In travel, one loses and gains. Spending an 8 month drifting trek in the Americas had troubled my existence of home and the luxury of a settlement. I shot many photographs but spend most of my time in my diaries and sketchbook, creating visual manipulations of what culture on my discoverer's level was like, from designing clothing to visual storyboards and dreams of what i could create with a film crew and photo team. On the road the restrictions of social status and what i would say the living limbo map of borders meant for me to be very distant and contrived.

Punu came to my mind as a nickname for things that were from the unknown and in humorous experience. But the name was mysterious as i travelled and the sense of meaning was my discovery. When discovering Punu is an African dyeing culture in west Africa was a bit confusing. There was very little information i could find in various places i searched for what this culture was but found very little information regarding its existence. The main remain that exists are their ritualistic "death" masks which are white painted faces of women with closed eyes and very sublet expressions. To the death comes recreation and i have used this as a metaphor in my photography and video art.

This project was started in Melbourne as i was preparing to leave Australia in 2009. I had been living in winter for a year prior and was preparing to travel through another 2 years of winter in the Americas. For words they were more difficult to understand, seeing my friends and creative acquaintances, electronically living, as we do now all over the digital globe was restricting and when spoken to strangers on the drift the idea of a cross cultural wanderer was very confrontational and confusing depending on the city i was dwelling in. I started shooting my designs in San Francisco, California while i was living there for 5 months in 2010. The women i had met were strictly Internet connections and seemed to have a lot of trust in me, agreeing to do shoots without even meeting me in person. From "mari: role of escape" and " shamari mask" there exists a sense of social confrontation within the subconscious. The Punu Bumesi project in Melbourne was a collaboration of 15 women creating a surreal interpretation of death to cultural identity, rebirth in social confrontation and what predictions there are in the social subconscious for years to come. Such collaborations in this project are varied from conceptual fashion design, music production, video art, performance and photography, with artists coming from various ethnic backgrounds such as Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, India, Colombia, Australia, Brazil, France, Spain and the United States, collaborating on their role in the idea of recreating culture through transition.

Using these various backgrounds as a metaphor of social confrontation in the globalized generation, each model portrays a sense of masked characterisation in connection of their current art and persona. Each persona holds themselves in an improvisational shot scenarios with other women whom they have never met prior to the shoot. The images content is to portray a documented portrait in an altered reality and the confrontation of new cultural development towards people who are aware of "de-culturalized global culture". Beyond Punu masks these influences relating to my present life portray a new mash up of subculture involved with this international generation.

All the designs that were created for this project were mainly influenced by a creative concept of survival of long trek as well as keeping your cultural consciousness original with wearable dignity. The garments designed and produced for this project are based on interconnections among the culturally conscious. Each piece is designed with cultural references of my own heritage and those of punu influence as well as the connections through my interaction with the artistic collaborators. All garments are handmade from various fabrics and raw wool from the United states, Mexico and Australia.

This project holds a strong upbringing on the uprising of a cultural revolutionary influence for the Melbourne artistic subculture, and predict that the future of awareness is now.