Artists Didi Rojas, Paa Joe and Matija Bobičić explore self expression, death and nostalgia through the portrayal of footwear in their work.

Artists Didi Rojas, Paa Joe and Matija Bobičić explore self expression, death and nostalgia through the portrayal of footwear in their work in a story by Laura Pitcher.

For Diana “Didi” Rojas, a Brooklyn-based ceramic artist, the shoes you wear “tell your story.” “I think of shoes as self-portraits of their wearers,” she says. Creating colorful ceramic sculptures of your favorite designer shoes, her first solo exhibition <a href="http://www.launchf18.com/exhibitions/didi-rojas">You’re Doing Amazing Sweetie</a> opened last year after her graduation from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. “If I wasn’t an artist I think there’s a possibility I’d be into collecting shoes,” she explains. “I’m glad I can make them, even if it’s out of ceramic.”&nbsp;
 
After becoming interested in the medium during her freshman year, Rojas found something special in the "additive and then subtractive qualities" of hand sculpting. “I don’t see my sculptures as ceramic replicas of the shoes they reference,” she says. “I sculpt most of my pieces using photo references so, to me, it’s interesting thinking about what the sculptures should feel like given my own understanding of what shoes look and feel like.”
 
Rojas’ inspiration comes from noticing what shoes people are wearing around New York and from there, she sculpts each piece using the coiling method specific to ceramics before finish-off the piece with hand-painting. This is something that has been more difficult during the current pandemic, but she’s been grateful to continue her work and be back in her studio. “Right now I have two oversized sneakers in the works at my studio and I’ve been oil painting a lot at home,” she says. “Lockdown has also made me see that my practice can expand beyond just ceramics which has been refreshing.”

Craftsman Joseph Tetteh Ashong, commonly known as Paa Joe, is arguably the most prolific coffin artist in Ghana. Rooted in the traditional Ghanaian custom of abebuu adekai, Joe creates fantasy coffins that range from larger-than-life Supreme bags to Air Jordans. Joe explains that in Ghana, people are buried in a coffin that symbolizes their career, family or something they are passionate about. This makes his sneaker coffins not only a symbol that represents personal human experience, but a tool to reflect the belief that the deceased will continue their career in the afterlife. “A photographer goes with a camera, a king or queen goes with a lion or eagle, a fisherman with fish, all believing life still continues in the afterlife,” he says. When asked what his famous sneaker coffins symbolize about those buried in them, his answer is simple: “someone who is addicted to sneakers.”&nbsp;
 
Joe’s personal favorite pairs are the <a href="https://www.goat.com/collections/off-white"><ins>Nike OFF-WHITE sneakers</ins></a>. He believes fantasy coffins send people into the afterlife in a stylish way and started creating coffins back in 1962, through his mother and uncle Seth Kane Kwei, inventors of this craft and founders of the first fantasy coffin studio, Kane Kwei Carpentry Workshop. Each coffin is made from wood, handcrafted and hand-painted. Each sneaker-inspired coffin takes around five weeks to make from start to finish. While the pandemic has greatly impacted his business, he hopes to build an art academy and gallery to train new students in this unique art form in the near future.&nbsp;

Slovenian painter Matija Bobičić has made a name for himself painting whimsical scenarios orientated around sneakers, where clowns and dinosaurs are seen sporting the latest kicks. Interested in cartoons because they create a “reality where anything is possible,” Bobičić says these pairings represent the fleeting sense of happiness that consumerism brings. “We are like predatory dinosaurs hunting for products that we think are going to make us happy. We know that most clowns are initially sad and the smile is only a facade,” he says. “I think materialism is never going to make me truly happy, but painting material things [does].”
 
His fascination with sneakers comes from a place of nostalgia, starting with his first pair of Nikes back in 1995 “around the time [Eastern Block countries] trading with the West became possible. I took photos of my first pair. I felt so grateful my mom bought them for me, and then I decided it would be a good idea to paint them because I could really analyze them and appreciate them better through the process,” he explains. “With that, I managed to combine two of my favorite things in the world: painting and sneakers.” Today, his favorite shoe to paint is the <a href="https://www.goat.com/search?query=Air%20Max%2097%20Silver%20Bullet"><ins>Air Max 97 Silver Bullet</ins></a>, a pair he desperately wanted as a child.

Although all inspired by footwear, each artist has a unique relationship to footwear that mirrors the way the human experience spans &nbsp;different cultures and contexts. While Rojas sees shoes as self-portraits, Joe takes this concept further and creates fantasy coffins that literally represent someone’s passion in both this life and the next., as per Ghanaian customs. This idea of the connection to the self is explored through a different lens by Bobičić, whose relationship to sneakers is largely nostalgic for the importance they played in his youth. With this in mind, it’s hard to deny that shoes—whether the pairs we wear, wish we wore or grew up with—are all connective tools that span location and medium.

WRITER: <a href="http://laurapitcher.com/">Laura Pitcher</a> 
PHOTOGRAPHY: <a href="http://www.launchf18.com/">LAUNCH F18</a>, <a href="https://www.ruttkowski68.com/">Ruttkowski;68</a>, <a href="https://didirojas.com/">Didi Rojas</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/matijabobicic/?hl=en">Matija Bobičić</a>

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