MZL 7 SPACE SHOP :: THE STORY

DISCLAIMER From Shreya Tanisha: To my family, friends, people who have come and gone through my life: this is all of me and no one knows all of me. I don’t even know all of me. The point is some things you may find disagreeable or even shocking so bear that in mind. I’m an artist. My job according to me is to tell my truth. From MZL / The Collective: We love our founder and we love what we do here. We do it with integrity and honesty. If you have any objections or are offended by our views we accept that and we are happy to hear from you; however, we won’t tolerate being unjustly silenced or any forms of abuse. We know we won’t be perfect and get everything right all the time. That’s what makes us human. And what we want more than anything is for you to invest in our vision with us. As artists this is our dream, to make our art and have it reach you, and so clearly the dream can only exist if you’re a part of it. ________ This will be re-written over and over again. That's what we do. We tell the truth. And the truth evolves. We are finally opening the MZL 7 Space Shop and it has been a very long time coming: more than seven years. And since that’s where we are beginning we feel it is only fair that we explain ourselves because we’re about to release work that has been building from since the beginning of time for our founder (Shreya Tanisha, 1993). That’s 32 years of survival, hard work, living: a journey to now. And like every human being and artist has a  journey, this is ours, which is also our story, and our story is our art, and our art is our purpose, and our purpose is what has kept us alive.  Why wait so long? Why do it like this? What more will come? These are the three questions we are going to answer in a self-interview in order to introduce and welcome you to the launch of the MZL SPACE SHOP and our Introductory Merchandise. We are going to make this as short as possible so that we can get you straight to the shop where you can show your love & support! (The Long Version will come right after.) So here we go: The Short Version In Three Questions Asked & Answered by MZL & Shreya Tanisha.  MZL: Why wait so long? Shreya Tanisha: I’m not a surfer but my inner life, the life of an artist, which is what I’m asserting myself as, has felt like an extremely exhausting yet exciting sport, which is what I imagine surfing is. I catch waves. I’m not always sure where they come from but I do know they take me everywhere. And the water has always been a beautifully bluish purple, exhilirating, and dangerous.  I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder I and - the more severe one of the two - shortly after or maybe even during the COVID19 pandemic (I was already diagnosed with clinical depression) so that combined with a mixture of personal life stresses, external attacks, difficult decisions - I sort of caught a massive wave that led me to multiple hospitalizations and doctors and medicines, and basically having to stop.  And that’s when I began Abnormal Pulse and Naked Concepts and kept writing about what was happening with me and around me. Being public and vocal about certain issues led to attacks, which really opened my eyes to the reality of what I had predicted would be scary about the entertainment, creative, and art world. So. I didn’t really bask in the glory of how right I was. I was filled with rage and then crippling anguish. I hated that these people were doing this and this was happening and that I had to ride all those waves. I had to take the medicine and go to therapy. I had to scream about it without making a sound and I had to accept it all over and over again.  That has taken years. So I wasn’t waiting. Like most things and many times before in my life I guess I just trusted that if I survived I’d be here again. And I did survive. And here I am. MZL: Why do it like this? Shreya Tanisha: I think I already answered that. I think a lot. I feel a lot. My emotions can be difficult and challenging and vivid and overwhelming. When I got to the other side of Seeing Through Fire (which is the title of my soon to be published writing on surviving Bipolar Disorder I) I noticed I fought more than anything for what I believed in. More than what people call success. More than what I thought my dreams were because I was being challenged. So a lethal combination really but that desire to fight and keep fighting - refusing everything - it was defiance as my only answer: rejection of everything. Now I’m finally at the place where after all this time I’m like ok I’m ready to earn money now. I’m ready to release this now. I’m ready to stop defending this and start selling it and not call that impure because what happened was my creative economics was being tested and challenged and I don’t know the assumption and norm is to bend over backwards if you’re an aspiring artist - maybe - or maybe if you're a female to tolerate compromise at every level. I did the tolerating kind of but I didn't and won’t accept the compromise. That’s why we’re doing it like this. We’re asking for foundational support because we are not trying to just sell you creative products, entertainment or art, or fine art actually - we are selling you, sorry to be so dramatic, but we are selling you the soul we have fought for for so long. No merit. No rewards. Just pure, concentrate, undiluted conviction, passion, and hope.  That’s our starting point. I decided that as the founder of this interdisciplinary artistic practice & studio I would only sell or release work when I was absolutely certain I would be happy knowing that someone is paying to own it. And that’s taken me 32 years to basically give myself the green light. I didn’t even think will anyone buy any of it. I was waiting for moral permission from myself. So after all that how else would you expect me to do it? We’re starting now. We’re creating a creative ecosystem. I’m a nobody, we’re a founder and a collective, with vision, tenacity, attitude, a mission, a creative director and more creatives working together to bring you work that we believe in and that we hope will mean as much to you as it does to us.  That’s the dream.  MZL: What more will come? Shreya Tanisha: Lots and lots more art. We are fine artists at the end of the day, interdisciplinary, our hope is to scale far and wide but right now we are really interested in being appreciated and finding people who are going to invest in our concept from the get go. It’s a concept that is radical, we know, because we’ve fought long and hard for it.  We’ve refined it over and over and over again. If you can feel what we feel, if our story and who we are resonates with you and you want to be a part of us then you are always welcome. And we need your support to keep bringing you more of what we do best: interdisciplinary art.  Basically, after this initial introductory merchandise launch we are going to be releasing fine art for sale. And of course we want you to want it, love it, own it, and make it a part of your life.  That’s why we’re doing this in a very DIY aesthetic to begin with. We are literally starting at the beginning and we are not pretending otherwise.  We’re going to use all our initial earnings to go back into the studio so we can expand and bring you more art. So in a way you’re not just buying things from us, you’re quite literally investing in our vision. And it’s a vision we’ve worked long and hard to bring to you. So I personally want to say thank you from the deepest depths of my heart and soul for being here. It means everything to MZL and it truly means the world to me. ____ THE FULL STORY This Took 32 Years. MZL & The MZL 7 Space Shop is was not built over a weekend. It is the result of over thirty years of living — internationally, nomadically, at the intersection of cultures, systems, and global contradictions, several long, hard years of education and training — and over seven years of building a studio with nothing but belief, borrowed spaces, and the stubborn refusal to wait for permission or do things the way others would have us do them. We have always been bold and unafraid to upset those who think they know better than us. 

We assert that our experiences, insight, knowledge and vision matter. And this is where it all lands. Here. Now. In headwear. In print. In colour. In the first of many of our statements. Who I Am I am Shreya Tanisha. Bengali, born near Kolkata. Raised across India, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, the Netherlands, Wales, Scotland, England, and Qatar. I replaced my caste-marked surname with my Bengali daak naam — Tanisha — at twenty-one, because a name inherited from a system that ranks human beings by birth didn’t sit right with me. I am a filmmaker, playwright, director, actor, photographer, architect, social scientist, visual artist, and writer. I studied at The United World College of the Atlantic, The University of the Arts London, The Architectural Association School of Architecture, The University of Edinburgh, The Royal Central School of Speech & Drama, and The University of Cambridge. And a few more. Since I basically killed myself studying everything, which not everyone has to do, I give myself the right to define what those titles mean for me. I have made theatre and film with and for communities that are routinely excluded from the rooms where decisions concerning their lives get made. And my claim as an interdisciplinary artist places the idea of speaking up for those without a voice at its core. Naturally that means I and my company / studio invite condescension because we aren’t just making art for the sake of pleasing others. And we know certain people will not like it. We have always known that. We are making art to assert our vision and I’m a woman and that has historically always been an issue, and history is created today, so the fact that it is problematic / explosive / controversial now - with both men and women - shouldn’t come as a surprise. Though it certainly is disappointing (at least to us). You can call me a provocateur but I’m too old now to care about what you call me. I also live with Bipolar Disorder I. That is not a disclaimer. It most certainly is not an excuse. It is one of the most significant and challenging facts about who I am and how I work, and I am not interested in managing it into something more palatable for an audience that finds mental illness inconvenient. MZL was built around and through and despite and because of it. My public journal Abnormal Pulse documents the intersection of art and recovery honestly, without softening the edges. My thought platform Naked Concepts takes the subjects that people prefer to avoid — consent, identity, coercion, aesthetics, power — and puts them on the table. One of my forthcoming books, Seeing Through Fire, is about surviving Bipolar Disorder I. Not overcoming it. Surviving it. There is a difference. Because Bipolar Disorder doesn’t have a cure. Why It Took Seven Years Because I was doing it the right way. My way. MZL Productions (as it was initially known) was formally endorsed and funded by The Royal Central School of Speech & Drama and The University of Cambridge. It received formal government approval. It won the Central Start-Up and Enterprise Award. It built a body of work — plays, films, workshops, events — across London, Edinburgh, Cambridge, and Doha, predominantly pro bono, for the love of it, because the work mattered more than the money at that point. Not because we don’t need money but because we understood that in an extremely competitive industry our insight is more valuable than our ability to garner attention the fastest. We still operate on that principle. I did not rush to market because I was not ready to compromise. And believe me when I say we were asked to compromise. I was attacked. Personally. Because that’s what happens when you’re right - not through arrogance - but through cold, raw, real experience. So to us this shop is not just a transaction. What you buy carries the name of something that took years to build, and that name represents us. I was not willing to attach it to anything until I was certain that what it carried was true to its values, the people, and story behind it. Seven years. One studio. One founder. No shortcuts. The Paradox I Grew Up In I grew up as an expatriate in the world of Energy, Oil & Gas. My parents became expatriates who worked in the energy industry when I was around four years old. I was raised moving between countries, between cultures, between comfort and dislocation, inside an industry whose relationship to the planet is — to put it plainly — complicated. I lived with that contradiction. I have written about it. I did not leave it behind cleanly, because you never do. I didn’t work for the company but being a conscientious child meant I understood why my life was different from others and of course when your parents work for companies that are that huge and discussed in the media and in public discourse about climate change, which is a deeply self-righteous movement: you’re going to find it hard to remain unaffected and indifferent. What I chose to do instead was confront it directly and make deliberate decisions, make art, which exposed my vulnerability to it all. That is dangerous. Because people can and will take advantages of your weaknesses. But I let it happen since it only helped clarify and refine how I was going to use that vulnerability and criticism to do something: to make a positive difference like the companies and corporations themselves are asked to. Every product in this shop that carries an eco-conscious material is a choice, not a marketing move. The Econscious Product Range, including The Cotton Cap, is made from certified organic and recycled materials. Everything is custom-made on demand meaning nothing is overproduced. Nothing sits in a warehouse. Nothing is manufactured speculatively. Nothing is made in bulk. You place an order with your specifications and we make it exactly how you want it and deliver it to you, which ensures the highest quality. It also means it takes us a bit longer to deliver but we don’t mind because we are first and foremost a fine arts studio. We are interested in selling you our art and yes we do think of it as art and not just products. The DIY model — small, intentional, made when ordered — is the only production model I am willing to operate under right now. Because it respects the art. But just to clarify: we are not claiming to have solved environmentalism. I am paying attention, and making effective choices that are available to me — informed by organisations including Reel Green, Albert, Green Spark Group, and Earth Angel amongst many, many others, related to the specific mediums of art in question — as well as using my own personal lived experience (that raw priceless stuff) — while building a studio that intends to continuously evolve as it grows. That is what honesty and integrity looks like in practice. Free Love: What It Actually Means This first drop is called The Sixteen Free Love Headwear Drop. Free Love is not a feeling. It is not a romance. It is a political philosophy — rooted in anarchist thought — that asserts a single, radical principle: the state has no authority over the body. No government, no institution, no religion, no man, no system has the right to legislate what a person does with their own body or their own belief. That is what Free Love means. That is what it has always meant. "Consent is radical. No Gods. No Masters. Our Bodies. Our Rules." That is not a tagline written for effect. That is the position. And it’s hard because it challenges some parts of the world. So we want to be very clear: that stance doesn’t oppose religion, and it doesn’t disrespect any state. It simply reminds us that despite all of our man-made social mechanisms the human being and the human body can never fully exist within social constructs. It has always belonged and will always belong to nature itself. The 7 Space dimension of this drop adds another layer. 7 Space began as an act on Instagram — posting seven images in a carousel as a deliberate statement of defiance against sexual coercion. Seven images. An image clearly of Shreya Tanisha (me) placing one leg on top of another on a bed saying no to sexual advances. A pink sky. Other images of routes, a rainbow, an airplane, Amsterdam - a capsule of emotions. A public act of refusal. It went viral in its own way because it named and came to signify something that people already knew but had not seen put plainly out in the open. Why else would they repeat it? Why else would it become such an abstract but real act of solidarity? That energy is embedded in this headwear. The number 7 from the shop, The Sixteen from the significance of Sixteen in my own life: legally, the format, the repetition — all of it carries that origin. Sixteen was when I was first sexually assaulted. Sixteen was the legal age of consent in The Netherlands where I lived at that time. That and Wales. I was attacked for holding on to this fact but this fact shaped who I am for better or for worse and this is the better part now. THE SIXTEEN FREE LOVE HEADWEAR DROP is about love, consent, and autonomy. Sixteen pieces. Sixteen variations. One message, expressed across colour, cut, material, and form. This is headwear as a strong, unmovable yet evolving position. We stand by what we believe and we stand strongly for freedom of thought and expression in our right to both believe and express our beliefs. This is also customer advertising. By buying these hats you are investing in our vision and helping promote the studio both monetarily and visibly. Our headwear contains three designs: the white MZL plain four dots logo, the inverted version of the logo, and The MZL 7 Space Shop logo. What This Shop Actually Is The MZL 7 Space Shop is not the magical end place. It is the beginning. It’s the airport. You buy the headwear - your plane ticket - and then you go wherever you want to go. Look at the headwear drop as Phase One. It exists to establish the brand in the hands and on the heads of people who understand what they are buying into before the fine art arrives. The fine art drop — limited edition prints from the MZL Studio, including original acrylic works by Shreya Tanisha and eventually works in various other mediums — is coming. When it does, it will not only be pitched at the general public. It will also be for collectors. The original works will not be sold via our shop. We will sell high-quality fine art print editions accessible to a wider audience as the art truly is for everybody. This is for people who want to invest in a vision, not just acquire an object. People who understood what Free Love meant when they read it. People who already know that what MZL makes carries something that cannot be mass-produced because it was never designed to be. It’s for people who truly love art. This first drop is the introduction. It is the studio saying: here is what we believe, here is how we work, here is what we make when we make it carefully. If that is your language, you are in the right place. The proceeds from this shop go back into the studio. Into the films, the theatre, the workshops, the residencies, the publications, the collaborators, the art supplies, the canvasses, the paints, the utility bills — all who have been working pro bono for years and who deserve to be paid, which of course includes Shreya Tanisha. Every purchase is a direct investment in work that is trying to exist outside the systems that usually decide which stories get told, who gets to have a voice, who deserves to be visible. It has been a long fight and it will continue to be. So join us. MZL / The Collective MZL is not a brand. It is a studio. It is a practice. It is, in its own words, something that never begins and never ends — immortal and eternal creative experimentation. It is built by artists of colour, for audiences who deserve to see themselves, and for everyone who has the wisdom, patience, and selflessness necessary to become true allies. It is feminist, anti-racist, LGBTQIA+ friendly, and opposed to censorship in any form. It operates from a belief that art has a duty: not to comfort, but to tell the truth — about power, about the body, about what it costs to be who you are in a world that would prefer you to be something easier and convenient that they can sell for their own benefit. This is the studio. This is the shop. This is the story. Welcome.