak about their influences, how they define themselves, how they see their place in the world and what brought them together.

[divinefabrics-blog]

Sean "Mega "DesVignes, Camonghne Felix, Aziza Barnes and Safia Elhillo are four diverse writers who make up Divine Fabrics Collective. They speak about their influences, how they define themselves, how they see their place in the world and what brought them together.

[divinefabrics-blog]

Meet Safia. "I believe that naming is a claiming act- that, in giving something a name, in choosing the word(s) through which we will continue to identify this thing, it becomes ours in this small way. Having a vocabulary for an experience puts us a little less at its mercy. I believe that a poem is an extended naming, a reversed synthesis that takes all of these pieces that have, for eternity, been lashed together and deemed “love” or “sadness” or “trauma,” and spills out everything that has been locked behind their one-word name. A one-word name is a means of codification; a multi-word name is a poem. I write extensively about loss- not in mourning, but in hopes of reclaiming. I name and rename all my lost things and, by doing so, make them present (an incantation). I believe that a poem can bring back what is lost- not in its tangible form, but a vivid enough ghost to remind us of its presence rather than of its absence. In developing the presence of what has been lost, I am making room for it, and in making room for it, I am orienting myself. In my work, I want you to visit my house and look at my things, to read my map of lost and found.”

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Meet Aziza. "In my art, in my person, I’m interrogating what it means to be relentlessly authentic. Vulnerable. Present without caveat or exception. Hyper-aware. Therefore sensual. Therefore analytical. The dance party and the laboratory. Or, that the dance party is the laboratory. Minutia, where the mundane meets the absurd; that’s some territory I dig walking through. “Sustained intensity” is how Wynton Marsalis described Miles Davis’ style of playing the trumpet and that’s something I’m into. Play less notes, but make them the right notes. Not the punch line, but the whole damn thing is funny.” 

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Meet Mega.

“Encompass everything”

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Meet Camonghne.

“I am committed to doing the work of my obsessions.

I am obsessed with beauty, with the political and social status quo, with dialogue, and black radical exploration.

I am obsessed with friendship, and camaraderie, and how to love myself amidst interruption.

I am obsessed with The Block, with what happens outside of it, my little sisters, and Nicki Minaj’s performative genius.

I am obsessed with you, and representing you, and being represented by you. I am obsessed with preservation.

My art is just trying to figure out how to contend with all of that.”