WOVEN VOICES

Photography and Words: Gaia Bonanomi Textile design & Creative Direction: Penda Seck

This project is a poetic reflection on how textiles, fashion, jewelry, and color shape and dialogue with the identity of being a woman. From the vibrant streets of Dakar, where fabric and adornment fill every corner of daily life, to the open light of Ngor Island, where movement and Nature allow the self to emerge, the work explores how women navigate, reclaim, and express their presence. It is an exploration of identity through the language of beauty.

This project grew from a conversation between two women: Gaia Bonanomi, an Italian photographer, and Penda Seck, a Senegalese designer, exploring how identity, self-expression, and the cultural meanings of beauty, fashion, and adornment shape women’s lives. It reflects on how beauty and adornment, rich in meaning, can also impose pressures, and how women can reclaim them as tools of self-expression.

The journey begins in Dakar, where the woman’s face is concealed, a symbol of the layers that soften or silence her voice. The streets themselves are alive with color and fabric, shaping identity and daily life.

Designer Penda Seck expressed these emotions through intricate dresses and masks crafted using Seurrou Ndiago, a textile deeply significant in the lives of Senegalese women. A central metaphor of the project is the complete covering of the woman’s head and face. This gesture speaks to the suppression of women’s individuality, personality, and perspective: an erasure that reduces her identity and life experience to the needs, desires, and expectations of men.

As the series moves to Ngor Island, the landscape opens and she gradually reveals herself, in dialogue with wind, rock, and sea. Here, identity is formed through presence, movement, and self-recognition.