Designing a difference: Using art to fight for justice
(Courtesy of Stella Rose Favaro)
Clara Spars writes about starting her fashion brand, which raises money for organisations like We Love Lake Street, the Navajo & Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Fund and FarmLink.
My mother once told me that one of the first times I ever visited her side of the family in Bali, I sat with my grandparents on the floor of our sweltering living room with a sketchbook between my thighs. She stood in the doorway, smiling. I must have been three years old, barely capable of speaking English, let alone Indonesian. I drew a misshapen blob with jagged limbs jutting out of it from various angles. It was meant to represent the sun.
“Matahari,” my grandmother cooed. Matahari is the Indonesian word for “sun.” I tried to mimic her syllables.
I drew three more lumpy figures beneath the matahari. I gave them uneven dots for eyes and smiles that curved so far up their faces that they almost made full circles around the dots. It was the three of us.
“Kita,” my grandfather laughed. Kita is the Indonesian word for “us.”
(Courtesy of Stella Rose Favaro)
When I started making art seriously, I wanted to explore the two sides of my identity: my mother grew up tending to the chickens and rice fields of her family’s village in Bali, my father playing baseball in Mill Valley, California. I’ve spent my whole life in America, only visiting my Indonesian relatives a handful of times. My drawings were meant to capture the intricate confusion and beauty that comes with being a person of mixed race — not fully fitting into either of my cultural communities but being welcomed wholeheartedly into both all the same.
On December 8, 2019, my grandfather in Bali — my kakek — died. I hadn’t been able to visit him in the two years preceding his death and neither had my mother. When it sunk in that I wasn’t able to see him or speak to him for the first and last time in years, when I realized that even if I had been able to see him face to face one last time, my broken Indonesian wouldn’t suffice to fully express my gratitude and admiration for him, I was inspired to lean further into my Indonesian heritage.
Six days after he passed away, I started a small business selling the designs that came out of my cultural and emotional exploration printed onto stickers, T-shirts and other accessories. The designs started off with the same bold, black and white style, with heavy outlines and pointillistic shading. Though I liked the unifying aesthetic of keeping everything black and white, over time, I began to add splashes of color to some of the designs. Originally, I used pen and ink on paper for all of my work, then uploaded edited photos of my drawings onto my computer to have printed by manufacturers. Later, I began to create art digitally.
The content of my drawings initially reflected different facets of my experience as a young woman. The “In Too Deep” design depicts a girl overwhelmed by isolation and inundated in her own worries. The “Feed Me” design portrays a woman eating mie kuah, a traditional Indonesian noodle dish, as a tribute to the way my grandparents used to feed me when I was little. Other designs explore the experience of being confused by one’s own emotions and thoughts or thriving in the power and comfort that one can find in oneself. My main objective was to find unique ways to capture compelling sentiments so that people of all backgrounds could connect with the designs.
When coming up with a name for the online store, I thought back to sitting with my grandparents on the floor in Canggu, giggling at my ugly 3-year-old depiction of the three of us under the sun. I thought of us shouting gleefully, “Kita! Kita!” over and over. The word “kita” captured the sentiment of unity that I hoped the brand inspired. This was the origin of KITA Products.
Three months into starting KITA, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Stanford University, where I currently attend, asked all students to return home for the rest of the academic year. It wasn’t long before a close friend of mine, Celine Foster, who worked for the Stanford Students for Workers’ Rights (SWR), reached out about using my art to help the workers laid off by Stanford in the face of the pandemic. SWR estimates that, assuming that the number of laid off workers reaches 130 (as is currently projected), it would cost Stanford a total of $1.67 million to continue to pay the laid-off workers for the 10 weeks of the spring quarter — a relatively small amount compared to Stanford's $27.7 billion endowment. Celine asked me to design a sticker with an uplifting message that could be used to raise money to support these workers as they navigated their sudden unemployment. The funds were meant to alleviate some of the workers’ stress while SWR fought for Stanford to change its policies regarding this issue.
Within a few weeks, KITA came out with the Unity Sticker to raise money for the laid-off Stanford workers. The design featured several hands and fists reaching in the air while surrounded by red flowers with the words “In unity is strength” inscribed over the top. The image is meant to symbolize the power that comes with working together, and that, among many things, gentleness and kindness can be a source of strength. We’ve already raised $4,600 to date from sales of the Unity Sticker. Since then, KITA has expanded our sticker fundraisers to several other causes, inspired by the powerful students and voices of the Stanford community.
“This commitment to necessary social justice is ingrained in every aspect of KITA’s work, and I’m looking forward to collaborating with more organizations on fundraisers and other ways of using art to promote change. ”
Most recently, KITA partnered with Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Xi Beta Chapter to create the Silence Is Violence Sticker to encourage people to speak out for racial justice. The sales support We Love Lake Street, a campaign dedicated to helping small businesses and nonprofits on Lake Street in Minneapolis rebuild and reopen after suffering damage during protests following the murder of George Floyd. It is up to every one of us to speak out against racial injustice and the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Nina Pop, Ahmaud Arbery, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Aiyana Jones, Atatiana Jefferson, Oscar Grant and so many others. Silence is not an option. We all need to stand up, speak out and support Black communities. In the first 72 hours, this fundraiser raised over $14,200. We have raised almost $15,000 to date.
Other sticker fundraisers include the Be A Warrior Sticker to support the Navajo & Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Fund and the Linked With Love Sticker to raise money for FarmLink, a student-led nonprofit grassroots movement that connects farms with food banks. The success of these fundraisers has proven that art can be a powerful avenue for activism and advocacy for social justice. This commitment to necessary social justice is ingrained in every aspect of KITA’s work, and I’m looking forward to collaborating with more organizations on fundraisers and other ways of using art to promote change. KITA is already in communication with two other organizations interested in raising money for SiSaLeSe, an educational program for kids from villages in Arusha, Tanzania, and a domestic violence awareness program.
We are in a defining period of history, and KITA’s goal is to help guide and promote change by creating visual symbols of the powerful emotions and sentiments that are driving these movements. We are not going to come out of this the same. In this important moment of learning and growth, I think of my kakek, sitting peacefully on his living room floor, nodding at his granddaughter and smiling, saying “Kita” over and over. “Kita bersatu.” We are all one.
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