• OMxAasthma

    Written by Jahwanna Berglund

    Oscar Magnuson teams up with Electronic duo Aasthma
    In an unexpected collaboration where eyewear meets music.

    Founded in 2006, contemporary art, design, fashion and music are all influential on Oscar Magnuson’s expression.
    The OM collection is defined by its expressive yet pure and balanced design and subtle palette of monochrome colours. All frames, made from eco-friendly acetate, are handmade by highly skilled craftspeople who carry out the many stages of the production in the company’s Italian factory. Sunglasses are fitted with premium high precision optical glass lenses.

    How was the idea of the collaboration with Aasthma born?
    We met through friends in common and started to talk about doing a project together. We directly felt we had good vibes and wanted to do a project together involving both design of frames and creation of music. It’s always interesting to mix creativity with people that work in a completely different creative field. The idea was to work with all senses; design, music and visual expression to create a limited experience.

    Can you describe the collection and the inspiration behind it?
    The frame used in this project is one of our favorites called Gaff, it’s a futuristic unisex frame form the core collection. We were inspired by the visual expression of the new Aasthma album and have chosen a unique futuristic blue color and silver/purpled mirrored sun lens for this project. To complete the project we are using sustainable materials such as Bio-acetate and Bio-Nylon for the lens and the box is produced in Sweden with a new eco-friendly way of cutting cardboard.

    In what ways does music play a big role in your creative process and what music inspires you?
    For me personally music is probably the biggest inspiration of my design. When I design a collection, I always listen to music and nearly always what I listen too will set the mood of the collection.

    If I listen to classic music, it might come out softer and if I listen to electronic music, it might come out sharper. It is bit hard to tell exactly how it effects the design, but I know it does.

    What brought you into designing eyewear?
    I have a master’s degree in industrial design and have always been interested in production, design and culture. I think eyewear is a perfect mix between fashion and product design. I have realized working with eyewear design for 17 years that we are actually more in medicine than fashion as the frames are mostly used to correct your eyesight. That is why in the end I think my background as an industrial designer have come to serve me well as you learn a lot about the interaction between body and product.

    If you wouldn't design eyewear what would you see yourself doing?
    I would work in the field of product design in some way for sure. Having run a design/production business now for 10 years I have come to find design strategy very interesting and would probably work in that field.

    But to be honest running an eyewear brand lets me work with all visual expressions like in the Aasthma x OM project, so I really do not see myself starting something outside “Oscar Magnuson”. I think we will just keep on exploring how far we can push the OM expression in other creative fields.

    www.oscarmagnuson.com

  • images courtsy of Pitti Uomo

    Pitti Uomo 104 and The Case Against Fashionable Sportswear

    Written by Philip Warkander by pari

    A couple of months ago, I was having coffee with an old friend, currently living in Switzerland. She told me of her 16-year-old son’s emerging interest in fashion. He travels regularly to nearby  Milan to visit traditional tailors and menswear shops that have been in business for decades, selling traditional haberdasheries. Obviously, as a teenager he had limited means, but what he had, he spent on conservative clothing. I was reminded of this story when recently visiting this summer’s edition of Pitti Uomo in Florence.

    The menswear fashion event has a reputation of being a platform for very unfortunate fashion choices among some of its male visitors. Many years ago, exhibitors would on occasion go out for a cigarette. Leaning against the rails, smoking, and chatting with each other while fashionably dressed, they became the object of early street style-photographers. It didn’t take long until people started to travel to Pitti Uomo in the hopes of having their picture taken. Such a photo could help make them famous for their sense of style and thus had a potential economic value (in the world of influencing). In order to get the attention of the photographers, these aspiring men dressed outlandishly in garish outfits, hoping that their clothes would be loud enough to go viral. 

    The male peacocks, strutting slowly back and forth in the hope of someone snapping their photo, has since become an unfortunate Pitti Uomo-cliché, a caricature of the narcissistic tendencies so often associated with being interested in fashion. I have visited the fair on quite a few occasions, and before the COVID-19 pandemic, sports-inspired streetwear fashion was clearly an important part of this ugly trend. Now, it is all but wiped out. No chunky Balenciaga sneakers, no college shirts with large prints. Instead, the style among the fair’s visitors is dressed up, in a casual yet refined way.

    In 2005, Riccardo Tisci was appointed creative director at Givenchy. He transformed the French luxury brand, spearheading the new trend of merging fashion and sportswear. Shorts over leggings, and T-shirts with applications of pearls and lace, became an integral part of menswear. Tisci worked for Givenchy until 2017 (when he left for Burberry). This means that for someone like my friend’s son, born two years after Tisci’s Givenchy takeover, sportswear was the trend of his childhood. Like most people, as he grew older, he naturaly wanted to change his appearance, emphasizing the difference between what had been the style of his childhood and his current adolescent self. And as he grew up in the era of fashionable sportswear, he naturally turned to a more traditional aesthetics; well-fitting suits, exclusive socks, handmake shoes. To him, this is exciting and new, a welcome contrast to the sportswear he has been surrounded by all his life. 

    The example of my friend’s son is anecdotal, but all around me at Pitti Uomo, I saw the same trend multiplied. There were no traces of the sportswear megatrend, so fashionably only a few years ago. Obviously, not everyone had turned to the more traditional style of my friend’s son – I also saw versions of the relaxed Côte d’Azur-lifestyle championed by Jacquemus, a few still sporting the Belgian deconstructed look of the 1990s, as well as plenty of Prada labels – but it was clear that in this crowd of trend-conscious men, an invested interest in sneakers or wearing your training gear to a dinner party is today a clear faux-pas. 

    Our understanding of current events is determined by where we are in life. For those older, it can be difficult to understand why streetwear seems so unfashionable to the younger generation. But for those who have never known anything else than sneakers and T-shirts, a suit can seem a more radical option. And so, fashion continues to change, like a pendulum that swings from side to side.

  • image courtesy of Lio Mehiel

    photography Wynne Nielly

    An Interview with Lío Mehiel

    Written by Josie McNeill by Josie McNeill

    When trans-masculine filmmaker, actor, and artist Lío Mehiel came across the toxic, man-made lake of the Salton Sea in Bombay Beach, California, they saw a metaphor for the experience of transgender people in the world.

    “It felt like a warning message, that underneath this man-made, toxic lake, the world had drowned, and the world is drowning,” Mehiel said. “And like, the powers that be … are distracting us by getting us to argue about whether or not trans people should exist and whether women should have the choice to get an abortion. It's like we're being distracted by this shit when our world is drowning, and it's underneath the toxic lake of our own making.”

    Mehiel explored this comparison and others in their photograph 'angels in a drowning world.' The piece, which was shot by trans masculine photographer Wynne Nielly, will be on display as part of the ‘Saints and Sinners’ exhibition in the Guts Gallery in London from June 9 to July 7. The exhibition showcases art by LGBTQIA+ artists and aims to explore what it means to be queer in a time where many safe spaces are being physically closed.

    The trans experience is a topic Mehiel explores through their multitude of artistic pursuits, including their portrayal of Feña in the film 'Mutt,' which will be released August 18. Mehiel was awarded the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting at the Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 27 for their leading role in the film. 'Mutt' centers around a tumultuous, emotion-filled day for Feña, a young trans masculine person.

    So with all of that, if you haven’t heard Mehiel’s name in conversations in the arts world yet, you probably will soon.

    Can you start off by telling me a little bit about yourself and your background in the arts?
    I'm a Puerto Rican and Greek trans masculine artist. I'm a filmmaker and I'm also an actor. I started out actually dancing salsa when I was seven years old, professionally, and then I was acting on Broadway in New York as a kid. And then it really wasn't until University and upon graduating that I started to form more in the installation and the visual art space, which really just serves as a passion space for me. It's not something I necessarily have an agenda about making money from or building a career because acting and filmmaking takes up the industrious side of my work. But visual art and installation is something I do as a way to explore and pilot out aspects of my identity. And to sort of reckon with the difficult things that I see in the world. Like I sort of process it through photo projects, in collaboration with other artists.

    What drew you to photography? Was it mostly your filmmaking background?
    I think that I'm an image maker and creating images has always been really fascinating to me, especially as a queer and trans artist because I spent so much time in my life before I transitioned thinking about the image of myself and trying to figure out how to both create an image that was what I thought would be acceptable to the outside world and also understand what it is that people were perceiving about me that was leading them to treat me in a certain way. And so I think Trans and Queer people, especially when they're making art, have a sort of—or at least I can only speak for myself—I have a relationship to image making that is deeply personal because of the way that it's threaded throughout my life.

    How did you come up with the concept for the angels of a drowning world photoshoot?
    So, a very close friend of mine is the one of the lead producers of this arts festival called the Bombay Beach Biennale. And it happens at Bombay Beach, which is a partially abandoned desert town about 45 minutes past Palm Springs and California. And it really feels like it's the end of the world. Like it's the last stop in the world that you would get to if the world was flat.  And the town is sitting on a man made, toxic lake called the Salton Sea, which is a really rich and inspiring, jumping off point for a lot of artists.

    [The Bombay arts festival was] able to give me a small grant to do some kind of installation and performance piece. At the time, I was already working on developing a collection of sculptures of trans and gender expansive folks, which is called Angels, with Holly Sylius, who made the sculpture of me that is in this photo. And then this opportunity came up and I was like, what are the implications of putting the sculpture of a trans person, me, and this you know, euphoric moment in my life commemorating my top surgery, inside of this man made toxic lake. I became obsessed with the metaphor within that and I'm still obsessed with it. I'm now sort of in a year-long project around this lake and the relationship to these sculptures. But yeah, I was just like, oh, this sea is an uncanny comparison to this project of developing these sculptures.

    Did you say you're working on another project that surrounds the same concept? Is it an expansion of the photo or a different project altogether?
    Next year in April for the festival, I'm hoping that we're going to be done with the 12 sculptures that we're building as part of the Angels collection. And once we're done, I want to install it in the sea in a semi circle position and do some kind of performance in relation to them. But it feels like a reference to the Last Supper. A lot of my work is for some reason organically in response to classical and religious themes. I think because the scale of that kind of art, even Renaissance period art, is the only scale that seems to match the crisis that we're in today. And I also think a part of it, why I'm sort of fixated on these themes and like 12, you know, that sort of holy religious number and recurring number, is because trans and gender expansive people have been left out of the archive of human history. And like they were there. Like we've existed as long as humans have existed. So I want to, as a love letter to my ancestors, insert them back into this religious and classical imagery as a way to honor them and also recreate a history that I wasn't able to receive as a young trans person.

    What would you say is the central message of the photograph?
    I think, I think the central message is that the apparent beauty of the image alongside the actual toxicity of the environment that I'm standing in, provide an apt metaphor for the mythos of America, that there is a parallel between the subjugated marginalized body stripped of its autonomy and the subjugated Earth, exploited for its natural resources. There's a parallel between those two things and that feels like the central message of what I'm trying to communicate.

    This is being showcased alongside other works by LGBTQIA+ artists in the ‘Saints and Sinners’ exhibition in London. I was wondering if you could talk about what it means to you to be represented alongside these other artists?
    Yeah, I mean, what they're doing with Guts Gallery is really inspiring. I had heard about them before I was invited to do the show and just the fact that they are so committed to changing the art industry in the art world from the inside out and building a community of artists where the artists are given, you know, ownership over their work in a radical way. So I feel so honored that my debut in London in the UK is with this gallery because it matches my values so deeply and then, you know, there are so many amazing up and coming artists that they've included in the show. But then they also have Catherine Opie, displaying some of her work. She's been an inspiration to me since I was a kid and could barely even understand what queerness was.

    At the same time as the Guts show, a film that I'm a lead actor in called Mutt is premiering as part of Sundance London at Picturehouse. So I'm going to be able to come out for that film festival and at the same time, I'll be able to go to Guts Gallery and see the work in person which otherwise I wouldn't have been able to. So I'm really grateful.

    I was gonna ask about your role in the movie. Why was it important for you to take this role as your character Feña?
    Yeah, so this is my first time working as a lead actor in a feature film. It's written and directed by Vuk Lungulov-Klotz, who is also a mixed ethnicity trans guy just like me. And so the fact that my first role in a feature film was able to be a character that is so close to my experience and allows so much of me and my intersectional identity to shine through was such a blessing.

    What was the most challenging part of acting in that role?
    It was difficult to occupy the emotional state of feeling so defensive and alienated because Feña is a character who has gone through a lot of hardship in his life, and it has resulted in him having a pretty thick shell and being a bit more defensive and prickly and aggressive than I am as a person. I'm pretty soft and sensitive in my everyday life, and so being in that state of assuming that nobody understands you and people aren't really on your side and assuming that they don't love you for the, you know, four weeks we were shooting and the two weeks that we were in prep almost made me feel like that, even in the moments when I wasn't shooting. It kind of got me a little defensive or sad myself, you know, just occupying that emotional state for so long. It just kind of infiltrated my life, and that was challenging.

    Is there anything you would like viewers to take away from your role in the movie?
    Yeah, I mean, I think one of the most beautiful things that I've heard from audiences is that for folks who have never met a trans person, or who don't know any trans people, they feel like they walk away from the movie with a new friend who happens to be trans. People really love Feña, and it feels like such a gift to play a character that is accessible in that way. And so I hope that audiences walk away being like “here's just a day in the life of a trans person, and even if I've never thought that I'd have any relationship to this community, I do now because I see them and I understand them, and I get that they're just human beings too.”

    You're also the first trans actor to win the Special Jury Prize for Best acting at the Sundance Film Festival. I just wanted you to speak on how you felt getting that accolade.
    So that was crazy. I actually didn't know that there was an award. It was a Special Jury Prize, they don't give it out every year, so I wasn't even like, hoping that it would be a possibility. So the fact that, you know, there were big celebrities like Ben Platt and Jonathan Majors and like all these folks who are at the Oscars every year up for the award, but they gave it to me, felt like they were sort of saying to the industry, hey, we believe in this person enough that we want to give them this award, and recognize them in this way because we want them to have a real career. After having worked as an artist, you know, for so many years of my life, and really just doing it when nobody's watching and nobody notices and nobody cares. Then to finally be in a film that has a real platform and to be honored in that way was really crazy. And also to be the first trans person. I mean, when you're a trans artist, you are more likely to be one of the first at something than other people simply because there hasn't been as much access for trans folks. But I think for me, I want to have a platform so that I can spread love and share my experience. It feels like this award sort of helped me on the journey of being able to access people and change people's minds through the art that I make.

    What do you think about the level of representation trans people have in the arts in today's world?
    I think we're doing a lot better than we were doing a few years ago. But there's still a long way to go. What I've been thinking about is, as much as it is important to have trans folks in front of the camera, it's even more important to have trans folks behind the camera, specifically in the decision making world. I want to see more trans agents. I want to see more trans executives at production companies and studios. I want to see more trans managers and film financiers, because it's all of those folks who are really the ones who are deciding what movies get made and what platforms the movies are able to garner. So beyond just telling trans stories, which we definitely need to do, can we have the system that runs the storytelling mechanism include more trans people too?

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