A fertile mind: Kali Arulpragasam’s SUPER FERTILE

ViSCERAL.

is an understatement.

 

It’s no surprise that designer and founder of Super Fertile, Kali Arulpragasam was a senior at top advertising agencies in mega-cities London, Los Angeles and NYC before creating Super Fertile.

Her passion for global politics can be easily seen and felt through her pieces- which are much more than ornament: they are a message, emotion, hope and memory- they are communication. Her pieces inspire multiple and dynamic talking points; they demand conversation and introspection.

She brings critical issues, that are often ignored or sadly desensitized into debate and brings their voice to powerful, travelling spheres. It’s almost like she is bringing the voice of the affected to a continuous audience, keeping the conversation afloat and their voice and hope alive.

Kali starts her process not with the material or shape of the final piece– but with the message she is trying to convey. The message informs the piece’s shape, material and process from conception to final completed creation. Her wide range of material and processes is exciting: stainless steel, 3D printing, rubies, sapphires, crystal, mesh- excited to see coming combinations!

A true artist, who believes in delving into her projects to communicate purity, honesty and depth in her work, Kali has been an artist-in-residence at Darl Al Ma Mun in Morocco, prepping and discovering for her upcoming collection for 2016, WARRIORS, where she is combining traditional and contemporary artisanal skill and culture in an effort to empower and protect the women represented. She has also spent time in Jalisco, culminating in her exhibition at the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City.

Her focal topics range from humanitarian to environmental to domestic crises in Haiti, Sudan, Iraq, the United States and all over the globe.

What I admire most about Kali’s work is somewhere between her highly visceral pieces to her unapologetic, seemingly brash but actually highly empathetic lack of fear. Some have criticized her work as going to far, but Kali brings the truth to you on a pedestal like no other and forces us to take part in some way.

Too many people ignore the evil that is committed around the world simply because it isn’t happening to them. If there is any lesson to learn from history, it is that we must never let violence against anyone go unchecked.The idea behind the Murder collection was to put on full display in a highly artistic way the horrific acts that are committed in the name of religion, justice, nationalism, political affiliation, retribution…The mass media has numbed our senses with almost daily reports from around the world of genocide, suicide bombing, executions, raids… We even see mass celebrations for the ending of human life. No one has the right to take anyone’s life and you can dress it up and call it as you like but in the end it has only one name and it is murder…

Hunger’ is a range of extremely elaborate pieces using beading techniques, but in the tradition of SUPERFERTILE, as always with a difference! Staple foods such as wheat, chickpeas, corn, rice, beans, lentils have been recreated in gold and silver to highlight the priceless nature of essential foods taken for granted everyday in many parts of the developed world.  We created our pieces exhibiting the value of food and how much one can afford depending on their income, how much they can afford to buy and displaying their wealth and their  food around their necks.  All beaded necklaces are named by their weight in grams and kilos … 

With this collection I tackled the growing corruption that lies at the root of many world problems. We want to expose the truth. Whilst designing the collection, I also discovered that Africa is the centre of our World. Set in geography, shaped like a human heart. When the index is worn as a necklace, it sits on the wearers heart. It seems always broken, suffering, damaged, and we need to fix that. There are 24 different indexes of corruption in total including nuclear weapons, conflict intensity, political instability, education, global peace, under-nourished, safe water, life span, human development, world risk, corruption index, emission and energy, HIV Aids, civil liberties, literacy rates, wealth inequality, labour under $1 a day, freedom of press, human rights, income rates, and even the map of happiness.  Informs us of where the World is today.

The Tourism (Terrorism Affects Tourism) Collection. Iraq, for instance, features palm fronds and oil rigs; Afghanistan” is built on a poppy field. I wanted them to be huge, so you could see them across the room…I wanted to overwhelm people with beauty and then to make them think about the real country behind it…The mostdifficult part of it was researching elements to include that reflectedpositively on those countries. You always read about the wars. I wantedto create unexpected awareness of their beauty.

 

Images courtesy of Kali Arulpragasam.