PHOTOGRPAHED BY ROYAN WEARING PIECES FROM AKE
We decided to do a series of journals tailored visually after the elements while also conveying messages of our reality and resulting contradictions. The journal on earth was supposed to pronounce the reliance of the human race on the earth element with it being the root of our creation and accounting for everything solid within around us and also being our final resting place. For us Africans, it goes a little bit deeper; land symoolizes a connection within ourselves and to our ancestors and also has the more general economic implications.
You’re reading this because we’ve moved past visually compelling photos and would like to put up a piece that actually addresses our reality.
The elements are supposed to be the primal requirements for the sustenance of human life. Air, Water, Earth and Fire, the only truly essential human needs which are free. The reality the human race created is a competition of who can collect the most land or burn the most wood or harvest the most fish or oil to secure the biggest heap of a fifth element only important to us, money. We adulterate everything free that nature or God if you’re a believer gave us for an elusive and fleeting idea we created at the expense of our environment and health and indeed other life forms we share this planet with. The fish in the sea don’t care about how many billions of oil money your country gets from the shell, and before I create the idea that only big multinationals do damage, I’ll tell you to recycle, don’t destroy the environment…. Don’t destroy humanity, to all the perpetrators of the on-going slave trade in Libya and every other abuser of human rights everywhere.
