While finishing this Issue I reflected on where PREMIERE started and where we are taking it. The transition from being just an Instagram page, to a look book, and to slowly becoming a magazine with content besides photoshoots. This issue highlights another amazing artist Kikesa DeRobles, two Premiere Photoshoots headed by two of our members from the creative team, and a shoot by the talented creative Naomi Merlain. More from Naomi coming soon and I can’t wait. March is the beginning of spring and also the beginning to a new look for PREMIERE , the precursor for the April Magazine if I will, which will have a different feel from our previous issues. The shoots in this issue deal with concepts of being comfortable in your own skin. The contrast shoot highlights the body with paint, the Devine feminine/masculine deals with crossing the boundaries on what is considered masculine or feminine, and the Skin shoot highlights the idea of nudity as a form of art. A lot of the models in the shoots had to stretch themselves and get out of their comfort zones which was the idea of the shoots. I myself was taken out of my comfort zone when shooting the contrast shoot, but it was also interesting to see Sir Kobe direct others and making a space for people to be comfortable with showing their bodies off to others. I hope you will all be inspired to live a life comfortable in your own skin and enjoy the magazine.
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o the divine feminine/masculine energy is all about balance, yin and yang—duality. The idea behind these two energies is that we have both of them in us, and with an equal balance we can truly reach new heights in our lives. Feminine energy is very soft, introspective, self loving, figuring out what makes you happy and grounded. While feminine energy can be very personal and introspective, the masculine energy comes in to aid in expressing those things without fear of what other people are going to think get in the way. Masculine is about outward expression and displaying what gives you passion to live YOUR life authentically. I wanted this shoot look at one’s inner world and put that on display. The shots were very intimate, and I think every person was able express these things in their own, unique way. My mission was for people to adorn their bodies with these thoughts in mind and I think that really came to life.
“This shoot literally made me feel like I was in another world. It emphasized our softness, our light. It was a perspective I always wished to see myself in. Everyone in premiere’s existence just screams divine duality to me, we’re all a combination of so many things, and that’s the beauty of it all.” - Jessica Daniels
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his interview is with the talented mixed media artist Kikesa Kimbwala DeRobles. When choosing the next artist highlight for the month of March i was drawn to her happy and genuine personality. This interview was between PREMIERE’s own Christopher Williamson. Who are you, Where are you from, And what form of art do you do? My name is Kikesa Kimbwala DeRobles, people here know me as Kikesa Kimbwala. I am from Pomona, California, and I do different types of art, primarily painting but I also like working with Mixed Media, mainly anything I can do with my hands; my favorite.
Explain your art in one sentence? My Art is I guess it’s both Introspective but it’s also very reflective of different social, racial, sexual, and class issues.
How did you start making art? Why do you make art? When I was young, my mom owned a bookstore and it was like a cultural center for a lot of different things. She exposed me to a lot of different forms of art both like spoken word,literature and visual art. So just kind of having all of that cultural exposure just made me really want to participate. I make art because, shit that’s what I know how to do and the person I know how to be, it’s how I know to express myself and also the things that are important to me. It also helps me analyze and break down things that are difficult for me and reflect on a lot. I’m one of those bad communicator aquarius so that’s my way to communicate. What project are you working on now? I Just finished a couple different pieces. I just finished a couple portraits, a couple commissions and right now I am working on a piece that’s like a full male body which I haven’t worked on ever, I don’t usually do male subjects, but that’s what I’m working on right now. So I just got some free time, so I want to experiment a little bit with different mediums like wood, I’ve been doing that a lot lately. Ink, stuff like that.
Is there an artwork here you are most proud of? Why? The piece I would say I am most proud of right now is actually one that won a prize for the student show, but that was a piece that I had been thinking about for a long time. Like I had conceptualized it my junior year of highschool, and I didn’t get to start working on it until last December, so all of the months leading up to last weekend; that was my main piece, my main focus. So that’s what I’m proud of right now. What was the name of it? It’s called Four Women. Inspired by the great Nina and her song. How do you know when a work is finished? I am the type of person where I could be working forever and ever. Like I can just continue, but I think that when I start a piece I don’t feel responsible for it as my own as much as I’m bringing something to life, like it already is its own. So I’m kind of exposing it to the outside. I’m giving it a time to bring itself to fruition. I kind of let the piece show me when it is itself.
What inspires you? Everything that I enjoy. All of the people that I care about, looking outside, just all of the experiences of life that make this shit worth living. Like you can look anywhere and it’s beautiful. You can talk to people, all of the interactions are beautiful. You can overhear words and it’s just like people in their regular existence in spite of all of the distractions, all of the hardships, whatever you have to be concerned about. Moments of stillness to just enjoy being, those really inspire me. What inspired four Women? So Four Women was inspired by the song Four Women by Nina Simone. It’s one that kind of haunted my childhood a little bit. I remember my parents would play it in the car and it’s very graphic in the descriptions of these different black female identities describing their own hardships with race relations, being the children of slaves, or the product of rape. It was just something that I had thought a lot about since I was younger and wanted to visualize their individual strengths and also how black women are the pillars for not only the black community, but America, and that it was built on the backs of black women.
What problems have you faced as a black artist and also as a woman? It’s kind of difficult to navigate your identity as a black artist, because there is so much speculation as to what your responsibility is as a black artist. You have to make work that is culturally relevant and you have to be a spokesperson for your people. What does that mean when we are all individuals? When we all have different experiences and different perspectives? So when people hold that as an expectation for your work, and the perspective that you’re supposed to embody that can be limiting in what you feel free to explore as a creative. And also the way that that identity intersects with exploring issues of gender discrimination in my work, and I’m also half Mexican so there are different cultural intersections that I have to navigate and I don’t really want to feel bound by.
Do you think your gender plays a role in how people recieve your art or does your work speak for itself and gender/race/sexuality not play a part in it? I think that gender might. Some of my earlier works like my main focus last year I did a lot of female nudes or the implication of nudity and sexuality without wanting it to be overly erotic because I think that the female body can be very hypersexualized, nudity in general can be hypersexualized even outside of a sexual context. When people would see my work the first question would be, “Did you model for this? Is this you?” And then it detracts from the work itself and now it’s like okay now we are just talking about sex. But I found that an empowering topic to explore because of that contradiction. What intrigued me about it was this idea of using something that has been used against you and reclaiming it in a way that allows you to explore, like self intimacy and what your body means to you. I’ve always liked the idea of taking something that was used against you and using it to empower yourself so that was and interesting topic to explore visually.
What is your most important artist tool? Is there something you can’t live without in your studio? I would say something simple like a sketchbook and pencil just because there’s so much that you experience day to day that you carry with you that has an impact on you and I like to keep note of that. I write a lot of little notes, I write a lot of quotes that are over here. I’ll be sitting somewhere and make an observation, and write it down. The weird thing is I think that I take more notes than I do actual sketches, and then the words transform themselves into the paintings. Reading and writing also had a large influence on how I like to express myself so they take a big role in how I transform them into a visual work. Dang, I don’t have a real studio right now, but my corner of the bedroom. I like to keep stacks of paper and cardboard, little things like that just because I’ll see something that I think is interesting and compelling for no reason, like it could be a little toy or those little Polaroid pictures, like I keep piles of those which makes me look like a hoarder, but I don’t know what I’ll need them for, but eventually I’ll need them.
Is there an element of art you enjoy working with most? Why? I would say I really like cardboard. I haven’t worked too much with cardboard lately, but that was like something I was really interested in last year. It was something that I was introduced to in one of my classes and the idea of textiles. The idea of cardboard its used everywhere, you can find it everywhere, and you can start peeling it back and there are these layers of different fibers, things like that. So you can use it to construct, but you can also create by taking away and exposing. That has always been really interesting to me. But yeah, I fuck with cardboard. It’s the poor man’s canvas. What processes do you look forward to experimenting with? Right I’m in a printmaking class and I would like to then transfer what I’m learning now into silk screen printing. I’d like to move into working with different textiles maybe working with clothes. I need to invest in a sewing machine. My aunt finally taught me last summer how to sew so I’ve made a little shirt but I’d like to start transitioning into different textiles for sure.
Why do you create? What need does it satisfy? My desire to create is really raw in the sense that it’s not something I think about, it’s something that I feel very restless and uneasy if I’m not actively creating, and usually that’s like 3,4,5 pieces at the same time just so I always have my hands on something, but it satisfies a need to make the things that are hard for me to even conceptualize something tangible. Which is crazy because you can have these ideas in your head that are even difficult to put into words and yet it can become something that is clearly communicated to other people just by interacting with it just in passing. They see it and it came straight from there without me even having to understand it. That’s something that I think is pretty cool. To have something that you don’t understand, but allow to exist. What would you do without art? I always joke that I could not do shit else. People will be like, “Oh that’s really cool that you’re an art major, congrats!” but it’s not something to hype me for because I cannot do shit else. I don’t have the discipline. But I had other dreams when I was a kid. I wanted to get into science, I’m bad at math, but yeah I was a nerd, I wanted to be a seismologist, I wanted to work for NASA too, but yeah I’m an artist.
What is your dream project? I would love to open some type of creative space that is not only able to showcase the work or other artists, but allows people to engage it in a way that… I guess what i experience going to museums is that there is a real disconnect between the people that go, which are usually like middle aged white people, and the artists who have their work showcased, especially black contemporary artists, there’s a real disconnect in what the work is trying to communicate and what’s interpreted. I’d like to create a space that allows that barrier to dissipate, and then allows people to be inspired by the work that they see and create themselves. I don’t want money to be a factor. I want people to do what the fuck they want. If I could provide that for people, that’s what I would want to do. What do you like about your work? I like that my work isn’t too grounded in rules. I give myself a lot of space to experiment both with different shapes, and different colors. I love working with different colors. I am really interested in ideas of visualizing different dimensions without having to explicitly depict them. I try to work with elements that are unexpected and make you think a little bit more about the concept behind it.
What do you dislike about your work? The opposite side of that is when you put it up against a work that’s more traditional then it can kind of become a point of insecurity, like should it be more consistent with the laws of great portraiture things like that, staying within those standards. I can start to question that a little bit. For the most part I know Im still a student even to my work. I allow the process to teach me so I don’t get too hung up on the execution really I let it be what it is. What do you dislike about the art world? What I dislike about it as it currently stands: money corrupts. Art is very lucrative, but it’s also... Everything is very political, and if you play your cards right, everything can work out. It’s also that clout culture it’s a lot of hype and you can lose your honesty to what will allow you to be successful mainstream, which kind of contradicts, to me, what the point of art is. Which is that raw communication, it is a means of communication so if you’re not communicating something that is honest, what is its real value?
What memorable responses have you had to your work? So our student show was on last Friday and this girl came up to me afterwards and was like, “I was looking at your painting a lot. When we walked in I was looking at the different faces, and I sat back in my chair, went through the whole ceremony whatever, and then I turned back around and looked at it and all of a sudden I saw the big four figures, and you really made me think. I had to think both to see it, and also to understand the cohesive concept because I had already seen the different elements of it and that just brought it together, you made me think harder than i had thought in a long time.” and I was like that’s the best thing you could’ve told me. That was like a really validating thing to say. Who are you listening to right now? Oh God this is embarrassing, okay should I be honest? I woke up listening to Ugly God, because he’s funny and his beats kind of go off. I’m not lying, I wish I was. I’ve been listening to Tierra Whack. Obviously Solange’s new album, that shit goes crazy, oh my God. I like listening to the Soul Classics every once and awhile they’re just thrown in there some Curtis Mayfield, Nina Simone is always in there. But it’s a range, Rico, she’s there of course, BbyMutha, she’s in there.
What’s your favorite Ugly God track? See I would say Bitch!, but am I allowed to say bitch in this? Okay yea, Bitch! Is good. Bitch exclamation mark. How would you describe your style fashion wise? It bounces around. I like to be comfortable, and I also like to wear things I feel like I’m not supposed to just because it’s fun, I like to be messy. I like a boyish look just because it’s fun to play with androgyny all the time. Yea so you might catch me out in a big, loose button up. I love statement T shirts they’re always fun. But yea I like a carefree, comfortable, boyish look. How was growing up in Pomona? Pomona is a cool place, it’s weird because I went to high school in Claremont which is right next to it, and it’s one of the whitest, affluent cities in California. Which was not my experience at all. Pomona is very low income, a lot of undocumented immigrants, but I was just exposed to a lot culturally there. Pomona has a really amazing art scene, so I got a lot of love for it. My mom still owns a bookstore there. It’s a non profit so she has open mics every week, they have farmers markets. It’s just a very creative place that is overlooked as well.
What’s the name of your mom’s bookstore? It’s called Cafe Con Libros Press. Thanks for that shout out, she’ll like that.