By Macarena Arias Silva Del Pozo & I’M Firenze Digest Editors.
Why create a paper magazine today? And where to start to make one? This is a question many people ask. As we are young, reckless, creative and free, we believe in the future of quality paper magazines: publishing will never die. Creating storytelling through paper projects and feeding a passion for books and magazines is especially clear for us, Fashion Styling & Creative Direction and Arts Curating students. Nomada magazine is one of the fashion publishing projects edited for Istituto Marangoni Firenze Visionary Minds, an exhibition of books, magazines and paper projects held at the Fashion Room bookstore in Florence. Here is how and why this magazine came to life, explained by its author, Macarena Arias Silva del Pozo, a Fashion Styling & Creative direction student.
MORE THAN A MAGAZINE, A SAFE SPACE TO REFLECT
Nomada is a reflective and intimate depiction of the rawness of seeking our unique identity. It delves into the journey of understanding who we are, before and after. The exchange of commodities for a deeper connection with reality. It is about diving deep into the ocean of life. Abrupt, arousing, and in constant movement. At times calm, quiet, and serene, at others, rough and sudden. More than a magazine, it’s me. It’s you.
It’s crowded. Colourful. Random and raw. At times it doesn’t make much sense. At times pages are filled with text, others as empty as space. Many integrants make it up, different fonts adorn its pages, and contrasting colours paint it throughout. It’s peculiar. May be hard to understand.
And that’s okay.
Like us, it’s not meant to be understood but to be. To exist, simply. To work as a platform for artists to talk about individuality, to showcase a bit of what goes on in the mind of an immigrant like me and you.
As you read, don’t try to understand it, just experience it. Enjoy the images, dive into the text, and write down who you are before and after reading it. Experience it. That’s all it wants from you. To be read, to be enjoyed.
Welcome to Nomada. Your new home. This is a safe space. One to share, to reflect and to digest.
You will find a family in the people who own a copy of Nomada. Friends. A community. Let your guard down and allow this magazine to open your mind in ways you haven’t experienced before. Lay down, and put on your favourite song. Or maybe one you know you love but haven’t heard in a long time.
Think about today. About who you are today. Enjoy who you are today. Tomorrow you won’t only miss the people you love and the place that surrounds you; you will miss yourself. You will miss the person you are now and in this place. Because you’ll never be this way ever again. Listen to your heartbeat. Realise how little you live in your body and how much you live in your head, and change that. You are alive – and how cool is that?
THE EDITOR’S LETTER
Go out. Stare at the sunset. Digest that sudden, stunning coexistence of orange and blue. And think. So many people have come before us, and millions more will come after. So many people have looked at that same sun rise up in the morning and go to rest at night. Look at the meadow, gaze at the waves in the sea. A million eyes have admired the same view. If you look closely, you can almost see them, generations dissolved in the bluegrass and hay.
How could I not want to be someone? To become. To be. Not even remembered, but to be.
Our obsession with understanding and having an identity results from two factors: our sense of belonging and feeling at home. They are very similar but oh so different.
It is a tricky feeling, that of belonging. It is something we all aspire to. To belong. It is the most natural and human thing to experience. We yearn for it. We dream of it. It makes us feel safe. This magazine originated from a sense of not fitting in and being lost. Ironically, it has become a helpful tool that has turned that feeling of disorientation into a realisation of belonging in all places.
So what is it to migrate? Is it to move from one country to another? Is it to flee the bird’s nest for your own life? Migrating is motion. It’s constantly changing. It doesn’t have to be external or tangible; rather, it is the constant migration that one undergoes internally. Migrating ideologies, religion, sexuality, personality, style, and appearance. Migrating from who we are to who we want to be. Migrating from who we were told we were to who we truly are. When in introspection, we undergo a process of constant migration. A process that generates many doubts and unanswered questions.
Who are you when no one is watching? Who am I? Who are you?
The longer I think about it, the more things come to mind, and simultaneously, the less clear the answer becomes. I think of my childhood. I think of my favourite colour. The music I listen to in the shower. Is that who I am? Am I just a compilation of moments and decisions?
Or more than that, What is it to be someone, to form an identity, to create a personality?
Finding out who you are means connecting to your essence, core and aura and reflecting that encounter in everything you do.
The destination is clear; understanding who we are as individuals, but the path is one of the trickiest paths we have to walk in life. The path towards finding our identity.
Macarena Arias Silva del Pozo is an undergraduate Fashion Styling & Creative direction student at Istituto Marangoni Firenze.
