Wipe Your Eyes

Where are you from?

I’m originally from Tunisia, but I was born and raised in France, so I’m French-Tunisian, Tunisian-French.

Do you want to talk about the project at MoMa?

Perception is a project I did two years ago, in 2016, and actually was an artwork located inside the Cairo garbage-collector neighborhood, and the first idea when I decided to go there was to go and beautify this ugly, dirty neighborhood—but I had no idea what it was, actually. I heard about them in 2009, because Mubarak slaughtered 300,000 pigs using the H1-N1 virus and the garbage collectors used their pigs to recycle organic human waste. So, this was in the front of my mind and in 2015, I just decided to go—and I had no idea, I thought these people were kind of dirty, I thought they were living in the garbage, but they were actually living from the garbage. After a few days, my perception had changed already. You realize that the people who are bringing the garbage to the neighborhood, they come with trash, so the garbage comes from another place—and speaking with people, you realize that it’s the garbage of all of Cairo. In Cairo, they call them ‘the garbage people,’ and I kept calling them that for almost a year until we did the project, and I realized that was not their real name. The real garbage people are the ones in Cairo who produce the garbage.

It was a kind of organic project—we went, we didn’t know anyone but we connected with one guy. It’s a Christian Coptic neighborhood, so the first place that I went was the church, and it’s this crazy church that they carved into the mountain. It’s a 20,000-seat church that they built in the seventies, so when you see it you think, 'This is impossible in this place'—it’s inside Garbage City. It’s amazing, when you see it, it blows you away.

So, the people live off the garbage?

Right, so people bring glass, paper, plastic, and each family specializes in one thing. Some people, they collect everything, some people they just collect plastic, some people take care of another specific area. So, each one is allocated one area.

What do they do with it all?

They resell it and recycle it. They recycle more than 80% of what they collect—it’s the most powerful recycling system in the world.

And they just did it because they’re poor?

That’s what it was in the beginning, yes—it started like 60 years ago. There’s 70,000 people living in this neighborhood working together now.

So, you went in and painted the roofs?

No, it’s an anamorphic piece on the sides of the buildings that you have to go on top of the mountain to see, so it goes over 52 facades and covers 258 meters, something like that. But they’re not poor people, that’s the thing. They’re not poor. Some of them are super rich, that’s your perception—because they work with garbage you already think that they’re poor. There’s a disgust.

So, they do well?

Some of them, they do super well. Some guys have a jacuzzi in the house, huge American kitchen, a flatscreen tv—they’re living the life! And they tell you, 'This is our income, we work from this, we make our money off of this.'

It’s business.

It is business, and you know, when they’re done with work and change, they’re like regular people. And they’re working from something that no one really wants. And some of them have contracts with big brands—some families have contracts with L’Oreal, brands like that—because they collect their shampoo bottles and then sell them back to them.

Above: 'Perception' and the artist surveying his work.

So, what drew you to this?

I don’t know—the first idea was to challenge myself. The first thing was an artistic challenge. Then I said, 'I’m going to go there, I’m going to beautify this place.' Then I realized, I don’t need to beautify anything—the place is beautiful by itself. For me, it was one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen. It smells bad, and it’s kind of dirty from the garbage, but there’s beauty despite that.

It’s kind of a beautiful concept, as well.

It’s the idea—the way people welcomed us. It’s kind of a segregated place, nobody will go there. The cops won’t go there, the government won’t go there. So, we spent a year going back and forth, and we spent one month to make the project, and then when you leave you have a kind of family there—when you leave you’re a part of the neighborhood. We’re going back on the tenth of November for a wedding there. It was a really powerful experience—beyond the artistic challenge, and everything that surrounds that, it’s what we lived through with them, and that, for me, is the most important thing. That’s why I took the time to write this book. It’s not just pictures of poor people—I made an artistic choice with the guy filming. I told him not to take pictures of people working in the garbage, because instantly you will have the wrong image. When you see someone with their hands in garbage, you think, 'This guy is looking for his food in there,' when actually he’s just working—the same way you’re working as a journalist, or a guy works in a bank.

So, the book is all about this project?

The book is about this whole journey, how I started this whole adventure from an idea. These people are a pretext to talk about the subject of perception, there are so many people who misjudge because of a stereotype, and for me, this is a way to push people to think about their perceptions of others. As an artist, it was important for me to question that—what is it to be a minority? To be misjudged? Marginalized? Segregated? Because of nothing, actually. They’re doing something really useful.

So, the work itself is Arabic script, is that correct?

Yes.

What does it say?

I work with Arabic calligraphy, so all my work uses words. I write messages, so every time I go to a place, I try to write something that is relevant to the place where I’m creating the artwork. So, in Egypt I used a quote from a Coptic bishop from the 4th century, St. Athanasius of Alexandria. And using this Coptic bishop was a way of convincing the neighborhood—and to convince the neighborhood I needed to convince one guy, and that was the priest. So, when the priest said, 'Okay, you can do it,' it opened the door to the entire neighborhood. People said, 'If the priest said ok, then go ahead, paint on our houses.' So, St. Athanasius said, 'Whoever wants to see the sunlight clearly needs to wipe his eyes first.' That’s the quote.

Whoever wants to see the sunlight clearly needs to wipe his eyes first.

So, the cover of the book mimics the piece?

Yes, I handpainted over 500 book covers to recreate the piece from Egypt. We used recycled paper from the neighborhood to make the book that we bought from them. The paint that we used was blacklight-reactive, so at the end of the project we lit up the whole neighborhood with a blacklight—all the garbage kind of disappeared, and it was just the message coming out. And we have a similar piece in the book that will glow under a blacklight, as well.

Was it difficult to get the priest in the neighborhood to agree?

The priest is a kind of celebrity, he’s like the Justin Beiber of Christianity. He’s a super star. When I saw him the first time, I thought it was a fight—people were jumping to get closer, it was crazy. He accepted to meet me because I’m an artist, and I met him twice. He was actually super open. It’s interesting to see how one guy can have so much influence over 70,000 people. And they welcomed us—we’re not Christian—but they welcomed me like I was their brother. It was amazing.

For me, this whole thing was breaking this kind of propaganda we see right now, that there’s always a conflict between Christians and Muslims, conflict between Muslims and Jews—and here, there was none of that, not at all. The funny thing was there was this one Christian guy who asked us to repaint a mosque—5% of the neighborhood was Muslim and there’s this tiny little mosque—so, the guy was like, 'When you finish, I want to you to repaint the mosque,' because his house was touching the mosque, and because his door was blue, he asked us to paint the mosque in blue to match. So, now when you’re in that part of the neighborhood, you see this blue mosque, and it was asked by a Christian guy. We did it with leftover paint from the project.

What shade of blue?

Like a royal blue.

And he was just being neighborly?

He just wanted the mosque to match his door. But it was interesting to interact with these people and see how they treated things like education, too: one guy, he couldn’t read, but his son was getting a degree in business management. So, now they can take their business to another level. And that’s what's interesting. And there was Wifi everywhere in the neighborhood—it was better than New York in that way. It’s an incredible place.

Above: The artist recreating the work across the covers of his book, and a local boy viewing 'Perception.'

Interested in a book? Visit the launch page here.

Culture

Mowalola x Miss Sixty Launch with H. Lorenzo

I swing my legs over the ropes that guard the VIP entrance. Always over (I’m 5’10), never under. I’m late to the H. Lorenzo x Mowalola event, and the line wraps around the block. I don’t want to be an asshole, but I hate waiting in lines; it just ruins everything.

“Hey, my friend is DJing right now. My name should be down,” I say.

The youngish security guard looks me up and down. I have made an adventurous choice for this type of crowd. Neon pink hoodie, bright orange vest, my Raimundo jeans, and Jeremy Scott animal print sneakers. I let him take me in and look over his shoulder. Hmmm… I will be swathed in darkness when he lets me in. Dark night, dark clothes, dark makeup, furs, hoods, leather accessories, and sunglasses. I don’t recognize anyone, but it’s hard to tell who anyone is because I can’t see after 8 pm without my glasses. Night blindness. I can still catch a vibe though.

“She’s in the bathroom,” Mr. Guard says, interrupting my squinting.

“Who?” I ask.

“The woman in charge of the list.”

That’s a drag. I want to dance. Lately, I’m going out in the name of music.

“So…can I go in?” I ask.

“Just wait for her to get back.”

That sounds fine. I wait. The outdoor smoking area is packed. I hope the inside mirrors this, maybe with people dancing instead of blowing smoke in each other’s eyes.

“You got instagram?” The guard asks me after about ten minutes of flirting.

“Can I go in?” I said.

He laughs. He lets me in the event without a wristband.

Inside, I understand why the other guard was gone for so long. I make a mental note to not drink too much liquid; the bathroom line is almost as long as the line to get in. The party is popping, far from a flop.

I push through the crowd solo, following the speakers to the DJ booth. The immersive visuals provide me with enough light to make out Mowalola in a gold bikini and her low rise denim. My pulse races like the horse printed on the front of her coochie. That’s the point of the collection, obviously.

I spend a good thirty minutes grinding my hips before swaying to the open bar. I smile to myself, noting that it’s a mezcal forward menu. I see a drink that disgusts me, so I order it without hesitation. It’s a mezcal coffee concoction. My heart ’s ran through already, why not go all in? I hear Shigecki’s set start so I head back to dance. I’m jumping around, sweating, and I yelp when I pause for a beat. Strippers have materialized and are working poles opposite and behind the DJ booth. Good. Events should be sexy.

I end the night smoking my friend’s Korean strawberry cigarettes taking in the air of cool- when a man comes up to me wild-eyed exclaiming that we look just like one another. I look at him- no, not at all. I turn slowly, remembering what I should be doing: listening to DJ G2G’s set. Back inside, she is playing reggaeton type beats with lasers beaming out of her headphones (I want these). A rave in it of herself.

Too bad all the events end at 2 am in LA.

Culture

Vans Pipe Masters 2024

On the first night, Steve Van Doren and the Vans team hosted the heat draw for the competitors at a casual backyard barbecue. The son of Vans’ co-founder Paul Van Doren, Steve has worked in the family business for decades, and is now known as the Ambassador of Fun. Wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a cowboy hat made out of old shoes, he was definitely dressed for the part. The surfers, along with family and friends gathered in a relaxed setting as 40 men’s and 20 women’s names were drawn from a shoebox. The competition would run in 3 rounds, the top 4 men and 4 women with the highest scores moving onto the finals. When asked about their strategies, most gave answers along the lines of “get waves.” Refreshingly simple.

After waiting a few days for favorable conditions, the first day of competition kicked off with Women’s Round 1. It was finally time to see Pipeline in action. Banzai Pipeline is known as one of the most dangerous places to surf due to the powerful waves breaking over shallow and sharp reefs. With the potential to crash into the rocky edges or have leashes caught in caves, it takes a ton of skill–-and even more courage–to surf here. No stranger to these risks, the first heat included favorites Caity Simmers and “Queen of Pipeline” Moana Jones Wong, who showed off exactly why they’d been successful here in the past. Midway through the heats, Mother Nature decided to throw in another element as a light drizzle turned into a proper downpour. Rain or shine, the athletes went out unfazed, focused on getting their first points on the board.

After another short day’s break, the competition continued with the women’s second round and the men’s first. The beach was filled with spectators, locals and tourists alike, as the competition was free for all to attend. While fans rooted equally for the women and men, the most popular were the local Hawaiian athletes, which made up about half the competition. The women started off the day again, hyping up the crowd with incredible rides. One ride by Bettylou Sakura Johnson earned the first Bag of Cash of the day– a cash prize (of undisclosed amount) awarded in a brown paper bag to any surfer that pulls off a wow moment, excites the crowd, and pulls off something spectacular regardless of what the conditions might look like.

Winds picked up as the men’s competition began and two strategies quickly emerged: an aggressive approach, targeting any decent waves to build small scores; and a patient approach, waiting for the perfect wave to chase a high single score. Even the waves that were unrideable were a spectacle in itself. The sheer size, illustrated by the length of surfboards riding up and over, and the following crash of white water spray was hypnotizing. Then imagining having to experience it out on the water, duck diving under or being lifted over, brought a renewed respect for the surfers.

After watching these early rounds, it was time for office to head back to the cold. With the competition officially spanning from December 8-20, it seemed the forecast was gearing up for some massive waves— and it didn’t disappoint. Following from afar through Vans’ Instagram and live updates, we saw the full extent of what it means to surf at Pipeline. After a series of electrifying and daring surfs, the 2024 winners were crowned: Erin Brooks and Nathan Florence.

The thrill of watching top athletes compete at the highest level of their sport, even remotely, never fails to inspire. Few sports surrender so completely to the forces of nature as surfing does. And at its core, surfing is all about having a deep respect for the ocean—its unpredictable whims, its immense power, and its ever-changing moods.

Culture

The Cost of Queendom

December 17, 2024

One summer afternoon in New York, a few days after their New York premiere of the acclaimed documentary Queendom, office met up with documentary filmmaker Agniia Galdanova and producer Igor Myakotin at a tattoo parlor on the west side of Manhattan. While Agniia received a tattoo of the portmanteau “DOCU CUNT” across her fists, she — unfazed by the needle on her knuckles — answered our questions alongside Igor about the making of the stirring story that has traveled around the world.

One of the opening scenes of Queendom depicts a ritual many of us are all too familiar with in the 21st century. Jenna Marvin, the documentary film’s central subject, takes her friend along with her to take photos for Instagram. When she finds a suitable backdrop, she poses, poses, poses, and then reviews the photos. Dissatisfied, she gives her notes, and then returns to pose, pose, pose again.

By Brook Aster
Photos by Liv Solomon

The ritual may be familiar, but nothing else about the scene — from its setting to its stakes — is ordinary. The backdrop behind Jenna is a sweeping expanse of ice and snow in a small Russian port town called Magadan. Jenna is dressed in drag, but not drag of the Rupaul’s Drag Race variety; her drag has been referred to as “creature drag.” Her signature white face paint, platform heels and surrealist costumes, with their exaggerated sculptural proportions and use of duct tape and repurposed items, catches the ire of her neighbors and the love of online admirers alike. Jenna eventually accrued a following on social media for her public and technically illegal drag performances, which often involved little more than her walking or being in public spaces but nevertheless were often met with abuse and threats of imprisonment.

But when Agniia first encountered Jenna, she hadn’t yet reached the level of virality that would eventually come in the years to follow. The filmmaker was researching different drag performers in Russia for her sophomore project, which she thought would be a docuseries, when she heard from a friend about a young drag queen from Magadan. “I was like, this is impossible. I have to meet this person,” Agniia remembers. “And I could not actually go meet her because I was in Moscow and she was in Saint Petersburg, so I sent a friend of mine with whom I’d been studying with in film school, and she went and filmed the sample.” The simple video, showing Jenna and her friend getting dressed up for a party, struck something in Agniia. The drag was an earlier, more prototypical version of the style Jenna is now known for; less duct tape and ornamentation, but still that signature striking makeup. “Something sparked. I knew I just had to stick to this feeling,” Agniia says. She decided to turn the docuseries into a documentary solely focused on Jenna.

Around that time, the entire world came to a grinding halt: the onset of COVID-19 pandemic had just led to lockdowns around the globe. With only a couple thousand followers on social media at that point in time, Jenna had tried to branch out and connect with other drag artists in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, but faced rejection; her drag was extremely unconventional, and not even other drag artists quite understood it. “I think we found each other at the right moment, because nobody knew what to do, how to cope with all this,” Agniia says. “Jenna was saying that she was lost, and she also didn't know how to develop her art next.”

Unlike some of the other artists Agniia had initially researched, Jenna didn’t need much convincing to allow the camera into her life. “[Especially] after COVID came, there wasn't really [any] drag in my life,” Jenna recounts when I speak to her later over Zoom. “I realized that what drag is for me is not just a costume, a dress, something that you leave, that you take off and then in the dead of the night you put back on. Later, I understood that this is who I am, that I am art and I am drag, and that this is way bigger and more important than just clothing or costume.”

[LEFT TO RIGHT: Agniia Galdanova, Jenna Marvin, Igor Myakotin]

When it came time to move into production stages, Agniia sent a clip to Igor, who had been referred to her by a past colleague. When Igor saw the footage, he was similarly struck by Jenna — and even more struck to find out she shared his small hometown of Magadan. “It was just so fateful to know that I also come from this town, and I've never seen it through this cinematic lens, through the vision that Agniia has,” he says. “I was mesmerized by the footage, mesmerized by Jenna. I thought to myself, I have to do everything I can [for us] to work together, whatever the collaboration is gonna be.”

The two followed Jenna for over three years; Agniia first relocated to St. Petersburg, where Jenna had taken up residence after leaving her grandparents’ home in Magadan, and later Jenna moved in with Agniia in her home in Moscow. All the while, Igor and his team worked remotely from the United States to meet Agniia’s production needs. Inevitably, with all their time spent together, Agniia and Jenna became close.

“There is an unspoken rule in documentary filmmaking that you have to keep this line, and you can’t overcome certain boundaries,” Agniia explains. “In my first film, it was not an easy subject [to do this with] as well. I was following a family for seven months, and [we became] close, but I always was trying to keep my distance, and was constantly thinking about it. How much should I say? How much should I give?” But as she got to know Jenna, it became clear that this time, that distance wouldn’t be possible. “With Jenna almost from the very beginning, I was like, fuck it. That’s not going to work with this one. I'm going to break this rule 100%. I never regretted it, because that's actually what built up the trust that is there.”

As Jenna's public performances continued and began to garner more public attention, her online audience multiplied. Among her virtual admirers was French fashion maven Michèle Lamy, who would eventually sign onto Queendom as an executive producer. Lamy's discovery of Jenna led to an invitation to walk in the Rick Owens show in Paris — her first time modeling, and her first time leaving Russia in her life. Of course, Agniia and her camera followed. But most of their excursions were not so glamorous; many of Jenna's performances shown in the documentary were undertaken at a real risk to her physical safety, and by extension, to the safety of Agniia. But neither of them were daunted.

I remember who I am. And this is what carries me through this life.

After all, Jenna was used to both taking risks and documenting them well before she was the subject of a film; she and her friends long filmed the often impassioned, sometimes violent reactions of strangers and policemen to their mere existence in public spaces in drag. And after a protest performance in which she wrapped herself in the Russian flag, Jenna was kicked out of beauty school, her last attempt at a practical route before pursuing her drag as a full time venture.

The only time Agniia tried to dissuade her was on Paratrooper’s Day, a Russian military holiday often characterized by the drunk soldiers roaming the streets. The risk for violence was especially high. “On Paratroopers Day, people say you can't come out in skinny jeans or with nail polish,” Jenna describes. “[I think] you should do the opposite. You should really make a statement and come out wearing what you want to wear. I think that clothes, what we wear, is really at some point beyond our psyche, our mind, our understanding. It is as if it's a certain kind of spice that is enticing you and you follow the scent of that spice and you don't see anything else except that scent and you follow it. That's how I see it.”

“I was like, ‘girl, maybe we should not do that,’” Agniia says. “Igor was stressing out and she told us, ‘well, you don't need to follow me. I'm gonna go and do it. I don't care if you're coming or not.’” In the end, Jenna ventured out for her performance anyway, protesting the then-recent invasion of Ukraine. Agniia followed. Not shown in the film is that the two were arrested, and managed to talk the police out of their arrest.

Not too long after, she would have to leave Russia again, this time moving for Paris for good; the film follows her struggles to get a visa in time to leave the country after the onset of the war. “It's already been three years that I've been in France, and it is important for me to understand and remember who I am, and to remember that pain, those moments when we were back in Russia doing drag, fighting with the police and law enforcement,” Jenna says. “It is important that this resistance continues and that those voices are not being silenced. Yes, here there’s much more freedom, there are pride parades and queer people can get married, but this is an illusion because there are also places where you cannot get married and you cannot enjoy the same freedoms. I cling to who I am, who I was from the very beginning. I remember who I am. And this is what carries me through this life.”

“Meeting Jenna gave me hope for the future of the country, because governments come and go, people in power come and go, but the generations change at the same time,” Igor says. “So it warms my heart to see that someone like her came from somewhere like that. If I saw her back then at a similar age, it would be even more personal. I think I would’ve accepted myself as gay quicker, and I wouldn't be nervous or closed and not open to the world or myself… Working with this project also meant that we were amplifying the voices of many, many people who couldn't speak like Jenna could.”

For Agniia, the honor of telling Jenna's story is only paralleled by the honor of having her in her life. “We found each other,” Agniia says. “And what I learned from Jenna is so precious; about life, about art, about surviving. And I appreciate it a lot. This film grew so much larger than just a documentary, because I have a family now, a working family.”

Queendom is now available to stream on Apple TV.