Petra Collins for Gucci AW16
Today marks the beginning of Berlin’s fifth annual Art Week and this year there are a multitude of reasons to celebrate – namely, all of the amazing female creatives collaborating with the event. The artistic community is notorious for its gender bias, with vocal collectives like the Guerrilla Girls working to reduce this inequality. That is, why now more than ever, it is important to support the creative women producing boundary-pushing works, making a name for themselves in the art world and doing so from an unapologetically female point of view. For many, that includes an inimitable personal style that we can’t get enough of.
Here, we present the female artists currently taking over the art game and expressing themselves with eye-catching style while they do it.
Left: image via artist’s Facebook, right: image via @losninosparty
Fatima Al Qadiri
The cover star for our recently released SLEEK 51, Fatima Al Qadiri is a visual artist and musician whose work can still be seen until the end of this week at the Berlin Biennale. A member of the Gulf-based artist collective GCC, the laid-back creative is often spotted in street style staples such as Hood by Air while sporting her signature cropped cut. Her artworks are visionary for their ability to break genres as well as geographical borders.
Left: “Untitled (Psychosocial Stuntin’)” by Juliana Huxtable, 2015, New Museum; right: “Untitled in the Rage Nibiru Cataclysm” 2015 from the “Universal Crop Tops for All the Self Canonized Saints of Becoming” series, by Juliana Huxtable; courtesy the artist
Juliana Huxtable
As one of the faces for H&M x Kenzo‘s recent collaboration, Juliana Huxtable is a no-brainer for a roundup on the most fashionable female artists. Last year the creative was a featured artist at the New Museum Triennial in New York, where she exhibited poetry as well as two self-portraits (shown above). Focusing on queer identity and its intersection with race, Huxtable presents an important perspective that is often overlooked in contemporary art.
Left: Gucci AW16, image courtesy of press office; right: image courtesy of @petracollins
Petra Collins
Fashion photographer Petra Collins has gained a massive following for her dreamlike imagery and ’70s aesthetic. In a perfect marriage of artistic vision, the creative was hand-picked by Gucci to model for its decadently disco AW’16 collection. With her mane of blonde hair and penchant for ruffles, Collins’ personal style is one that would give Roller Girl a run for her money.
Both images courtesy of @junocalypso
Juno Calypso
Using photography to transform herself in a fashion similar to the legendary Cindy Sherman, Juno Calypso creates images that centre on society’s constructs of femininity. Her photographs involve highly stylised backdrops and props as she morphs into an alter ego named Joyce. The artist’s attitude towards style is as equally pastel-hued as her work, with Calypso pulling off the all-pink ensemble without looking like a marshmallow – a fairly impressive feat if we do say so ourselves.