A day in JoVaun Holmes’ wardrobe
What better way of getting to know a person than by a walk through campus and an impromptu photo shoot?
On what felt like the last summer’s day in Providence, I joined JoVaun Holmes ’17 on a walk across campus from Pembroke to the Main Green.
As an RPL, he is used to learning about a wide variety of peers and getting to know them throughout the course of the year, but now it’s his turn to reveal a few things about himself.
Holmes hails from Washington, D.C. and is concentrating in Africana Studies and Visual Arts. “Africana Studies is a way to intellectually explore one’s identity and challenge one’s mode of thought,” he told me. His heritage and identity are integral to his sense of style, as shown by his mud cloth jacket, which originates from West Africa.
He told me he has never modeled before, but when capturing these images, he exuded a professional sense of confidence and poise
He told me a funny story about the jacket, which was bought from a local West African store in D.C. “People often ask me what the print on my jacket is. I’ve gotten things from deer hooves to coffee beans,” he said.
“A while ago in the Meatpacking district in New York, a truck was honking at me and my two female friends as we were walking, and I assumed they were catcalling one of them.
“As I continued to walk, though, I realized the truck driver was trying to get my attention when he yelled, ‘Are those vaginas on your jacket?’”
The prints are actually cowrie shells which, according to an African legend, represent protection and also used to be currency in Western Africa.
I asked him where he sees himself in the next ten years and what excites him about the future.
He said: “I could literally be anywhere in the next ten years, and that is genuinely the most exciting thing about the future at this point.
“I do not think it is very often people in my age group zoom out and consider the fact something absolutely life altering could happen at any moment: five years from now, five hours from now, five seconds from now, etc.
“That being said I’ve come to a place where I, despite having a particular vision of what I may want from my life, try not to be too prescriptive when it comes to the future. I am in my twenties, which is always lauded as this formative period in your life during which you discover, complicate and reaffirm aspects of your identity.
“It’s a really promising idea, in spite of being so stereotypical, and reflecting on how much personal growth I have undergone even within the small span for two years gives me reason to be very excited by the unknown.
“So without being too specific, I hope that ten years from now I am surrounded by beauty (whatever that shall look like) and that the twists and turns of life have lead to a richer understanding of who I am, what I want, and what I will be. ”
And what frightens him the most about the future?
“Being a control freak, the element of surprise inherent in the future both excites and mildly frightens me! It has taken me a while to get comfortable with loosening up on the reins a little. I plan, but I also welcome change.”