A collaboration with renowned Kenyan photographer.
MUTUA MATHEKA — Mutua Matheka is a travel and architecture photographer and a Ford Foundation Fellow. Born in Kenya and based in Nairobi, he loves cities, urban living, and the mundane. His work focuses on exploring African urbanity.
MUTUA MATHEKA x MACHINA
Part of a series created during the Covid pandemic lockdown. While at home, Mutua Matheka started shooting portraits and making art pieces with his photography. As the lockdown persisted, the pieces varied from funny, to helpless, to hopeful.
WE, THE PEOPLE T-SHIRT
Police brutality is a worldwide problem.
While a majority of total victims of police violence are white, multiple studies have found that police violence disproportionately affects people of color.
Even officers who are fired for misconduct are frequently rehired.
And while class privilege isn’t going to stop any black person experiencing racism or racist violence, class is a major factor in how structural racism is experienced on a day-to-day basis, and those of us with good incomes or more capital must remember that. Working class black communities all over the world face daily harassment from the police while also experiencing worse health outcomes, trauma and poor housing.
In Mexico, as in the United States, states and cities fund police forces to supplement federal law enforcement. Critics say the result is that wealthier areas have better trained and equipped forces. Australian and Western European cities generally don’t fund their own police forces. One exception is Switzerland, where many municipalities finance local departments to augment regional forces.
Police brutality remains a problem in many advanced democracies. Officers worldwide have used aggressive means, such as rubber bullets and tear gas, to crack down on protesters, including French police during the Yellow Vests protests that began in late 2018. Police have also used excessive force when enforcing coronavirus restrictions in recent months; Kenyan and Nigerian police have killed more than thirty people amid the pandemic.
Ultra heavy weight cotton — 3M reflective graphics — Oversize fit — Smooth & Soft feel — Well structured.
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TUMAINI T-SHIRT
Hope is a match in a dark tunnel, a moment of light, just enough to reveal the path ahead and ultimately the way out.
A cloud hovers above us but hope exists. It grows in the deep layers and I’m committed to watering it and getting it to grow. I choose to live not as one without hope. — MUTUA MATHEKA
For this specific t-shirt we have invited people from different parts of the world to take a self portrait using our Tumaini t-shirt and share a story of hope through times of COVID.
We named this t-shirt TUMAINI ; meaning Hope in Swahili . It’s all about not loosing hope through these harsh times.
Hope is an optimistic state of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes with respect to events and circumstances in one’s life or the world at large. We invited different creatives from all corners of the world to do a self portrait of their own that represents them and can tell a story about hope through these times of COVID. How are they coping? What have they done different? What do they hope for? From photographers, to film makers, designers and dancers. You can follow their stories through our social media or using the following hashtags #MachinaWT #CreatingIsolation .
Ultra heavy weight cotton — 3M reflective graphics — Oversize fit — Smooth & Soft feel — Well structured.
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You can check out all of Mutua's self portraits for his #CreatingIsolation series through his social media.