_{© Agustín Farias}

Nigerian Italian/Afro-Italian creator and designer Diana Ejaita continues to create; from minimalist designs to fashion brands.

Things could have panned out very differently for Diana Ejaita. As of May 2019, she rarely checked the email address attached to her old website. New Yorker Art Editor Françoise Mouly had been trying to reach her at that email address for a while. At that point, Ejaita had just recently returned home to Berlin from a three-month residency at the Arthouse Foundation in Lagos. She had other priorities in mind.

Though, Mouly was persistent. She reached out again a few days later, this time, to Ejaita’s active email address. She was working on a Mother’s Day portfolio to highlight the work of women artists from around the world. Would Ejaita be interested in submitting sketches for consideration? The deadline was short, just 48 hours away. “I don’t think I ate or drank for 48 hours,” the Afro-Italian creator recalls, laughing. “Since I’d just come back from Lagos, I was intensely full of images of the city, so I decided to depict motherhood from that point of view.”

She goes in depth about this interaction and project— herself, her inspiration and work — as an Afro-Italian creator and designer.