THE GOODS | #006–FW15

Name: Moya Garrison-Msingwana
Occupation: Student / Artist
Age: 21

Moya Garrison-Msingwana paces up and down the driveway we have commandeered for the purposes of this shoot. He’s explaining the elaborate plot line of an intergalactic graphic novel he intends on making with a friend, or maybe it was comic, or perhaps a painting. His animated and excitable nature is a direct reflection of his frenetic imagination so it’s hard to determine where one plan ends and another begins. As we talk a plot line leads into a concept for a painting into a story about his trip to Barcelona for a gap year, “There was a lot of a partying and drawing. I guess that’s normal. Actually,” he reconsidered, “people probably don’t normally travel to Barcelona on a gap year to draw.”

And he’s probably right. At just 21, Moya doesn’t really do things normally for someone his age. For starters, he’s a ghost on social media, and hardly detectable on the internet in general. And though not even graduated yet (he’s in his third year of an Illustration Major at OCAD), he also already possesses a remarkable amount of confidence in his work. His unique paintings and illustrations are bustling, lively compositions dotted with subversive signs and symbolism. Though comfortable with life drawing, the artist cites that the more playful, graphic style of his recent paintings is a sly way to get across more controversial messages, “I have a baby face, but I’m actually a savage.”

This is exemplified in one of his current paintings in progress, a torso-sized canvas filled with the tangled appendages of police officers and guard dogs. The hands of the officers show a variety of symbols ranging from middle fingers to peace signs, representative of the complex and convoluted relationship between the authority and the public. Are the hand gestures representative of how we feel about the cops or how they feel about us? By presenting the viewer with so many layers of information to digest it allows them to find their own value and meaning within the details of the piece; naturally encouraging multiple interpretations of the subject matter. Moya’s action-packed canvases and sketchbook pages are inherently and intentionally indecisive, allowing his work to pose an open-ended question and leaving it up to the viewer to negotiate their answer.

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