DRU
BLUMENSHEID

The Punu Bumesi Project formed in 2009, when I was designing clothing to wear during my winter travels. I was living in Mexico the USA and Australia in a span of 8 months, and was witnessing what was happening to younger generations living in such an internationally changing environment. In so many ways, I felt there is a need to express alternative ways of communicating global issues in multi media art through film, photography and fashion. The works consists of collaboration with 18 creative people from all over the globe including Africa, USA, Japan, Malaysia, Europe and South America and was shot in San Francisco and Melbourne. Each shot was produced with an impromptu interpretation of how the death of old ways reflects the essence of recreation in our current interchanging state.

The style and content of this project is elaborately conceptual with cross cultural, psychedelic imagery, expressing emotional desire for individuality in the current world. All the clothing in the shoots are designed and constructed by me, as an element to display the need for individuality in a visual reality and quiet protest on how enclosing the creative market is in the countries I experienced that are lacking creative freedom. The collaborator’s ethnicity was a strong inspiration for me to be used for the interpretation of this new approach; a cultural “mash up” of the future of individual freedom.

The models portray a documented portrait of one’s persona, put in an altered reality to perform their interpretation of what social confrontation creates from living in the environment of international corporate exchange. Each character/personality in the photographs and films confront the nature of this human condition in their own right. I feel such art is necessary in multicultural environments to open awareness of how corporate elements in various countries attempt to infest their “de- culturalized global culture” upon upcoming generations.

Punu masks are used as a name and way of self-expression through our surreal environments that reflect the current state of globalization within urban and natural environments. I feel this surreal beauty can be found in such an international generation. The Punu masks originally come from West Gabon, Africa and are used as death masks, representing female ancestry. The look of the masks can represent a more global feature as it has many similarities with other masks used in ritualistic performances around the world. The mask is a medium for subliminal performance.

I wish to encourage this alternative conception of what we could overcome to survive freely and respectively for ourselves.