The Vessel Project: Mala & the Mermaid

PART 2 of The Vessel Project is coming to NYC this summer!

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The saga continues.

The Vessel Project is a social-therapeutic experiment where participants create an alter-ego around traits they want to grow into and prepare to take a portrait in character.

In the second installment of the docuseries, we meet Kim and Trishia during pivotal transitions in their lives—one establishing a new home and the other leaving an old one. Throughout the process, the two negotiate the chasm between where they currently are, who they've been in the past, and who they need to be to accommodate these transitional crossroads. Freya-Felix returns from Part I as a shepherd to give insight during the workshop and as a photographer for their realized alter-character. 

Through candid verité, lyrical persona vignettes, and other-worldly character portraits; this 2-part docuseries explores cosplay as a tool for personal transformation and underlines the power of finding a home within the self amidst the storms of life.

Art therapy meets fantasy role play.

THE VESSEL PROJECT is a documentary web series where cosplay meets art therapy. In the first iteration, the director, with the help of photographer & performer Voxigma Lo, engages two NYC-natives—Freya and Danajha—in a task to create an aspirational alter ego and take a portrait in-character. Together they excavate inner child wounds to find pathways back to their authentic selves. As the process commences, they face tensions and trials that test their deep bonds with each other—underlining the inherent challenge of growth: how do we show up for ourselves and for others at the same time?

Photo by Jelani Ameer

NYC PREMIERE SCREENING

On the last Saturday of Summer 2024, the cast and crew gathered at Dixon Place to screen the first VESSEL PROJECT to an audience for the very first time. A vulnerable and tea-spilling discussion ensued, followed by a portrait session of the most stunning lewks curated by those vibrant personalities. Stay tuned for the next one this winter & don’t forget to sign up for updates. Photos by Cynthia Francillon.

Download hi-res photos here.

Contributing Collaborators

Voxigma Lo is a bourdoir photographer and drag performer based in Brooklyn, NY. For the past decade, she has cemented herself as a shaman of Brooklyn's queer nightlife community. Whether witnessing their performance or sitting for a portrait, Vox's only mandate is to "come as you are"—using their own life force to create safe passage to a space where all can be vulnerable and fully actualized.

Her collaboration with filmmaker Shelby Zoe Coley began with Shelby filming the digital show for the all-Black drag show Vox co-hosts with Julie J and Alexander Paris—Sylvester.

Freya-Felix Vazquez is a proud Bronx native, writer, artist, and human with roots in media arts and community development. Their life is one of a dedicated nurturer, facilitating support both informally to their immediate community and formally through their work as an occupational advisor for a youth development organization.

By night, Freya is a virtuosic auteur—drawing from their vast vocabulary of fantasy, animation, and sci-fi to create supernatural characters, worlds, and mind-bending narrative constructs.

Freya-Felix makes their documentary debut in “The Vessel Project.”

Photo by Voxigma Lo