“TRANSIENT OBJECTS” by Omer Asim x Scarlett Rouge
Omer Asim & Maya Antoun co-creative directors of OA. Asim a clothier with a background in Architecture and Antoun, a jewelry maker who relocated into the medium of Fashion. The pair from Sudan have a meticulous focus on substance, craft, form, and construction and they define the brand’s solid silent aesthetic with sensual volume, texture and considered shapes. The idée fixe of the brand is - clothing as objects, a mere pedestal for the individual.
Photo x Dmi @master.it.london
Omer Asim and Maya Antoun, co-creative directors of the Omer Asim brand, have spent the last decade carefully building an archive of garments, objects, and ephemera that capture the essence of their brand. They have simultaneously developed a distinctive visual language and brand identity. Their journey reflects a dynamic exchange between Sudan and London, expressed through their garment and object creation.
As Omer Asim enters a new phase, the brand aims to further refine its unique identity and core values. These are based on three fundamental pillars: the "Pleats" the iconic "Gilet" and the "One Piece" which is inspired by the 4.5-meter fabric of the Sudanese Toub. The 'One Piece' is an ingeniously designed dress that can be unstitched to revert to its original fabric length.
In an era defined by speed and impermanence, Omer Asim reclaims cultural identity by deconstructing Sudanese objects and addressing historical marginalization through a focus on materiality and the creative process. The collection of Copper objects, developed over 10 years, also examines and challenges traditional crafting methods and material value norms.
"Transient Objects" marks the start of a series of nomadic events set to unfold over 24 months. Rouge's collaboration with Asim and Antoun, who have a longstanding 'Other Works' aspect to their practice, delves into art, culture, and spirituality, which fundamentally supports their design approach. On Wednesday evening, Rouge presented an interpretation of their fabric usage and its relationship to the body, embarking on a transformative journey where creativity, expression, and collaboration converge to explore the narrative of Omer Asim's brand identity.
The speed and impermanence of modernity might trump the ‘transient’ and shade the matter of the ‘objects’ in this title. However, for us, as makers, this order is inverted by our affinity to materiality and the process of making. Integrating ourselves into the means of production of material culture and body politics served as a social bridge for our displacement to navigate between radical differentials of status and political power.Materiality aside, the matter of ‘objects’ also translates in a Kleinian sense. In Klein’s psychoanalytic setting, ‘objects’ refer to internalised emotive landmarks, ranging from the positive and life-enhancing (good mother, good breast), to the negative and, god forbid, nameless dreads.
We examined Sudanese ‘Objects’ through acts of contemporary deconstruction (material and metaphysical) of the Sudanese Toub, amulets and signet rings. This experience is as personal as it is universal. In the early 20th century, indigenous art and knowledge systems inherent to Primitivist Modernism were outcasted until being repackaged and co-opted by the imperial West. Becoming known as ‘post-modern’, ‘progressive’ and ‘alternative’, primitivism was exported back to the indigenous societies from which these systems of thought and aesthetics were stolen.
Contending with this epistemic rupturing and theft of our material, cultural and metaphysical agency, this is an act of reclamation which holds a particular and restorative promise for makers, designers and artists from colonised and indigenous societies in the struggle against epistemic marginalisation. Other ‘objects’ of note in this monograph are the wood-wools upon which our ‘resolution objects’ are displayed. Traditionally, wood wool is used for soundproofing; however, we found it to be an apt backdrop for the current geopolitical sonics
Photo x Dmi @master.it.london
- Omer Asim to HUMBLE :
- “I think the only thing that keeps me going is that I can't think of anything else I can do. So if it's the only thing you can do, then probably stick with it.
I think the main problem with being in this industry is that you constantly have to battle with up and down, up and down, up and down a lot. And it's definitely not an easy thing to deal with. I think maybe we cope with that by partnering together because it can be very, very lonely and it can be very mentally challenging.
I think partnering is very important to me, but also because a lot of what we do is based on conversations because we don't really sketch or we don't try to find literal points of reference for inspiration. It's all conversation based. So for us it made sense that we work together because we needed those conversations to guide the work.
Because everything comes from the process of making and nothing is being planned. So for us it also makes sense to be two people who can do work and then come back, discuss it and maybe discuss other things actually that might seem like they have nothing to do with this and then come back to it again. So for us also the partnering made sense from that perspective because we needed to have these conversations from a different angle”.
- “We are collaborative in the nature of how we work; for us at Omer Asim collaboration has been how we have worked for the last decade. Thus, partnering with an artist like Scarlett, whose work sits in an adjacent space to us, felt like a natural choice. Her artistic practices resonated with us, as we recognized a shared sense of discipline. The process working up to the performance has been an exchange of dialogue in ideas which has led to the culmination of the symbolic performance on the 5th.”
Photo x Dmi @master.it.london
Scarlett Rouge: IG ScarlettRouge | www.scarlettrouge.com
Photo x Dmi @master.it.london
- “Collaborating with Omer Asim felt natural as there was a synergy between our thought processes and ideology. My collaboration here was bringing to light the installation with the fabric that has a long history, seeped in Sudanese tradition yet portraying its contemporary and modern outlook. Omer Asim creates a space around ‘Transient Objects’, which I’ve been able to connect with and translate through expression, bridging the gap between physical objects and emotion through the movement which flows throughout the performance.”