Lamar is a muse for the ages, a lens through which we can explore the love within both our hearts and others'.
Check out the video and photos below.
“The idea behind JOOPITER is to embrace the energy that is released when objects change hands, and to respect the value that’s been created around these objects,” Williams says. “JOOPITER is a new platform for myself and for my fellow curators, one where existing and future generations of collectors can feel welcome to take part in this exchange.”
Focusing on rare items and the narrative behind them, JOOPITER is flipping the traditional auction experience on its head, offering access and resources fit for new and experienced collectors. Digitally, JOOPITER is a destination for community and commerce, and true to Williams' ethos, will be donating proceeds to an important and meaninful cause, Black Ambition.
The inaugural auction, Son of a Pharaoh, will include a collection of 52 personal archival artifacts curated by Williams. These items span his iconic career, and tell its story. Almost all are one-of-one, custom, and created with input from Williams. See a preview of some of these items below.
Whether you like Sinéad O'Connor or not, this is an important film that waves the flag for the underdog. Exposing the haunting truths of the music industry and media as a whole, the film gives a clear insight as to what its like navigating a world ruled by narrow mindsets and mysoginy, while holding on desperately to one's truth. At all costs.
This week, with the documentary's debut, Sinead’s story is being given another chance to be told. Directed by Kathryn Ferguson and streaming on Showtime, Nothing Compares documents the truest ballad by Sinéad O'Connor, her raw experience, in a beautifully compiled mosaic of photos, video, audio interviews and live performance footage. In narrating her life, Sinéad's voice both young and present day recalls what her childhood was like growing up in Ireland, and her time spent at an all women’s Catholic school, which served as more of a longterm orphanage for many of its residents.
The film outlines about her abusive relationship with her mother and how that effected her childhood, building a solid and unfortunate foundation of pain and childhood trauma that would ultimately overfill her well of inspiration and need to express herself through her voice and music. Throughout many of her early years in the public eye, she handles the media, in all its corruption with grace, deflecting questions about why she chose to shave her head with levels of disinterest that come off elegant and innocent, rendering most of her interviewers unsure of how to proceed with her.
She sought equal rights for women, and was silenced. She fought for antiracism, and was silenced. She demanded the Catholic Church to take responsibility for the many lives of children whose innocence was robbed of them — and again, was silenced. Not unlike O'Connor’s two biggest inspirations, Bob Marley and Bob Dylan, she told the truth publicly and unflinchingly — all the while creating a soundtrack of battle cries to accompany her efforts that stood out and lived on as some of the most hauntingly beautiful, raw, uncensored and iconic pop songs of the '90s. She put her career in the line of fire, screamed the truth into the barrel of a gun held by the sweaty white, male-dominated media, and it doing so it was robbed of her.
Founder of the Los Angeles-based brand Fuct contributed a compilation of twelve acrylic paintings mocking the graphics of American Motor Company Ford — on the company's 75th anniversary year, no less — titled, "Oval Parody". Erik Brunetti accompanied his exhibit with a capsule collection between Fuct and Slam Jam, as well as an artist book and a billboard comission.
With the solo exhibition Our Beutyfull Future, Vans and Slam Jam paid tribute to the iconic Italian photographer Davide Sorrenti. His work revolves around his skate and graffiti collective See Know Evil (SKE) back in the '90s when Sorrenti was part of the Downtown kids himself, and the city was on the cusp of becoming what it is today. Raw emotions, intimacy, and the grimness of New York's streets combined with a traditional printing process are what make his work relevant yet in the midst of today's modern youth culture and fit so perfectly in the realm of contemporary photography. Context aside, Sorrenti's work is highly emotional, eerily intimate, with an air of dark romance against the gritty subculture it so paradoxically, beautifully, captured.
Apart from two-dimensional art, the SlamJam event also hosted the New York Jazz and artist crew Onyx Collective. Promoting their latest film project, the group held a live performance and presented an exhibition Xynophiles, which displayed devil-ish looking masks by Maxwell Deter. Though the exhibition and event was held in Milan, and featured more than a few familiar New York faces, something about it captured the essence of edgy, exciting youth subculture in all it's forms, from skating to fashion to sound and street art, that transgressed borders and felt entirely universal.
This was neither a Milanese night nor was it New York, it was simply the coolest creatives gathered together in a beautiful space all at once, celebrating what they've been creating in unison. And though the event happened on the 22nd of September, the work by Sorrenti and Erik Brunetti can be viewed until 30th September and 7th of October, respectively.
