When Art Meets Activism How Kundai Kapurura stepped into her identity as an artist to give back to her community.
Written by Haley Landis | Photographed by Collin Bell | Illustrated by Sophie Barlow
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t’s midmorning on a Friday when Kundai Kapurura enters the sewing studio nestled in the corner of the Erb Memorial Union at the center of the University of Oregon campus. Large spools of thread protrude from a board hanging on one of the room’s walls. An archaic-looking weaving machine rests below the back window, and shelves rimming the room hold sewing machines, bins of materials and a collection of sewing books. Kapurura pulls out a seat at one of two worktables in the center of the room and drops her bag of materials on the other. She grabs a pair of scissors and lifts out a handful of neon fabrics. Today’s design is a custom order for a couple in California: two matching crewnecks, each with color-contrasting, hand-drawn flames sewn into their hems. She begins cutting out the pattern she had drawn the previous week, moving the scraps aside to save for later projects. Things are quiet in the studio today, but Kapurura often works in her room with music playing. She finds her creativity thrives in isolation, something she learned during the pandemic. “I can get in a zone where it feels like nothing else exists but what I’m working on,” she says, transfixed on the fabric in front of her. The project is one of many designs that Kapurura has taken
on since launching the clothing line Philanthropy Phabrics with her friend Sophia Cobb in 2020. The brand’s mission, Kapurura says, is to create “a sustainable future through handcrafted fashion.” They take clothing donations, thrifted items or pieces from their own closets and transform them into new designs, infused with aspects of Zimbabwean and Colombian from each of their backgrounds. But for Kapurura, the work is more than just clothing design — it’s a means of giving back to her community and being a social justice advocate. The brand donates 10% of its proceeds to local activism causes, focusing on ones that need timely support. Kapurura and Cobb are dedicated to causes that “uplift their community” and eventually hope to expand beyond local causes to national ones. Moreover, Kapurura is learning to take up space as a Black woman in business, use her voice and harness her creative abilities to spur social change. She does it all while balancing life as a full-time student and business owner. “She’s an amazing artist with a humble heart, a passion to serve others in that social justice lens and create space for other artists,” says her twin sister, Kudzai Kapurura. Alongside her twin sister, Kapurura grew up in a tight-knit family with her parents and older brother. Her parents moved from Zimbabwe to the U.S. in 2000, the year she was born,
Kundai Kapurura is a product design major and co-founder of Philanthropy Fabrics. Kapurura began hand-painting and upcycling clothes in 2020, at a time when she felt — due to the emergence of COVID-19, the height of the Black Lives Matter movement and the increasingly destructive wildfire season — a general sense of unrest globally as well as within the Oregon community. After reaching out to her co-founder, Sophia Cobb, the pair began creating and selling sustainably sourced clothing with their own creative spin while donating a portion of their profits to various local organizations. 34 | ETHOS | SUMMER 2022
