Mami Wata

[mamiwatasurf]

AFROSPORT - THE BOOK

A 320 page art book - African design is reshaping the world’s cultural stage, sport shows us how.

African design is reshaping the world's cultural stage. Our new book AFROSPORT will explore, narrate and investigate the broad landscape of design and sport in Africa to understand its history and future global influence.

Pledge now on Kickstarter.

Imagery from AFROSPORT: Drame Djibril

Imagery from AFROSPORT: Christian Bobs

We have launched a Kickstarter to fund our second book AFROSPORT: to shine light on African sports and design. Following the global success of AFROSURF, our second book aims to explore, narrate and investigate the broad landscape of design and sport in Africa to understand its history and future global influence through photography, stories, profiles, interviews and design. 

AFROSPORT features:

A view of sports and design told through an African lens, including surf, skate, football, laamb wrestling, boxing, athletics, rugby and matatus bussing

1 photo comic

LOTS of graphics

150+ photos from world-renowned photographers 

Pieter Hugo, Photographer

Nana-Yaw-Oduro, Photographer 

Kyle Weeks, Photographer 

Kabelo Kungwane, Founder Kasi Flavour

Contributions from international artists, skate brands, film-makers

Jomi Marcus-Bello, Owner of Nigerian Skate Brand WafflesNCream 

Drame Djibril, Visual Artist, Filmmaker, Curator and Publicist 

Hardy Mcqueen, Co-founder FanBase Africa 

Carmen Politan, Style Anthropologist, Content Creator and Writer

We need to raise $60,000 on Kickstarter to cover the costs of producing and printing AFROSPORT. Thereafter all the profit from future sales goes to supporting the work of African surf therapy organisations, Waves for Change and Surfers Not Street Children.

Fundraising for AFROSPORT - The Book began 22nd November and will be running until 20th December. To reward backers on Kickstarter there are some fantastic early-bird specials and an exclusive limited edition AFROSPORT Mami Wata T-shirt and Sweatshirt available to those who pledge. The book is priced at $60. By supporting the Kickstarter you'll also get your name in the book.

Let's get the word out and tell the story of original African sport culture.

Imagery from AFROSPORT: Nana Yaw Oduro

Pledge now on Kickstarter.

[mamiwatasurf]

Neo-Animism: The first fragrance from Mami Wata

African surf culture. That’s our story. We like to tell it in many ways, mainly through the lens of African design principles and storytelling. But how else?

Fragrance is a powerful storyteller. But how could we tell the story of African surf culture in a scent?

Surf is informed by our experience both in the ocean and our lives around it. We needed scents from both in and out of the ocean to tell the story.

Our fine fragrance Neo-Animism has been created with two dominant notes:

African ocean minerals. These capture the experience of being in the water. The minerals in the ocean are understood by our bodies and minds in almost imperceptible ways, but it is through our nose that we identify them.

‘Green bar soap’ is a ubiquitous soap product available throughout Africa. It is used on everything from bodies to clothing and all manner of things that need cleaning. This captures the daily lived experience of African surfers growing up in Southern Africa. The most common brand of green bar soap in sub-Saharan Africa is called ‘Sunlight’. It has the power to conjure memories for many people, summoning ideas of mothers, home, fresh linen or the beginning of a new day. The use of a ‘common' scent for a fine fragrance challenges the idea of luxury.

Neo-Animism brings together the scents of ocean minerals and green bar soap to tell a unique story of African surf culture.

The signature fragrance was developed in partnership with South African-born Etienne de Swardt, founder of niche fragrance house Etat Libre D’Orange and French nose Mathilde Bijaoui.

The name? The fragrance is part of our new Luck Is Alive range which is informed by Animism, the belief that all objects have a sentient life spirit. Like the ocean. Or even the idea of luck.

Neo-Animism is a fragrance that is alive.

Click to shop Neo-Animism

#thepowerofafricansurf #mamiwatasurf

[mamiwatasurf]

A WOO WOO STORY

It had to be Venice, LA. When we were looking for a location for our first US pop-up store Venice was the obvious choice. Mami Wata co-founder Selema Masekela has lived in the neighbourhood for nearly 20 years. It’s his home turf. Also, for us to take our story of African surf culture to the US we needed to put it in the middle of a part of American surf culture. So when a location at 1508 Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice came up we knew it was in the right place.

Selema visited the empty store to check it out. Location was great. The physical space was great.  It felt right. But it also felt more than that. It had a vibe.

Sometimes the universe speaks to you. It joins some dots and makes some connections you didn’t know were there.  

Well, 1508 Abbot Kinney Boulevard. It’s got a woo woo story.

https://mamiwatasurf.com/blogs/afrosurf/a-woo-woo-story

[mamiwatasurf]

Luck Is Alive tells the story of an African surfer who is a believer in Animism, a sensibility prevalent among surfers throughout Africa. Animism is based on the idea that everything is sentient: that inanimate objects, plants, animals or even entities such as the ocean have a spirit or a soul, often in the sense of having ‘personhood’. 

 The film demonstrates an animistic sensibility through the concept of luck. The line, ‘Luck is Alive’, encapsulates this way of relating to the world: a sense of the aliveness of chance, and by believing in luck and that luck is alive, luck can lead you to be lucky. 

The film features Damme Samb (21) a surfer from Dakar, Senegal a predominantly muslim country on the west coast of Africa. Damme is also a believer in Animism. 

Credits 

Creative Director: Peet Pienaar 

Production: Giant Films & Stink Films 

Director: Paul Ward 

Executive Producers: Cindy Gabriel, Emma Lundy, Martina Luelsdorf & Paul Ward 

DOP's: Deon van Zyl & Calvin Thompson 

Animation: Mami Wata 

Music: BDS MUSIC

[mamiwatasurf]

Luck Is Alive - A short film from Mami Wata

Luck Is Alive tells the story of an African surfer who is a believer in Animism, a sensibility prevalent among surfers throughout Africa. Animism is based on the idea that everything is sentient: that inanimate objects, plants, animals or even entities such as the ocean have a spirit or a soul, often in the sense of having ‘personhood’.   The film demonstrates an animistic sensibility through the concept of luck. The line, ‘Luck is Alive’, encapsulates this way of relating to the world: a sense of the aliveness of chance, and by believing in luck and that luck is alive, luck can lead you to be lucky.  The film features Damme Samb (21) a surfer from Dakar, Senegal a predominantly muslim country on the west coast of Africa. Damme is also a believer in Animism.

[mamiwatasurf]

Mami Wata x Pieter Hugo

A photographic creative collaboration.

Our Spring Summer ‘22 lookbook was photographed by renowned South African photographer Pieter Hugo.

Hugo, who lives in Cape Town, is a sometime surfer himself. His work straddles fine arts and commercial photography. Hugo is renowned for his powerful and unsettling portraits, often of outsiders or marginalized people and cultures. He usually photographs them in a way that unsettles unconsidered, voyeuristic ways of looking. A recent solo exhibition of his portraits at Rencontres d'Arles in France, titled Being Present, explores atypical ideas of beauty. His work is included in the collections of institutions such as MOMA NY, the V&A, Centre Pompidou and the Rijks Museum.

Hugo has recently shot fashion features for the likes of New York Times magazine and the US editions of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. He has collaborated with brands including Louis Vuitton, Bottega Veneta and Hood By Air.

The SS22 lookbook, the brand’s creative director Peet Pienaar explains, explores the concept of distortion and reflection using trick mirrors (and occasionally digital manipulation).

The concept of the collection has its roots in an animist way of relating to the world, especially as it informs surf culture in Africa. When Mami Wata produced Afrosurf, an astounding coffee-table book that assembled and documented the stories of surfers and the details of the various surf cultures in 18 coastal countries around Africa’s coastline, many African surfers testified to a spiritual connection with the ocean. Some African surfers relate to the ocean in a particularly animistic fashion. Animism involves understanding and relating to inanimate objects or entities – such as the ocean – as a sentient being possessing human qualities, such as a personality or a soul.

The design of the SS22 collection takes as its starting point the way in which animism in contemporary West African cities influences graphic design. In the Senegalese city of Dakar, for example, it is not uncommon to see images of eyes adorning buses and motorcycles to indicate a humanized or spiritualized conception of them. Mami Wata’s designs build on and extrapolate such prompts they find in animistic-inflected visual cultures.

The image of the eye in various permutations is central to the Mami Wata SS22 collection, as are various graphic representations of dice, which indicate luck, a proxy for an animistic sensibility. The collection’s slogan is, “Luck is Alive”.

Speaking of the concept behind the use of distortion and reflection in the photo shoot, Pienaar explains that it is a way of representing how, as a surfer, you might “see yourself within the ocean”.

“It's almost as if seeing yourself reflected in a wave transfers a kind of sentience and a spiritual quality to the idea of a wave,” he says.

Distortion also conveys a sense of movement and transformation, which relates to the spiritual effect the ocean has on many African surfers.

Pienaar also points out that mirrors have a strange kind of power in all kinds of contemporary cultures: It’s where you go to “see yourself”, as he puts it. Mirrors reveal an image of ourselves, but simultaneously take us out of our bodies. Distorted reflections, such as those we see in circus mirrors, further complicate the idea of a self-image or reflection. We find ourselves transformed and defamiliarized, not unlike the way surfers might find themselves in the ocean, but somehow transformed.

Follow the conversation between Pienaar and Hugo in which they discuss visual culture, the relationship between art and fashion, surf culture, popular culture and their creative processes. Read more here.