“We’re going to make stuff out of beads that is going to take people’s breath away,” says Ralph Ziman within the trailer for “The MiG-21 Project,” a army jet that he and a transcontinental crew coated nostril to tail in thousands and thousands upon thousands and thousands of glass beads.
For the previous 12 years, the Los Angeles-based artist has examined the impacts of the Chilly Conflict Period and the worldwide arms commerce by means of a trilogy titled Weapons of Mass Manufacturing, motivated by his upbringing in Apartheid-era South Africa. Greater than half a decade within the making, “The MiG-21 Project” completes the collection.
The primary installment, “The AK-47 Project,” reimagined the aesthetic of one of many world’s most ubiquitous wartime weapons, the Avtomat Kalashnikova 1947, by coating dozens of the weapons in colourful glass beads. The second venture revolved across the Casspir, a heavy-duty Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected Car (MRAPV) launched within the Seventies, which he likewise ornamented in vibrant geometric patterns.
“The idea was to take these weapons of war and to repurpose them,” Ziman says, flipping the narrative about icons of violence and reworking them as an alternative into symbols of resilience, collaboration, and collectivity. Automobiles and firearms morph right into a theater of hope and energy within the face of a horrible Twentieth-century legacy.
Apartheid, which in Afrikaans means “separateness,” is the identify assigned by the minority white-ruled Nationalist Occasion of South Africa to a harsh system of racial segregation that started in 1948. The interval lasted till 1991 and was carefully linked throughout the context of worldwide relations to the Chilly Conflict as tensions erupted between the U.S. and the previous U.S.S.R. Spurred by the deterioration of the 2 nations’ WWII alliance and fears concerning the unfold of Communism into the West, the battle started in 1947 and likewise led to 1991 when the united statesS.R. was dissolved.
Throughout this time, the Russians produced a fighter jet known as the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21. The aircraft is “the most-produced supersonic fighter aircraft of all time,” Ziman says. “The Russians built 12,500 MiG-21s, and they’re still in use today—just like the Casspir and just like the AK-47s. But it’s one thing to say, hey, I want to bead a MiG, and then the next thing, you’ve got a 48-foot MiG sitting in your studio.”
“The MiG-21 Project” combines images and costume design with historic analysis and time-honored Indigenous craft. The venture encompasses not solely the jet however a collection of cinematic pictures and elaborate Afrofuturist regalia impressed by army flight fits, African tribal textiles, and area journey.
Ziman’s crew includes quite a few expert artisans from Zimbabwe and Indigenous Ndebele girls from South Africa’s Mpumalanga Province, who’re famend for his or her beadwork. For the Ndebele, beadwork is a way of expressing cultural identification and rites of passage, taking over highly effective political connotations within the Twentieth century because it grew to become related to pre-colonial African traditions and identification.
Tapping into the teachings of our not-so-distant previous, Ziman addresses present conflicts like battle and the worldwide arms race, trendy colonialism, systemic racism, and white supremacy by means of the lens of Apartheid. Funds raised all through the method, a part of the mission of the Weapons of Mass Manufacturing trilogy as a complete, are being donated to the individuals of Ukraine in help of the nation’s ongoing battle with Russia.
You’ll be capable to see the “The MiG-21 Project” later this 12 months in Seattle, the place it is going to be on view from June 21 to January 26, 2026, on the Museum of Flight. Discover extra on Ziman’s web site.
