Talks Digital Art, Destiny’s Child & Tumblr
Folasade Adeoso is more than ‘just a model’. She’s an artist taking the blogosphere by storm with her digital reappropriations of colonial and fashion photography.
People know you as a model, but you also make pieces of digital art which I first saw on Tumblr. When did you start creating in this way, what compelled you to start and where are you hoping to take your art?
I’ve been making work on my computer in my room for a long time. Way back it was manipulating images of Pharrell or Beyonce. I stopped for a while because I took some time to model and then took time off from modelling for personal reasons. But since taking time off from modelling my work has been getting so much better. I’m not just a model, whatever “just a model” means to you, I have a vision and my vision is my voice. I plan to go to back to school and study graphic design and eventually I want my work to be exhibited. Mainly I want my work to start a dialogue, that’s one of the most important things. For my generation of kids, it’s so easy to make something and put it on the internet for some ‘likes’. I’m beyond that now [laughs].
How do you go about creating your work? How do you find the images and do you sketch before you create?
I can’t draw, I can’t even draw a stick figure! But everything is drawn in my head, my mind is always working. So when I see an image I like, I might stare at it for a day, then save to my computer and start working on it.
Is there a symbolism to the line markings you make on photographs? I notice that faces and heads are often cut or framed by lines.
I draw the lines where I feel. Sometimes I delete them and try again.
I don’t know why placement is so key to me. The lines here are connecting by intersecting and suggest a relationship. But mainly I just think what can I do to bring something different to these images? And I start playing with lines and then connecting one line to another. And then I delete, try again, delete, try again. Place a line in another