Selected by Azamit

As a Creative Director, Curator and Designer, Azamit is forever in the mode of gathering and collecting – be that ideas and images, research and references, objects and artworks – and whilst she acquires with great fervour, she is equally invested in sharing her finds, providing a platform and instigating new dialogues.

“We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice,” notes John Berger in his influential book, Ways of Seeing – and with that he perfectly describes the work of the collector, whose search for beauty is always active and deliberate, hungry and passionate. What exactly one chooses to look at is a decision that is shaped by many factors, by heritage and culture, education and intuition, and as such, our collections become a meaningful reflection of ourselves.

For Azamit it is her diasporic childhood that first informed her eye, and later, a career in fashion that honed her ability to communicate through purely visual means. Spanning many categories and continents, Azamit’s collection consists of the things she has picked up along the way – and whilst each piece is significant and specific in its own right, she notes that, as a whole, they seem to be linked, “as if they’ve all come from the same place.” These objects – the books, boxes, beads, masks, bags and clothes – are connected not by geography or era, but by their curator – and so, when seen all together, they seem to speak: telling us what forms she finds to be elegant, which materials she is drawn to, and what kind of stories she wishes to hear, and to tell.

Objects that were worn or used – personal effects and household items – make up a large part of Azamit’s collection. Antique clothing and vintage kimonos are admirable for their texture and tone, their shape and skillful construction – however, it is their past lives that are most intriguing. Imbued with history, these objects seem to capture something of their previous owner(s), as if their stories are woven into the cloth itself.

In the same way that clothing retains a memory of the person who last wore it, antique furniture provokes a similar curiosity – raising questions of how it was used, and by whom. Azamit pairs time-worn antiques with glossy contemporary pieces – she is drawn equally to the patina of antique leather and wood,such as the 19th century Eritrean chair that sits low to the ground on carved legs, its surfaces a lattice of hand-woven strips of hide, as she is the crumpled metal sculptures by the contemporary Belgian designer, Ben Storms.

Having dedicated her career to presenting the work of others – as a Fashion Editor and Creative Director – in 2022 Azamit launched Hintsa Rudman in collaboration with her partner, Francis Rudman, a fellow Creative Director and CGI artist. The culmination of decades of research, their debut collection of Art Deco-inflected furniture explores their personal histories: the many cultures, people, homes and heirlooms that have combined to create their visual language, both individually and as a pair.

These influences affected the collection’s physical form, but they are also present in more subtle, conceptual ways: the Mebeli bench, for example, makes reference to those benches that are found “in front of every house in Abyssinia – it’s where the elderly sit outside their home and watch the whole village or town pass by,” and the Meste credenza is a subtle homage to Azamit’s mother: “I remember feeling so excited whenever my mum would open the credenza – where she kept all her beautiful plates – to set the table whenever we had guests coming over. My mum loves hosting and entertaining – which is definitely something I got from her.”

The Menberi table offers a glimpse into Azamit’s approach to home, to art and to life: the surface, a huge expanse of white marble, was designed not only as a coffee table – but as a blank canvas, upon which an ever-changing selection of objects, books and ephemera can be displayed and curated.

Guided by the principle that ‘opposites attract’, Azamit brings together contrasting and contradictory elements with ease. In painting, this technique is known as chiaroscuro – which describes the use of strong contrasts to create an image that have a much more vivid sense of volume and depth – and it is something that Azamit employs to great effect in her own work through masterful juxtapositions of past and present, positive and negative, masculine and feminine, east and west.