The Dark Matter Project

The project is about documenting the African culture, beauty and fashion. It’s a project with a good friend and stylist Bryan Emry and we collaborate with fashion designers to shoot creatively. It is about documenting the beauty of being black. We have grown up believing that being beautiful is being light skin and women keep trying to make themselves lighter to conform to the perceptions in society. I try to tell stories of being black and proud and how much beauty we have. The Melanin Thing!

By Brian Siambi

1. Experiencing love –by Upille @beingupile

I am in love and I have never been more myself. Maybe they’ll say I went soft. Butwhere’s the fault in that? People are meant to soften for each other, to show tenderness because finding love is finding something right in the world.

What do I need to be tough for?

2. Opening up to love –by Upille @beingupile

No one talks about the concrete that made room for the flower,

so there you have itsomething as tough as concrete can soften enoughto let a beautiful thing grow through it.

3. Reflecting on how love has changed you –by Upille @beingupile

No one told me that love could feel as part of you as skin. I am sorry, I began this storywith anger. See, they told me to always have my fingers in fist form and my heart in mybelly. Love has to be approached like war. Hide your softness, bury your burdens.

Prepare yourself for battle. And there you were, with your softness, with your burdens,

with your arms ready to give, ready to take. What a glorious thing you’ve shown me -

how to love fully.

4. Words by Sannaa Arman

I've been to war

With voices within

Men without

Even gods beyond

War used to creep in

Uninvited through my window

Pierce sharply into my skin

And find my soul unguarded

But I haven't fought lately

Though my window remains open

My skin has found its voice

Soft enough to sing my soul to calm

Yet loud enough to shield it from the storm

5.

Be a man they said

Be a real man

Feel less, Flex more

Be indifferent to that which is beautiful

Touch only that which makes you a man

Makes you manly

Don't let them see

Not your scars

Nor the flowers that bloom within

I heard them

I was them

Before I regurgitated their man

And became my own man.

6 .

Evasive as she was

I looked for her

All I knew was her name

So to far away lands I travelled in vain

One day I stopped

Tired of searching for beauty

I occupied the spaces

I had set aside for her

It was then I heard her voice

I knew it was her

When I listened closely

And saw her reflection in me.