Marita Moreno Collab
Marita Moreno trusted me with their beautiful shoes. It was a true honor, and I had a wonderful time illustrating them.
“Personne”
“Personne” is the French word for “nobody”. It's a reference to André Breton's second book “Nadja”, which explores ways of seeing the world, the self, and surrealism. It seemed fiting, since these illustrations are visual representations of my dreams. I painted the shoes black as a metaphor for nighttime. The white pen draws the delicate balance between light and darkness.
My dreams are usually weird and filled with elements that, alone, are meaningless. Still, they create a cohesive narrative when together. Insects, flowers, trees, and eccentric animals, the moon, the stars, and all the things that are part of a firmament that we still don't fully understand, are a huge part of my subconscious nights.
For this reason, I keep coming back to elements such as the sky, the stars, and the planets.
The tiny dots are stars, and the passage of time.
The sphere from which all dots are born represents the way I look at my existence on this planet: as part of a whole that breathes through the same organ, never independent of its surroundings.
No beginning, no end.
“Man Bug”
Here you can read the story of how I created my Alien Babies series. That's the concept for these shoes, too.
The title of this work “Man Bug” is one of the names Cobain considered for his band before choosing the famous “Nirvana”. Fitting, being that he was the inspiration for the whole series.
The illustrations are about the “self”, the night, and dreams.
I also added a few constellations (would it really be me if I hadn't?):
“Aries”, my sun sign.
“Lupus” means “wolf”, and refers, once again, to nature.
"Mula", is part of the twenty-seven Nakshatras of Hindu astrology, and symbolizes the "root".
“Automatic”
For this pair, I explored automatic writing and drawing. I painted childhood memories, animals, body movements, fears, doubts, and abstract shapes that are familiar to me. I wanted to portray a place where reality turns into a dream.
The same happens with the text, written without planning, often inverted (something I did as a teenager since it allowed me to write things other people couldn't read). Colors were also applied as randomly as possible.
