Introducing Xander Ferreira - A tale of a friendship -

We first met Xander back in 2009 at a music event in Copenhagen. Satoru was mystically drawn to Xander’s energy, which was the catalyst for the encounter. It was a "point of no return” in this friendship, once he learnt that Xander was from South Africa.

Our late father was invited to South Africa to teach glass-art at the University of Johannesburg in the 1980s. During his visit, apartheid in South Africa was at its height - a brutal institutionalised system of racial segregation that the United Nations had rightly condemned as a “crime against humanity.”

The experience of the cruelty of apartheid haunted him until his final days, and every time he spoke of the injustice he had witnessed, his whole body shook with anger. The trauma left a permanent mark on our family, and it taught us that all people must be treated equally - a simple and obvious principle. Yet in his time - and still today - it remains far from reality.

As children, we thought “Someday we want to meet the people of Africa!” and in 2010, our dear friend Xander made that dream come true.

For every journey to Africa, including our most recent adventure to Ghana and South Africa, Xander has been by our side.

Xander Ferreira is a visual artist & creative director at the intersection of performance, installation-experiential design, photo & film. (Read more)

Special thank you to Xander_Ferreira for directing all stills and video visuals documenting our Africa journey.
Thank you to @sigmaphoto and @sigmacine for supporting our project.

All photo’s by Xander_ferreira and Haruki_takakura.