SPRING 2018
THE AUDACITY ISSUE 5
CREDITS
Staff Editor-in-Chief Creative Director Layout Social Media Events
Erin Kuykendall Melina Perez Moses Lee Maiya Evans Ebanie Griffith
Contributors Photographer (Lest We Forget) HMUA (Lest We Forget, All in the Golden Afternoon) Model (Lest We Forget)
Rachael Henson Mariah Becerra
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Stephen Jeter, Erin Kuykendall, Kelly McComas, Nadia Pinter Photographer (Kill Bill) Vivian Kwan HMUA (Kill Bill) Arden Frank Model (Kill Bill) Allison Lopez, Suzuka Sampson, Ashley Yen Stylist (Kill Bill) Brian Helm Artist (Kill Bill) Manami Maxted Photographer (Awaken My Love) Jeanette Nevarez Model (Awaken My Love) Brennen Cooke, Kiani Dover, Eva Frederick, Karina Gamboa, Will Kachi, Luis Lantigua, Mostefa Sheikhi HMUA (Awaken My Love, La Sirena) Maiya Evans Photographer (La Sirena) Alexa Ray Model (La Sirena) Melina Perez Artist (La Sirena) Rachel Efruss, Marg Gerik Photographer (Skin, Kate Dannenmaier All in the Golden Afternoon) Models (All in the Golden Afternoon) Kiah Brooks, Gail Chovan Writer (Lest We Forget) Renee Johnson Writer (Skin) Sarah Ogunmuyiwa Writer (Kill Bill) Brennen Cooke Writer (Awaken My Love, Erin Kuykendall, All in the Golden Afternoon) Submissions Writer (La Sirena) Catalina Casar
CONTENTS
Contents Staff Photo 04 Lest We Forget 06 Woman / Body as Art: An Anthology 12 Flavie Eibel 18
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Kill Bill 20 Awaken My Love 34 La Sirena 48 Clam Girl Has a Premonition 58 All in the Golden Afternoon 60 Tollbooth on the Shore 66
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Editor -in-Chief Erin Kuykendall
Creative Director Melina Perez
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Social Media Maiya Evans
Events Ebanie Griffith
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STORY
Lest We Forget THE AUDACITY
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LEST WE FORGET
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eauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but there is no doubt that our society privileges art of white male artists depicting their idea of beautiful or powerful white subjects. These works fill the art historical canon, classified as Art with a capital A. They remain untouchable, lauded by art historians and tourists alike.
While we cannot deny the subjective beauty of these paintings and the technical prowess with which they were executed, we must also acknowledge the ugly truth behind the canon of art history. Past art historians have chosen pieces of “classic” or “influential” art that put forth a singular idea of beauty and power centered around whiteness. When looking at these pieces–– the Mona Lisa, the Girl with the Pearl Earring, Venus d’Urbino, or the Birth of Venus––many questions of identity and agency arise. Who gets to be painted? Who deserves to be shown as beautiful? Clearly only rich and powerful, or sexually alluring but subservient, white people.
With echoes of “Me, Too” reverberating throughout our society, the art world is faced with the dilemma of addressing famous works of art made by known sexual abusers, racists, and generally terrible people. Some suggest that the wall labels should explain the artists’ misdeeds, while others have called for the removal of works by certain offenders entirely. The few institutions that have responded to these critiques claim that removing works with controversial pasts from their walls would result in empty galleries. Maybe so. We are still living under a patriarchal society that privileges the works of white male artists, no matter how despicable, over works by women and people of color. Removing these works would be denying the struggle that artists from marginalized backgrounds have faced. It is our duty to create a middle ground. We must acknowledge that these canonical paintings have ugly pasts that hold up ideals of white superiority, capitalism, and sexism. We can take the power of these works as a lesson from history about colonialism and the dominance of white male perspectives, and move forward by acknowledging and supporting other narratives in art. We must complicate beauty by acknowledging that it is draped in slime, a grotesque but inseparable ribbon we can trace through time immemorial. Renee Johnson 8
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But what can we do? These paintings will always hold an important place in western culture. Can we admire a painting on its own without admiring the creator, or the time period and society in which it was created? Should we even try? To look at a painting by Titian, a powerhouse of the Renaissance who radically changed the Italian approach to painting, without acknowledging the influence and power of the artist is denying his immense influence and thereby denying history.
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LEST WE FORGET
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STORY
Woman / Body as Art: An Anthology By Sarah Ogunmuyiwa
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Your back, your bone Your sex All an anthology The body of anyone who occupies the position of woman is always demonized and silenced into invisibility. Not being able to talk about our bodies insinuates that we do not own our bodies. Women have historically used their bodies as mediums to create ownership. Through art, women have created what Joan Morgan has called, “a politics of articulation” where we can openly talk about our bodies and pleasures without shame. Body positivity doesn’t just include normalizing bodies that are considered deviant, it’s also about naming what turns us on. 12
WOMAN / BODY AS ART: AN ANTHOLOGY
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WOMAN / BODY AS ART: AN ANTHOLOGY
The hip is both a curve and an orchid Backside both a history and a medium Woman / Body as sculpture — captured image SPRING 2018 : ISSUE 5
In 1810 Saartjie Baartman, a South African woman, was brought to London to be displayed in freak shows because of her large backside. After she died, her body parts were dissected and used to justify scientific racism, by comparing her genitalia to those of animals. These “scientific” discoveries became the foundations of ideologies that deemed Black women’s bodies as sexually deviant.
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“Don’t dare presume there’s shame in the lot of a woman who carries on...To resist occupation whether you’re a nation, or merely a woman, you must understand the language of your enemy.”
Poisonwood Bible Barbara Kingsolver
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Braille written in the calluses of occupied hands reciting the sacred words of holy books These are the hands that refused to strike, and instead moved forward Woman / Body as power
WOMAN / BODY AS ART: AN ANTHOLOGY
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ILLUSTRATION
Flavie
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As we all know, representation is really important. It makes us feel accepted as we are. Unfortunately, hairy women are rarely represented in medias. I try to use my art to participate as much as I can to show women how beautiful they are. Hairy women are precious, no matter how much society lies about it.
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FLAVIE EIBEL
Eibel
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I love strong women and it’s always really intense for me to draw one. We often see emotionally dependent women in medias, waiting for the perfect man to solve all their issues. This is not us. This is not who we want to be. How strong is it to take your own heart out, to face it and to eat it raw? We all have the ability to renew ourselves and our way to love.
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NAME
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ratuitous and over-the-top: That’s what Quentin Tarantino does in his stories, plot lines and characters. No exception was made in 2003 when Kill Bill Pt.1 released as a grindhouse-style homage to the martial arts film. Blood, gore, and exaggerated tropes abound.
There are, however, some positive things we can take away from the portrayal of Asians in Kill Bill. Lucy Liu’s character is a half-Chinese, half-Japanese American that fiercely defends her mixed heritage. Another character is French-Japanese. This little bit of character depth is important. Most of today’s Asian people aren’t lopping limbs off with katanas, but some
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The Asian characters in Kill Bill, with few exceptions, fall squarely into Western stereotypes. The primary Asian women in the film are quiet, demure, and heavily sexualized. They’re feminist characters from a white male perspective — in their actions they’re no-shit-taking ultra-violents, but on the outside they fill the ‘ideal’ submissive role of Asian women. Chiaki Kuriyama’s Gogo Yubari illustrates this perfectly. She’s quiet and soft-spoken, dressed like a schoolgirl, and yet cracks sex jokes while violently killing men. It might seem like a good thing — the girl’s a bad ass, right? Unfortunately, the message is far from empowering for Asian women. Whether they can kick ass or not, they’re expected to fall in line with what’s considered sexy.
KILL BILL
are having to reconcile with mixed Asian heritages. This nuance is often lost in western media where Asian cultures are far too often lumped together.
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Kill Bill is an easy film to pick apart, because it relies on and often satirizes Western stereotypes of Asian people. Even if not taken too seriously, these stereotypes can be harmful. Asian and Asian-American people are sorely underrepresented in media. Tropes and caricatures work to perpetuate the white lens that Asians are seen through in the US and Europe. We need more Asian characters that reflect our lives as real and complex people, and more commentary on the struggles that Asians face outside of how these struggles are represented in white media. In the meantime, let’s take the killer and leave the quiet. Do what makes us feel like bad asses, and what makes old white men intimidated. We can fight these tropes, and we can break the white lens that western culture sees us through. At the end of the day, after all — we do Kill Bill. Brennen Cooke
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Awaken My Love
AWAKEN MY LOVE
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o you remember the first time you felt yourself opening? As young people, it’s hard to forget the first time you were aroused and who or what was responsible for this confusing new sensation. Largely, the overarching sentiment has been one of necessary shame. Push those feelings away, and keep it quiet. Calm down. Sex is never to be celebrated — especially if you’re a woman, or attracted to someone your Sunday School teacher says you aren’t supposed to be.
Collected here are some of our favorite story submissions recounting our youthful sexual awakenings. There is unadulterated power in the ability to laugh at what we were once ashamed of, and in the very act of declaring these feelings are your own. The images themselves reflect the nature of what inspired our awakenings, with a transparency that points to the idea that these are, after all, only a constructed fantasy. Erin Kuykendall
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“Literally everything in Love & Basketball, but specifically when they talk about Quincy’s ass and the camera focuses in on his butt while he’s on the court DAMN.” Anonymous
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Serena Bastian
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“Li Shang!! The whole I’ll Make a Man Out of You scene STRUCK ME TO MY QUIVERING CORE. As soon as he took off his shirt to start training his army oml. His sculpted abs. His arms. His lips. Truly a beautiful human being.”
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AWAKEN MY LOVE
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“The sex scene in The Notebook created something strange in my underwear and I was so confused I asked my mom what it was, oops.” Syd Martin
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Kaley Kiermayr
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“It was TOTALLY Keira Knightly and Orlando Bloom on the beach at the end of POTC3 when he takes off her boot and kisses her bare knee so worshipfully??? and Elizabeth fucking Swann tilts her head back in the setting sun and faces the sea smiling and sated and basking in it with her eyes closed like………….. hecking heck. She looks like Pirate King of the entire fucking world in that moment, and sitting in the theater, my heart was in my throat. Like, I get it, Will Turner. I’d die for her too. And the intimacy of him kneeling before her while she looked towards the horizon…to this day I am still processing the fact that I didn’t know which person I wanted to be more in that scene. (Queer culture is being in love with both Elizabeth Swann and Will Turner.) And LIKE do I want to kiss the knee or do I want my knee kissed b/c both the actors being attractive only accounts for about 40% of why that scene affected me so much–it was the specific power dynamic and the respect in that scene that gave me the funny feelings.”
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“The first time I saw Cameron Diaz as Tina in the movie The Mask. Basically every scene with her in it made me feel fuuuuuunnnyyyy. I think I was 8. But her white and black striped outfit and her tiny sequined dress STILL gets me every time.” Jordan Jones
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Anonymous
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“Kim Possible and Shego fights made me realize that I am attracted to other females and also hate sex.”
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La Sirena
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LA SIRENA
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LA SIRENA
“El canto de sirena, el viaje de marinero” We all play with the cards we’re dealt. La loteria is a testament to chance within a beautiful deck. We all hope the cards — la luna, la corona, el corzón and even el borracho — are stacked in our favor. As a child, each card was a pretty picture, another riddle to solve and another frijol closer to victory, and it’s no doubt that everyone has a favorite or luckiest card. For many, it’s la sirena. We all know the story. Sailors would set out in search for gold and adventure and come across a power only the sea could hold -- the same endless sea that could swallow a man whole and create Aphrodite out of its foam. SPRING 2018 : ISSUE 5
In Mexican folklore and academic literature, la sirena represents a distinct duality between life and death because she is the epitome of both. She is beautiful, feminine and full of wonder. She is the seductress that leads sailors to their demise. In many ways, we are the same. We are the very thing we are fighting against, the product of our achievements and shortcomings and a balancing act between life and death. Nothing belongs to us but we have everything we could ever want. We are la sirena and el marinero, navigating through life searching for what we think we need, hoping it will fulfill us. The compass we use to guide us goes by different names -- destiny, religion, luck and coincidence. As much as we like to believe that our journey is dictated by our destination, it’s the wind and the waves that carry us. Whatever comes our way we learn to embrace because it’s the card we’ve been dealt and it’s exactly what we need at the time. When we embrace the unknown and allow whatever we need to come to us, that is when the soul cries, “Lotería!” Catalina Casar
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LA SIRENA
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LA SIRENA
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LA SIRENA
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CLAM GIRL HAS A PREMONITION
Clam Girl Has a Premonition SPRING 2018 : ISSUE 5
“Clam Girl was born during my final year of college. She found her way into my senior thesis while I investigated creative processes that highlighted my self-deprecating nature. In illustrating my struggles as a timid artist, Clam Girl serves as my candid - usually rude - alter ego who appears when I “clam up”. As a sort of critical Jiminy Cricket, she is both the voice of reason and cause for my affliction.” Manami Maxted
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INTERVIEW
All in the Golden Afternoon THE AUDACITY
“All in the golden afternoon Full leisurely we glide; For both our oars, with little skill, By little arms are plied, While little hands make vain pretense Our wanderings to guide.” Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
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ALL IN THE GOLDEN AFTERNOON
Dear Reader: As this is our fifth issue, we’ve had time to reflect on the nature of our readership. We realize that the majority of you are young women, in your 20s, much like us. We’re part of a community trying to figure ourselves out; being sold the same repeated image of beauty, the same preeminence of youth, expected to share the same fears of a society chewing up our artistry and spitting us out the worse for wear. Growing up is scary, and we’re supposed to do everything we can to avoid aging. We’re supposed to stay the same.
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We started this zine with the intention of asking ourselves, and the community, the tough questions: What if growing up can be beautiful? How can we preserve our creativity in a world that constantly pushes us towards a ‘normal’? What can we learn from the women before us? For these images, we drew inspiration from Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It is a tale in which the creative fantasies of youth are explored, as a child fights with the power of disillusionment that comes with age. We drew inspiration from Gail and Kiah, two women who are powerful and inventive and paved the road for women like us, who are just starting to decide how to carve a path. They are presented covered in light from micro-photography of mold, something else we gasp and grimace at, taught to fear and avoid. As we hope you can see, the organic forms become all light, all color, and all encompassing environment when thoroughly considered. When cooperated with, our fears blur into a new and brighter landscape. We asked these women the same question our dear Alice once asked, knowing, of course, that it depends very much on where one would like to go: “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” Erin Kuykendall
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Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
Gail Chovan
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“One always moves forward with lessons learned from the past, wisdom gained from present experiences and productivity and plans for the future.�
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ALL IN THE GOLDEN AFTERNOON
Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
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“Well, you could really go any way you like. In life we are given options, it’s up to us to make the “right” decision. But whose right is it? The way I see it, it doesn’t matter which way you go as long as you are committed to the path. Make every stride you take one with purpose and conviction. Do not falter, no matter what obstacle is placed before you. And the toughest part of all, trust the path. Trust that you made the right decision and it will work in your favor. I spent a lot of my life in fear. Fear of failure, disappointment, and rejection...and I’ve realized, I will always have to face these three things. They are necessary. Necessary to my growth and ultimate success. The more time I waste fearing them, the less time I have to overcome them. Your goal shouldn’t be to choose the right path, it should be to finish your path. A lot of the time we will make excuses as to why we can’t get past a plight or why something hasn’t changed for the better. We put all of our time in hoping we make the right choices instead of just trusting ourselves and staying convicted of our choices. If we can overcome ourselves, our fears, and our excuses, then we can overcome just about anything. So chose any path, go any way, just make sure you go with strength and pride. And don’t forget to enjoy every step of the way.” Kiah Brooks 65
POEM
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Tollbooth on the Shore
TOLLBOOTH ON THE SHORE
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I was 11 and in Oz and the ocean was bigger than me Paddling too far out, upright in a shiny red kayak built for two. When I managed my return to dry ground, (the sun had already set) no one knew I did not tell that I had learned of nature’s grand indifference, floating alone At this time, I had been hearing rumours freedom came with age- (a rule of nature) I grew suspicious, waiting for evidence outside of sex or threat of violence or any responsibility that came naturally, from intimacy To leap tides, make headline on the weather channel Gesticulating toward a forecast map, coy, near the hollow pink of the ear, saying: “you can have whatever you want” I grew, (into the nuance of my body) (artist body, woman body) (in height and velvet cake plush) to the asking, a paying A man I once loved told me I had to be like water; bend at the angle of the riverbed I think we all know; in this metaphor, he was the riverbed Staring coolly from the other end of the kitchen island: hungover, pendulous in the desire that I lack all desire Angry I couldn’t be angry anymore Lexie Davis
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