-by Ale Zapata (Curator / External Projects Coordinator at Improper Walls)

Catching up with Anna Menecia Antenete Hambira—Vienna-based freelance fashion designer, artist and creative director and author of the interdisciplinary fashion project amaaena that combines sustainability, contemporary fashion and socio-political responsibility.

You can read our first interview with Anna about the project’s beginning here.

Anna, your last project, "from scratch: a reflection in retrospect of the life of a strange herb" is deeply personal and evocative. What motivated you to explore such personal and profound themes through this project?

Anna: I think I was just ready to open up. I have this weird counter-strategy of not remembering hurtful things that happened to me. For example, I've always felt like I only remember bits and pieces of my childhood and adolescence. Two years ago, something very traumatic broke through in the form of a flashback. Very unexpectedly. I had to travel back to a moment of violence that had happened to my body during my teenage years. That moment, confronting that situation again and dealing with it, caused a crack in the way I dealt with things.

In my opinion, overlooking and ignoring the pain that society inflicts on Black, Brown and queer bodies is a common survival strategy for marginalized bodies. How should we be able to experience moments of happiness in our daily lives under constant pressure? Especially when we focus on childhood, I often read the phrase “my child is too young to learn about racism,” coming mostly from white mouths. But yet Black, Brown and queer children are confronted with it every minute of their time growing up.

I wanted to travel back to a time when I didn't know what was happening to me. I felt the need to explain to my child-person what was happening there because I realized that all of that pain is written in my body today, and I deserve to acknowledge that. It's about responsibilities.

Your introductory poem “THEY” is incredibly moving. Could you tell us about the emotions and thoughts you were experiencing when you wrote it and why it holds such a special place in this project?

THEY crossed my path as I was writing about a situation that AE, the child in the auto-fictional story I've been working on since the beginning of this project, had to live through. AE had no strength left in her body. She gave up. In the face of the indefinable pain caused by the world she had grown up in, she curls up in an armchair, grabs a comic book, a move I know very well myself. She enters a world where a queer Black superhero named THEY fights for the oppressed. While designing this hero on paper, I asked myself why I had to let go of the human itself to describe what AE needed in this situation. And I realized I was looking for the embodiment of collectivity. Something bigger than the pain of a single person, a single moment. Something older than the bodies we encounter. Ancestral pain, ancestral struggles. Something born out of acknowledging the toxic systems we are doomed to live in. Born out of acknowledging the collective trauma. Early on in the process of this project, I felt that acknowledgment was the weapon in this thing. It felt like my way of healing. And also a way of articulating power, anger and resistance. A form of protest. Collective pain, collective anger leading to collective healing. And also Blackness, the beauty of being Black. This indescribable strength that lies in the burden we carry. It gave me so much joy to immerse myself in the beauty of Blackness and to write a story about something supernatural that gives you freedom. That's what THEY is about. And that's what this whole project is about. To visualize the strength that bodies and souls develop in oppression. We are not sensitive; we are born in resistance.

How did you decide to blend auto-fictional storytelling with fashion and art? What challenges and freedoms does this hybrid approach offer?

It wasn't so much a decision as an urge. I had to dig deep to find out what I was looking for. The biggest challenge, as always, is time. Throughout the process, I made the decision to move away from the fashion label. Calling what I do a project gave me the freedom to see each part of it as equally important. This also removed the finish line and allowed the project to evolve wherever it wanted. Everything is a process now. The timeline stretches endlessly.

Your project touches on the pain and resilience of growing up in a marginalized body. How do you hope to impact the ongoing conversations about race, identity, and belonging through your work? What message do you want to convey to both marginalized and non-marginalized audiences?

In the past, I wanted to invite people who were not marginalized into our world. I wanted to explain. Visualize in search of understanding and kindness. In some ways, the gentleness I sought in the encounter became a burden, always ready to break at the rudeness of my counterpart.

I had to change the way I interacted with audiences, especially white audiences. I felt my inner punk rise up, full of anger but also slightly arrogant when it came to the stupidity of privilege when interacting with people. We've explained enough, and I'm sick of it. If you care, you know the structures, you know the systems, you know your position in the world.

In my current project, I speak to us. I would be happy if other BIPOC and queer bodies recognized themselves in the stories I tell. The goal of this project is to visualize the strength that lies in the burden of being Black. It's about self-acknowledgement, healing and pride that we are who we are, that we are living with these invisible scars and that we are still able to create. Creating love, friendships, families but also creating any forms of creative output. It's about the strength not to get lost in suffering. It's about fighting against ignorance and all forms of oppression every day. It's about being bold.

Still from movie *scratch.* ©Courtesy of the artist

Looking ahead, how do you envision the future of amaaena? What new boundaries do you hope to push, and what conversations do you wish to continue or start with your upcoming projects?

When I imagine the future of amaaena, I see no limits. I hope to follow the path I've just taken into an even more experimental, interdisciplinary world where fashion, video, and written words intersect to create new images of the world we live in.

I hope to push the boundaries of fashion and, in particular, fashion production and consumption. I want to inspire people to reconnect with the garments they wear. To feel the value in every stitch that another person sews. To listen to the stories that are embedded in their garments. Being playful with one's own surface and finding love and softness for one's own body through it.

I would like to continue working with other artists and people from other fields. To find joy in exchange and encounters, to open up in softness, to build connections and to create resistance. Last but not least, I want to continue to expand my own boundaries and be active in any artistic field that speaks to me.

©Anna Breit

Anna Menecia Antenete Hambira lives and works as a freelance fashion designer, artist and creative director in Vienna.

Through her own everyday reality, as a black, queer woman born in Germany and living in Vienna, her designs deal with topics such as gender, sexuality and race.

amaaena is an interdisciplinary fashion project based in Vienna that combines sustainability, contemporary fashion and socio-political responsibility. It works outside the existing fashion cycle in order to conserve human and natural resources. The core aim of the project is to revalue the everyday objects of clothing and to visualize the reality of the lives of marginalized people. It's about starting a conversation and taking up positions.

INTERVIEW WITH ANNA MENECIA ANTENETE HAMBIRA