Strange Fruit- "BILLIE HOLIDAY"
This is a personal project I created in 2021 during the time where police violence seemed to hit an all time high. At the time it was very difficult for me to mentally process everything I was seeing in the media so creating was my outlet. I was inspired by one of Billie Holidays hit singles, “Strange Fruit.” I started out with this mood board I created using Adobe Illustrator.
When I thought about the song and the story behind why she wrote that song, my mind went to how white people refer to us, (Black people), as monkeys. Which brought me to the concept of how bananas turn into darker shades of brown as they decay. With all of this in mind I wanted produce a visual that resembled my interpretation of ‘strange fruit’.
Down below to the left is the photo reference I used to create this piece, I used Adobe Photoshop to combine the photo of the Black man and the banana. On the right is the final vector I made using Adobe Illustrator and Procreate, I played around with different brushes to add detail and texture.
