Photo by OJ Slaughter
As part of a larger photography project for Virgil Abloh’s “Church & State,” Boston-based artist OJ Slaughter (born 1993 in Richmond, Virginia) collaborated with ICA teens on an editorial fashion shoot inspired by Abloh’s work and his theme of “breaking the rules.” Participants from across ICA teen programs were invited to respond to a prompt about how they break the rules, and six were seleted to collaborate one-on-one with Slaughter on a set of portraits in which they styled their own looks from Virgil Abloh fashions created for the ICA.
Central to Slaughter’s portraiture practice is to create a collaborative environment where subjects can claim space and determine how they express and present themselves creatively – an approach that aligns with the philosophies underlying the ICA’s teen programming. In words and images that are at turns dynamic, joyful, confrontational, and intimate, six ICA teens directly address their own autonomy and others’ misconceptions of what it is to be a young person.
For exclusive images from the daylong shoot, visit the ICA Digital Guide on Bloomberg Connects.