Alumni 34 : Gnemea by Mouyabwa Diomande

Raffael Merawi: Do you remember your first conscious encounter with design and what led you to studying Fashion Design at the IFM?

Mouyakabi Diomande: My first conscious encounter with design was in connection with football boots, the Mercurials from Nike. I drew them and then added my own ideas to the shoe. When I started drawing Nike sneakers, I automatically drew the merchandising to go with them. I had more fun drawing the clothes, so at some point I focussed on that.
However, I didn't think about studying fashion until quite late on, when I decided to concentrate on what would make me happy in the long term.

R: You recently did your first exhibition, where you showcased garments you created during your studies. Could you please explain what the title "GNEMEA" stands for?

M: Gnemea is the name of my mother.
It’s a word in my mother’s native tongue - the Dida, an Ivorian dialect. It stands for « Thanks to God ». My grandmother gave that name to my mother because she had a lot of issues with her fertility for a very long time until she had her first child, my mom.

R: Upon entering your exhibition “GNEMEA”, I could feel the frequency of a homely embrace through the images shot in your living room on display, which showed garments from your IFM 2022 graduation collection. What was the process and thinking behind creating these garments & images?

M: The process I tried to give myself was the one of a director in a way, to do the best I could to give this feeling of memories of someone fading away. I worked on this collection, to make it an ensemble of designs that would be a part of one big picture to convey this feeling. I also work a lot with music. Music helps me to put images and words on feelings that I’m trying to reach. Since working on Gnemea, I've added my process of creating playlists as original soundtracks of my projects, it provides a certain depth to the creative research.

R: Fashion, graphic design and music play a major role in your work. How did you come to mix these media and what benefits does this bring to your practice?

M: I have always thought that every creative medium is connected to another. It has always been important for me to acquire a creative arsenal large enough to create the most comprehensive and full universes around my ideas. So it is quite natural and organic that I utilize all these skills in one project.

R: In addition to your garments and images, there is an audio-visual installation with archival material at the back of the gallery. Can you explain the significance of this work?

M: This work is a representation of passing the torch. Conversations like this are the bridge between immigrant parents’ childhood and their kids. I often get unveiled trivial information during these types of conversations, yet they feel very distant. We tend to take for granted what we already have, but it’s quite important to put those things in perspective. Whether it is about me being born and raised in France or the journey of my mother from Ivory Coast to here. It is important to give her journey a special place in this exhibition as these are the reasons this project could see the light of day. These are topics that are worth diving into and that is what I tried to do with this video.

R: Your exhibition explores fashion as a means of identity and self-expression through cultural narratives and tradition. What is your methodology for designing based on archival research?

M: I don’t think I have a specific methodology. But I do see garments as a way of expression. Every garment has a story to tell because that is what defines the one who’s wearing them. I try to make hyper realistic costumes to give a specific idea or identity to the model. The archives I worked with are family archives, so the mood and history I wanted to tell was already written, it was mostly a funny game of mixing and matching ideas and concepts from two worlds I grew up in.

R: GNEMEA is the first published work by BootleggedMafia. Who is behind BootleggedMafia and what is the purpose of this collective?

M: There is no real person behind BootleggedMafia. I’m the head of this project alongside Jihane Oukdim as the only two members for now, but in the long run I would love it to be a creative label, helping and working with creatives to express their ideas in a selfless way. The purpose of BootleggedMafia is to get rid of any concept of hype or clout. Nowadays, we are really focused on the artist rather than their art, we check who they are before diving into what they do, and in my mind, it should be the opposite. I would love BootleggedMafia to be a place for artists to simply do funny things they couldn’t do themselves because of this or that reason, a « creative dumpster » as I love to call it.

R: When I visited your exhibition and you told me you are part of a collective called BootleggedMafia, I couldn't help but think of Russel Washington, the owner of the record label BigTyme Recordz, talking about DJScrew's tape June 27th being bootlegged: “Between all the people who bootlegged ’em, how many times . . . I mean, where is June 27th as it stands? That’s gotta be two million records!” Which leads me to my question: Are there any Southern hip-hop influences in BootleggedMafia?

M: Of course, there is! The southern hip-hop influence is one of the reasons I chose that name.

R: Could you elaborate on this please?

M: The terms Bootlegged and Mafia came naturally to me as I wanted something far from any institution, not controlled nor driven by someone who wouldn’t understand what it took from me or other artists to get here. A name that would give some scammer energy.

R: Who are your favourite southern hip-hop artists?

M: I really do love DJ $crew and more particularly all the Three 6 Mafia related artists - Juicy J, Project Pat, Gangsta Boo and many others. I also love the way they influenced Music and art in a way that we can’t even imagine. We can not forget to mention Blood Orange, A$AP Rocky and Dean Blunt, I love him.

R: Is there a particular southern hip-hop song that you really like?

M: There are too many, it's really hard to choose one. I know that Stay Fly by Three 6 Mafia was my first encounter with southern hip hop. But I'm going to go with Niggaz Ain't Barin Dat, that track really encapsulates every angle and possibility of that genre.

R: Can you see a connection between DJScrew's practice of mixtape production and BootleggedMafia's approach to art curation?

M: Totally! These two things basically have the same essence. The idea of creating a larger aesthetic and creative universe by using the works of several artists. Especially the idea of changing the viewer's perception of the artworks depending on the space and/or location they are curated in, just like a part of a song can be sampled in thousands of ways, but every single one of them would be different. That's literally where I want to see BootleggedMafia go.

R: Initially you were trained as a Fashion Designer, what led you to focus more on Illustrations and becoming a Graphic Designer for Louis Vuitton’s Menswear line?

M: It all came naturally. I always had an interest in logos and graphic Design, especially the link it has with fashion, whether it is Dapper Dan’s logo mania or the way Supreme brought graphic design on top of their fashion expression. Let’s not forget Virgil’s understanding and use of it. I entered the LV studio as an intern at first in March 2023, and I had the opportunity to work with their Graphic Designer, and since then we’ve been working together.

R: Are there any current projects you or BootleggedMafia are working on that you would like to share with us?

M: The next project is gonna be awesome, I want to stay secretive about it but stay tuned,I hope it will be worth it!