Jack Waterlot Flashes Herizen for Numero Netherlands SS 2021 ELEMENTS Sustainability Focus

American singer, songwriter and actor Herizen, known for her breakout role as Mylene Cruz on the Netflix original series ‘The Get Down’ takes center stage in the SS 2021 issue of Numero Netherlands. Herizen also played Oshun [channeling one of the most important divinities among the Yorùbá people] in ‘American Gods’.

Herizen tells Numero Netherlands that playing the famous goddess Oshun “was such a special moment for me, I felt a connection to my childhood/womanhood I’ve never felt before. It was a beautiful spiritual experience.”

Photographer Jack Waterlot [IG] captures the Maimi native, who identified as an Afro/Black Caribbean-American, with styling by Jean Chung./ Makeup by Frankie Boyd; hair by Rita Marmor

Pre-rise of monotheism and the Abrahamic religions, — which subordinated the individual and nature, to an all-powerful male God — the relationships among the individual, nature and multiple deities involved and more respectful relationship between humans and nature.

Numero Netherlands devotes the Spring & Sumemer issue to the theme of ELEMENTS and asks Herizen about her own relationship with nature. She answers:

I think keeping a garden is something that everyone should learn. We had one last Spring and have started planting for this upcoming one :) It’s a meditation and an honor to put back into the earth that we take so much from and show it the love it deserves. Keeping an environmentally aware home is something that no one should get away with not doing. We all have to do our jobs to keep our planet alive. After all, it’s our home and the only one we have.

Being in concert with nature (which can be deadly) emerges as the talent’s answer to the question of the “most daring thing you did recently” is a life lesson for all of us. Herizen responds:

Last year when I visited my father in Costa Rica, I sat in the same spot every day on that beach staring at this island that was a little over a mile out in the water. Every day I told myself “I’m not leaving Costa Rica without swimming to that island” and every day for those 3 weeks it was like chanting an obsession. Finally, on the last day I did it! It was scary as hell and I freaked out in the middle there for a bit, but finally surrendered to the ocean and I completed my journey. When I got back to the shore, I felt a wave of courage and strength wash over me, and since then whenever I feel fear or weakness I think about that island, and it helps me move forward.

Read the entire interview and check out the image credits at Numero Netherlands.