Photographer Lucie Rox and Makeup artist Crystabel Riley have teamed up to bring WATER •• COLOR to life, a free adaptation of Rivers Solomon's award-winning fantasy novel The Deep.
The novel delves into a mythological legend of an underwater society built by the descendants of pregnant women on slave ships, that were thrown into the sea when they crossed the Atlantic. The plot revolves around the "Wajinru", the children of these women who, despite their mothers drowning, managed to survive and breathe underwater. The Deep is set in Afrofuturism, an aesthetic and cultural philosophy, that explores the development of the African diaspora with technology.
Rox and Riley began to consider what these underwater creatures would be like, powerful, and completely beautiful as the myth interprets them.
After the project came to life, the artists noted that this work could not simply be left as something to be seen on a few posts on social media, it was a powerful piece of work, and it should be treated as such. And so, they decided to make a fanzine about the project, thus giving the project the importance it deserved in order to be able to conclude it.
The proposal attracted several fashion collaborators, especially London designers, who joined in the journey by contributing looks from their collections, including Sinéad O'Dwyer, Di Petsa, and Alighiero among others.
Thanks to the lockdown, WATER •• COLOR had the opportunity of actually coming to life as an exciting project in which the artists who, due to lack of time during the normal routine, would otherwise not have had time to be fully involved in. This break created a space for creative development for Rox and Riley.
WATER •• COLOR is made for viewers to recognize the beauty of their subjects and enjoy the love with which it has been created.
