The Mermaid Awakens Her Warrior is a great underwater shoot conceptualized and directed by Fuaad Abdool in collaboration with amazing young African women. From what I gathered the story line is that of love. the mermaid wonders deep into the ocean where she meets the warrior, motionless and she radiates her energy into him thus awakening him. The project was a way of combining and illustrating the artistic skills of South African female creatives and more over Fuaad wanted to change the perspective of how people view mermaids. He says that he couldn’t find images of black mermaids so he wanted to create a modern rendition of mermaids and challenge the perception of how mermaids are supposed to look like.
This was model Bianca Koyabe’s first underwater modelling shoot and I personally think she looked great and she absolutely nailed. The mermaid costume was designed by 21 year old fashion designer Savannah Caster who had never made mermaid costumes before. Humiraa Mahomeds had never done body art for an underwater shoot before and she used eye-liner to draw the tattoos of the warrior. She had me believing that the warrior actually had tattoos. I give her a thumbs up for that.
