I get it now, fire.
You don’t want to warm people, you just want to exist.
A loud, orange and unapologetic energy.
People only love you when you stay small, like a candle, small enough just to be a vibe.
The moment you get big, they call you dangerous or whatever.
Different flame, but same story
You burn one thing down
and everybody forgets
all the cold nights you kept them alive.
نار مش محتاجة إذن.
You don’t ask permission,
I like that.
Oh and lastly: I wasn’t talking about fire.
Some shots I took during this shooting
@mrwhoo0@mychal.be@shotssbylucy@freshprince.prod@muckie_mara@skaa._
Stitched and Stained
The suit is her armor,
stitched in the language of the present,
letters pressed into fabric
like shields against the noise of the world.
The henna is her inheritance.
A skin-born scripture,
spoken by the hands of mothers,
whispered across centuries of women
who left no books,
but only the ink of their touch.
One gives her the shape of resistance,
the other the blood of belonging.
They do not fight,
they breathe together.
And in their union,
she becomes a living archive.
The present armored by the past,
the past carried into the present.
Stitched and stained, she walks the circle her mothers began.
Creative direction and photography: @focusonbadrr
In frame: @ayooni.studios
Suits: @thegangisbeautiful
Special thanks to @jinkojoshu 🤝🏽
“What’s your type?”
People ask me what my type is, as if desire is simple.
As if I could point to a face, a body, a way of walking into a room and say, this is what I choose.
My type was chosen before me.
It lives in the women who raised me. In the tiredness they hid well and the strength they made look normal. In the silence between, “I’m okay,” and the body saying otherwise.
My type is iron. Or the lack of it.
The miracle mineral that keeps us moving,
even when the body is losing.
My type is blood trying to carry enough life to keep going.
It’s orchids opening in the colour of bruises, beauty growing out of what hurts.
Oxygen is what the blood was promised.
Oxy generates a thirst the body cannot nurse.
It’s my mother’s body teaching me that
even though your blood is tired,
it can still protect a home.
So when I say that’s my type,
then sure, it might be about love,
but no.
I mean blood and its condition that moved through her quietly and taught me how deeply a body can carry.
One of my personal pieces of the exhibition
Thank you @kayefenty for helping me out 🫶🏽
For The Record - Fragments of Humanity
This is a project I’ve been working on for quite a while, and its urgency is growing by the day. For The Record is a living human archive, documenting stories that were never told in its native tongue.
This snippet is a Papiamentu segment from @oceanpearlrodriguez , talking about the car accident as a 13-year old and its echos.
Oh baby, I haven’t even reached my full potential yet. However, this week alone still deserves its own dump post tbf.
I had my first solo exhibition and my first feature film screening in the same week as finishing my first ever book. The rooms were packed, the stories were FELT and tears dropped like the heavy clouds trying to shed some weight. I don’t even know where to start.
Thank you, to everyone who pulled up and for all the help. This week has been so inspiring for me too, every conversation I had will be carried with me like armor and medals. Thank you, to everyone who brought energy into the room and asked questions. Thank you, to everyone who sent love and cried quietly (I see you). The exhibition “Not Everything Is Visible”, the film “For The Record” and my book “Creative Code Of Conduct” came from a very personal place. It came from wanting to build bridges and archives for anyone who feels invisible. To actually see stories in a room with actual bodies and voices, even in reactions and love, is insane.
Anyways, my blood is tired. Lemme take a lil nap for now. 🖤
For The Record - Fragments of Humanity
This is a project I’ve been working on for quite a while, and its urgency is growing by the day. For The Record is a living human archive, documenting stories in its native tongue.
This snippet is a Spanish segment from @sprnz18 , talking about domestic violence and its ripple effect.
A Sample X Badrr Collab:
Not Everything Is Visible,
an exhibition by @focusonbadrr
📍Sample - Hoekenrode 10A, Amsterdam | 19.30u-22.30u | Free entry | Welcome speech 20.00u
🎧 On the deck @jamyn3xtdoor_
Opening on 2nd May
Through 29th May
Badrr’s first solo exhibition starts from a simple idea: not everything is visible. What we see is often only one part of what is really there. Beneath every image or every person, there are layers that don’t immediately reveal themselves.
This exhibition is an invitation to look a little longer. To sit with what is shown, but also to sense what stays underneath. Through this body of work, themes like memory and identity come forward as things we carry and question, living beyond simple explanation. Besides his work, the evening will also make space to present his Creative Code Of Conduct, marking it as a first physical release of the document.
This exhibition is a snapshot of what Badrr has done so far and what is to come.
I’m hyped to invite you all to my first ever film screening as a filmmaker… and it’s a feature film (90minutes, yes).
For The Record, it started as a voice memo on my phone while talking to myself and it quickly became a concept on paper. This film wouldn’t have been possible without the people who shared their stories and a fragment of themselves. Thank you 🩶
A bit more about the film:
“In a quiet room, an archivist listens to a collection of cassette tapes. Each recording containing a voice, spoken in its native tongue, about a moment that shaped their lives. As he carefully transcribes every testimony, fragments of different lives begin to form a collective portrait of the human condition. But the longer he listens, these fragments begin to reveal something unexpected about the archivist himself.”
Date: Thursday, 30th of April
Time: 8PM - 11PM, program starts at 8.30-8.45PM
Location: Bijlmerplein 875-876, @blackactivationmovement
Ticket 🎟️ link in bio! (Food and drinks included)
For a long time this project only existed in notes, scattered thoughts, voice memos in chats and late night talks where me and friends kept questioning what responsibility we actually carry as creatives.
The creative industry is a vast and living vessel. People step into it every day with ideas, big ambition and the hope of building something meaningful. That openness and accessibility is beautiful. Anyone can become a creative and can enter that space, but there’s a problem we rarely talk about: there is no institute or association overseeing the creative integrity of practices within the industry, like hospitals do for doctors and patients.
There’s no shared structure that addresses misconduct that happens between the lines of projects or collaborations. And because of that, the very people who enter the space with the most enthusiasm often have little to no protection.
Too many people learn this the hard way. They encounter traumatic and horrific situations that push them into silence, or worse, make them disappear from the creative field entirely.
That shouldn’t be the price of wanting to create, right?
The Creative Code of Conduct started as a response to that reality. Even I went MIA because of unfortunate events at the start of my journey a couple years back. The document functions as:
- an institutional framework;
- a professional code;
- a cultural accountability guide;
- a theoretical foundation for understanding representation and power in creative practice.
The document is getting closer to its first official version. It will be a version I’ll begin presenting to institutions and organisations who believe creative work and the process behind it should at least care for the people inside it.
Creativity should remain accessible to everyone.
But the people who step into it deserve protection too. 🫶🏽
