LIFEWTR Launches “Black Art Rising” Bottle Collection

LIFEWTR is a brand known for its dedication to spotlighting the works and voices of emerging artists.

Last year, this premium water bottle brand continued its mission by responding to social injustice and amplifying social progress through a digital art exhibit titled “Black Art Rising.”

This month, in celebration of Black History Month, LIFEWTR took this idea a step further by introducing a limited-time “Black Art Rising” bottle collection. This series, available for purchase since Feb. 1, presents the artistry of three monumental Black artists. Featured in the collection is Haitian-American multimedia artist Adler Guerrier, Nigerian-American Dawn Okoro and Tajh Rus, a visual artist focusing on the relationship between Black identity and space.

Michael Smith, the senior director of marketing at LIFEWTR, says these artists stuck out because of their purpose-led work. The three of them “have created inspiring interpretations of the Black experience,” Smith says. “We hope to shine a light on the artistic expressions of our featured Black, purpose-led artists, inspiring future generations of creatives to pursue their own artistic endeavors.”

Especially exciting for our South Florida community is the work featured by Adler Guerrier, an incredibly accomplished, talented artist living and working out of Miami. “I’m honored to contribute artwork that will be seen, eventually, by hundreds of thousands, and potentially millions, of people,” Guerrier says of his participation in the series. “I’m interested in how these bottles will be sitting on counters, on desks, on tables and will be held in hands.” He’s particularly excited for the opportunity to contribute to the conversation about Black life. He hopes his work has brought “a little bit of thought, a little bit of beauty, a little bit of opportunity to think around Black life in whatever context the bottles are in.”

Born in Haiti, his roots greatly influence the work he creates. “Haiti, and for that matter, the whole Caribbean and by larger extension the Caribbean diaspora and African diaspora, are just part of a language that influence how I view the world,” he explains. Miami is particularly conducive to his work because of the vast Caribbean community throughout the city. “South Florida is a very interesting place to live in that I see aspects of my former home, as well of aspects of places I haven’t been,” he says, citing different cultures from places like Jamaica and Trinidad that he has felt reverberate in Miami.

These influences of place are especially important to him because his whole artform is centered around themes of home and place. “I make work about the place that I live, my relationship with the place that I live,” he explains. He drifts through the streets of Miami, taking in impressions, moments and feelings that he comes across along the way, then uses them as inspiration for his mixed media drawing, photographs and videos. “It’s partly through observation and being conscious of the place that one is in and how one’s emotion can make the place,” he says of his process. “There’s value in that.”

“At LIFEWTR we understand that barriers exist and not all creators receive the same opportunities to showcase their work,” Smith explains. That’s why, in addition to showcasing the work of Guerrier, Okoro and Rus in this bottle collection, LIFEWTR has also pledged to support Black creatives by making $30,000 donations to three organizations of the artists’ choices.

For the donation to be made on his behalf, Guerrier selected to partner with the Pérez Art Museum Miami. “PAMM will make sure this money goes towards the acquisition of the work of Black artists that will be in a collection that will be publicly seen, publicly shown and will be broadcasting a culture of Black production from the African diaspora,” he explains. Having had a show in the museum and having had the subsequent opportunity to get to know the staff, he’s confident they’re well equipped to make this money go far.

To learn more about LIFWTR, visit lifewtr.com and to see more of Guerrier’s work, visit adlerguerrier.com/studio.