[ninafuga-blog]

Nina Fuga for Lampoon

Text Candela Novembre. You are used to look in advance, kid. Searching and over watching for the very next thing. Getting ahead of your days is a new religion that you came to terms with. It's good be ready for the future. Sure that the future will be in that right spot waiting for you.

Here are some animated illustrations I did for Lampoon magazine to promote Max Mara new Venice Bag!

[ninafuga-blog]

People sit and have coffee in a different way in Bogota’. They sip the brown liquid mixture that has usually the most delightful smell anywhere else in the world, as if it was dirty hot water. They have all the rights to do so as the famous Colombian coffee that in Europe everyone craves for, is a product exclusively for exportation. Yet there is a fascinating aura of calmness and relaxed attitude in people’s manners in coffee shops in Bogota’. It might be that they wait for the rain to stop and go back to work. 

[ninafuga-blog]

Here are my Christmas Greetings 2014!

[ninafuga-blog]

Some shots from the opening of Undercover, an exhibition created while in residency at Red Magazine in July, showcased at Anthropologie Regent Street store in London. It's been an exciting night where Sarah Bailey, editor in chief of Red Magazine, did a wonderful speech and where special guests like Thomasina Miers came to see the work. Thank you for everyone who helped making this happen!

[ninafuga-blog]

Watch behind the scenes of Undercover, a project by Nina Fuga for Red Magazine!

[ninafuga-blog]

Undercover is an upcoming show that will be opening on the 16th of October, showcasing the work that I have been doing while in residence at Red Magazine, earlier this year. The opening evening will be hosted by Anthropologie  on 158 Regent Street, London W1B 5SW. I look forward to seeing you there!

[maisonmargiela]

Discover ‘Kingsland Road Overture’, Dazed Magazine’s surreal vision of our Spring-Summer 2014 ‘Artisanal’ Collection.

Photographed by Lorenzo Vitturi and styled by Robbie Spencer. (Dazed and Confused Magazine Volume IV – Summer 2014)

[ninafuga-blog]

Set Design by Nina Fuga

[ninafuga-blog]

I made this poster as I will be part of this pop-up live event where I will be drawing, responding to a showcase of two lovely fashion designers, Delia Fiori and Claudia Chan. The flowers' installation of Yan Skates will be accompanying the evening and function as sets for the live models. Come and join us on the 26th of June, from 8 until 12 pm, check the fb event page for details!

[ninaundercover-blog]

[ninafuga-blog]

On the 15th of May I've been nominated artist in residence at Red Magazine. The residency will be ending with an exhibition showcasing the work made, in October 2014. Follow the work in progress on http://ninaundercover.tumblr.com !

[ninafuga-blog]

Sunday Night @Hackney Picture House 

It's rainy outside and the flashing lights indicating road works turn the rain into fluorescent waterfalls of dust. Right in front of me a couple is eating hamburgers and downing beer - there's still time before the movie starts. It feels awkward being able to hand your phone at the ticket control, instead of a physical piece of paper that tells you where your seat is and that you used to hold onto, in case you had to go out and wee in the middle of the film.  The portable comforts of technological commodities. 

The record starts spinning, Only Lovers Left Alive has started and the electric sounds of  Jozef Van Wissem make the journey into Jarmusch' vision mesmerising. Vampires in love sipping blood from wine glasses, is a post modern fairy tale that makes you smile throughout. 

[ninafuga-blog]

TUESDAY NIGHT @ SAM'S BAR 

04/03/2014

Neon colour lights illuminating the seemingly authentic and unaltered 80s interior, Sam's bar is the perfect set for the next American TV series, where something unusually sinister happens behind the scenes. Sam sits by the door holding assertively the list and staring at the stuffy air. He looks nostalgic, possibly contemplating the disappearance of his friend Amy Winehouse or maybe wondering who should be the next muse of his new paintings. The entire wall surface is covered by his street-style portrait paintings, an ode to the female flash painted by an obsessive amateur, who loves jazz music and has turned his bar into a refuge from the passage of time. While sipping one of the bar's favourite cocktails, 'orgasm', one can temporarily leave behind his existence to step into this man-made time machine, accompanied by a smooth and glittery soundtrack. 

[ninafuga-blog]

NOTES FROM COLOMBIA // THERE IS ALWAYS A PLAZA BOLIVAR

Beep beep, squawk, swoosh, pitter-patter, vroom vroom! Bicycles carrying kaleidoscopic inflatable balloons going round in endless circles. Ready made stalls selling tricks and treats and hundreds of furtive glances, detecting the new faces adding to the picture of Plaza Bolívar. Kids, sellers, homeless people and protesters, tourists and thieves are swinging by, just like pigeons, the unquestionable inhabitants of every square. Thinking about the origins of the square and how perfectly its design serves to its means. A space designed to gather groups of people - and flocks of birds - and facilitate encounters. Is a web conference the square designed for the Internet, where followers and friends can meet and chat? I bet you cannot smell what I’m smelling today in Plaza Bolívar, the smell of sun kissed skins; the smell of dogs’ urina and donkeys’ shit. 

[ninafuga-blog]

NOTES FROM COLOMBIA // THE SIESTA'S SOFA

  It seems to be the most desired place where to lie down in the entire residency. It's a silent war played among contenders who don't dare admitting their inexplicable attachment and attraction towards this plain leather sofa. It must function as a safety point of reference, a bit like an airport does, a sort of non-place that people inexplicably identify as 'familiar'. Juan Pablo, the young introspective Chilean whose mischievous grin keeps the favour of the majority of the females around, likes to have his first and possibly last cigarette of the day in this sofa. Every morning, as I wake up responding to the gentle sound of the breakfast's bell, as I distractedly make my way to the large precious board accurately polished by Tio Carlo's helpers, I find him sitting in the same place and same position. As if he'd rested sleepless in that same spot, still holding his cigarette. Juan Pablo has decided not to do any work until 18 o'clock today, so he lays on the sofa and falls asleep as few rain drops initiate a scented tropical rain. The palm trees quietly absorb the rain drops, as all the multicoloured plants do. The iguanas find refuge under the thickest leaves and the rabbits watch the water falling through their earth holes. Felipon and the twins hide in the laundry room and until they will eventually get bored and decide to come out to start a new game.

  A slow pace is reigning all around the work areas and everyone's main preoccupation seems to be the swimming pool. It's early afternoon and everyone is cooling down the alcohol effects from the night before that ended up being morning,  looking at the fast rising sun from the top of the water tank. Saying goodbye and good morning to your day at the same time is an empowering sensation. 

[ninafuga-blog]

NOTES FROM COLOMBIA

Torrential rain in Pueblo Tapao. We stop in the local panaderia to have a mango juice and a cheese bread, waiting for the tropical storm to cease. our bikes are locked at the front of the local and the locals are occupying the majority of the seats around. they don't seem worried by the loud thunderstorm, as if they knew exactly how long it will last and at when they'd be able to go home. we draw the people around us in our sketchbook and the kids gather around us, half posing and half intrigued by the marks we quickly put down on paper. who's the stranger, them or us? 

  the older kids own cell phones with cameras and they see an opportunity to record something unusual. they're more attracted and intrigued by Emma's Scandinavian fair looks, like the incarnation of the most desirable American Barbie. the rain doesn't seem to stop. someone is screaming across the road; it's the residency's car and Seba and Matthew are in it to rescue us. Quindio's welcome leitmotif. what else is there? an earthquake.

[ninafuga-blog]

GONDOLA RIDE (O SOLE MIO)

…I don't merely draw lonely old men sitting at cafes. Here is a proof.

[ninafuga-blog]

GELATI POR FAVOR

'Never mind. I have never loved everything about Venice. Long ago, for instance, I realised that Vivaldi was not for me. I have always despised traditional Murano glass, and detested everything to do with carnival and its vulgar snobbism. Like everyone else, I am depressed by the rising of the waters, and by the sometimes truly nightmarish congestion of tourists. My saddest Venetian day was the day when, in 1983, for conservational reasons they removed the ancient golden horses of St Mark's, so proud and generous on the facade of the Basilica, and replaced them with the dullard replicas that are up there today. 

But I am reconciled now to those loveless animals. I have taught myself to regard their arrival as a historically symbolic moment – the moment when Venice consciously ceased to be a real, organic city, still the living heir to an imperial past (the golden horses were booty from Constantinople), and accepted its passive destiny as the supreme spectacle of all the world. I often used to think, whenever the floods came, that it would be best to let the whole place sink into its mud, and end its tale with a mighty gurgling of the tides. Nowadays, though, I enjoy seeing Venice in full contemporary display, jam-packed, scaffolded everywhere, flaunting its glories to the insatiable crowds, raking in the cash and basking, as it always did, in gaudy capitalist success.'

Jan Morris on Venice, The Guardian, 25 March 2010 

[ninafuga-blog]

SMOKING AWAY

'He was a fair-haired, friendly but rather silent man. 

'You shouldn't go to sleep under a fig tree,' he said, observing our falling eyelids.

'Why not?'

'The shadow is heavy.' 

from Mani, Travels in The Southern Peloponnese, Patrick Leigh Fermor