The type of beauty that stands out in a crowd, 26 year old Celine Rahman shines from the inside out. As a visual artist, blogger, and former Art Director at the ever popular, Elite Daily, Celine’s been busy in Brooklyn, cooking the daily Cup of Rahman to her followers.
We had the pleasure of spending a day with Celine to get outside of the internet’s bubble and to chat #RealTalk. What’s a normal day? Yoga, skateboarding to work, the craft store, constant creating, and a whole lot more.
On art directing through life…
“My work ranges from art direction, graphic design, illustration and photography. I’m constantly jumbling them to create something that speaks to me. But in terms of art direction, I listen to my moods to find inspiration to recreate.”
On picking it up as you go along…
” I didn’t pick up graphic design or illustration until I moved to New York. I was working with a graphics team and I never felt like I was getting what I was envisioning, so I just figured I could learn it myself, picked it up and went from there. It’s been a whirlwind because I never expected my illustrations to pick up the way they did. That was just short of a year ago! Right now my priority has been illustration; I came to New York working mostly on photography but the way social media has shifted, illustrations and graphics are becoming a large part of what people respond to.”
Humanizing pop-culture through art…
“When I put pop-culture into my work, I want it to be positive and something people can relate to. It’s difficult for people to view celebrities as normal people, but the truth is that they’re humans just like us. It’s important for me to highlight the simplicity of their personalities in my work. I recently did a Bella Hadid illustration where she is like “I literally just stay in and eat sushi and watch ‘Law & Order,’ and go to sleep at 9…” She’s really speaking for all of us. It’s the simple things like that, that make us relate to them.”
Why going against the status quo is so important…
“One thing I couldn’t live without is self expression. I remember in the 7th grade I went to private school and we had to wear uniforms. One of the only days we had the chance to dress down, almost every girl chose to wear the same three shirts from the same three places: Aeropostale, American Eagle, and Abercrombie. I think being surrounded by the status quo in private school helped fuel my craving for individual expression. When I got to high school I started collecting an archive of fashion magazines like Teen Vogue and Seventeen. I read them during my study halls as an escape into the fashion world. I also picked up sewing and started altering my clothes to my preference. I recently had a DIY segment on Elite Daily’s Facebook Live where I would host and create DIY projects, but now I’m transitioning to Cup of Rahman YouTube which will launch late November.”
Serving daily doses of Cup of Rahman on Instagram…
“The Cup Of Rahman Instagram is mostly curated subtitles from movies and shows. I won’t ever put something on the page that doesn’t speak to me or the audience I’m speaking to. At first I wanted it to be gender neutral, but realized there’s more of a female presence and wanted to cater to that. It speaks for feminists, girl bosses, girls going through emotions, and just life’s general reality.”
How Yoga and Meditation make expression possible…
“I was right out of high school when I was introduced to yoga and I haven’t stopped since. Meditation is a huge part of my practice and an entire world on its own– learning about your own mind and resetting the brain so that you can function and take on the world with an open mind. The most important thing I’ve learned through yoga is to move at your own pace and breathe. If I take even a week off from yoga, I have a hard time getting myself together. There have been weeks at a time when I did the whole “NYC – sleep for 6 hours- drink lots of coffee thing” which sounds normal but it’s actually not normal to treat our bodies like that. Yoga and meditation are crucial to my creative process.
ME to the CORE…
“I want to inspire everyone to be nothing but themselves. “
Keep up with Celine on Instagram.
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