Profile by: Jennie Bull
Photos by: Edgar Tescum
Photos by: Edgar Tescum
The kind you hold without realizing.
The lights dimmed, the music shifted, and suddenly she was there—Maia del Estal, walking into a circle of stillness, facing two living canvases clothed in white.
But this was no runway. No art show.
This was an invocation.
At the official launch of BUNT, a New York–based creative agency founded by Amelie Trimpl, the audience at Please Space Studios in Brooklyn witnessed something rare: a live painting performance that blurred the edge between fashion, intimacy, and ritual. As Del Estal painted directly onto the garments—crafted by designer Ciara Fitzgerald—the models moved with an aching, deliberate slowness. They reached toward each other. Almost.
Not yet.
The tension built like static in the air, charged with longing.
Each brushstroke became part of that story. A language built from movement and material. The models—wordless, expressive—were not just wearing art, they were becoming it. A meditation on queer connection, delay, and destiny.
By the time their hands finally met, the performance had moved into something closer to collective catharsis. The lights dropped. The room exhaled.
“I didn’t want a traditional launch,” Trimpl explains. “I wanted a mirror. A space where people could project their own stories onto the work. It’s not about decoding it—it’s about feeling it.”
“We don’t separate the aesthetic from the ethical,” Trimpl says. “It’s all part of the same language. If your work isn’t saying something about the world, why are you making it?”
True to that vision, the pieces painted during the performance are now being auctioned, with 50% of proceeds supporting Trans Lifeline, a grassroots organization that provides direct aid to trans people in crisis. The remaining half goes directly to the artists behind the work—ensuring both impact and sustainability.
“Everyone brought their own frequency,” says Trimpl. “Maia has this raw emotionality in her painting that feels like music. Ciara’s design work is sculptural, almost architectural. My role was to hold the frame—to build a structure where their voices could speak to each other without one overpowering the other.”
That equilibrium—tender and tense—was palpable.
There’s something radical about slowing down in a city like New York. About making people stand still and feel. BUNTisn’t trying to keep up with trends. It’s here to set tempo.
“We’re not just a creative agency,” Trimpl says with a wry smile. “We’re a space for emotional risk. For beautiful discomfort. For art that lingers.”
And linger it does.
The models’ final gesture—hands meeting, eyes soft, canvases transformed—didn’t feel like closure. It felt like permission. To reach. To feel. To believe, even for a moment, that connection is coming. Maybe not now. Maybe not yet. But soon.
After all, as Trimpl reminds us,
“Some stories don’t need to end. They just need to be witnessed.”