Who is kawenastra?

Kawena Vidigal is a visual artist And creative director based in Oakland, CA. Her body of work revolves around and works within themes of exploring her own womanhood in today’s times. utilizing ancient archtypes, kawena’s work attempts to tap into the collective unconscious to create tangible expressions of the human existence, as seen through her lens.

J. Astra Brinkmann is a film portrait artist who celebrates dreamscapes within reality. Using tight composition, curated lighting and suggestive props, she constructs scenes with her subjects to challenge perceptions, whether that is challenging the perception of the audience or the perception of the subject themselves.

Astra and Kawena met on a collaborative shoot in May 2017 and bonded over their mutual love for capturing moments in the tangible and irrevocable medium of film. A few weeks later, Kawena pitched to Astra the proposal to recreate the characters of the Tarot’s Major Arcana in a studio environment with the aid of live models and props. By recreating her own versions of the Majors, Kawena sought to explore the 22 archetypes and how they provide universal guides to her, her collaborators and her audience.

The sequence begins with Kawena modeling as the Fool and moves through other lessons embodied by models who volunteered not only their bodies and time but their own personal connections with each of the characters. All models answered a series of questions which delved into their experiences with their desired and respective cards in order to ensure authenticity of connection to the archetype.

Each image in this series features multiple levels of collaboration. The projected backdrops are either sourced from public domain archives or they stem from the photographic archives of Kawena and Astra, and the props and costumes were either provided by the models or handmade by Kawena or her studiomate.

The project came to completion in early March 2018 and was shown at Everyday SFC in book form and as a collection of 10X12” silver metallic prints.