Ginger Networked feminism
Spring 2019
MISSION GRACIE BIALECKI JULIA DUNHAM
EIRINI PAPAEFTHEMIOU
Ginger maps networks of creative people. In keeping with the logic of a network, all of the contributors to this issue were referred by an editor or contributor from a previous issue. As a feminist publication, we are committed to supporting the work of womxn, non-binary, and gender nonconforming individuals. Our goal is to produce a zine with a diverse range of forms, content, and perspectives.
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ISSUE 1 ISSUE 2 ISSUE 3 ISSUE 4 ISSUE 5 ISSUE 6 ISSUE 7 ISSUE 8
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LIANA IMAM
LANE SPEIDEL
CARLA AVRUCH
ELIZABETH SULTZER CLAUDIA GERBRACHT
MARIE HINSON ALEX VALLS
ISSUE 9 DOROTEA MENDOZA
ISSUE 10 ISSUE 11
ANNE MAILEY
LEANNE BOWES
ISSUE 12 ISSUE 13
DELILAH JONES
ISSUE 14
KERRI GAUDELLI
IRENE CAVROS
ISSUE 15 ISSUE 16
MEREDITH SELLERS DEVIN DOUGHERTY MARKEE SPEYER
LEYLA TULUN
KRISTINA HEADRICK
S.E.A. MADELINE DONAHUE
MISIAN TAYLOR
MEGAN SICKLES SAM CROW
MS. NIKO DARLING
CARMEL BROWN
OLIVIA JANE HUFFMAN
NATALIE EICHENGREEN
JACQUELINE MELECIO
NATASHA WEST CAITLIN ROSE SWEET
ANDREA GUSSIE
EMILY WUNDERLICH ERICA McKEEHEN
MARIA R. BAAB
HALA ABDULKARIM FELICIA URSO
JAZZY MICAELA SMITH
ITZEL BASUALDO
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ALEX PATRICK DYCK
DEVYN MAÑIBO
JANE SERENSKA
ALEXIS CANTU
AGROFEMME
MARIE SÉGOLÈNE
JEN COHEN
BONNIE LANE
Spring 2019
KATHERINE TARPINIAN
BRITLYNN HANSENGIROD
RACHEL WALLACH
LA JOHNSON
MOLLY HAGAN
SOPHIE KNIGHT
HARRIS BAUER
LAURA McMULLEN
HANNAH MODE
TONI KOCHENSPARGER
CAMERON RINGNESS
AMY BERENBEIM
ISSACHAR CURBEON
RACHEL BRODY
RACHEL ZARETSKY
BRIE LIMINARA
LAUREN ARIAN
ENA SELIMOVIĆ
ARIEL JACKSON
YI-HSIN TZENG
SOFIA PONTÉN
FREDRIKA THELANDERSSON
KASIA HALL
HERMIONE SPRIGGS
LAURA COOPER
JENNIFER WEISS
NANDI LOAF
WOLFGANG SCHAFFER
IVY HALDEMAN
NP SANCHEZ
BRIE ROCHELILLIOTT
ANA GIRALDOWINGLER
KRYSTA SA
ALLI MALONEY
EEL COSTELLO VANESSA GULLY SANTIAGO HANNAH RAWE
SOFIE RAMOS
COURTNEY STONE
CAITLIN WRIGHT
MARTY MANUELA
JESSE HEIDER
ISA RADOJČIC
COLLEEN DURKIN
JACQUELINE CANTU
KATIE MIDGLEY LEIGH RUPLE
EMMALINE PAYETTE
JESSICA PRUSA
MIMI CHIAHEMEN
ASHLEIGH DYE NATALIE GIRSBERGER
JOLENE LUPO
JESSICA WOHL
PAULAPART KATHARINE PERKO
MOLLY RAPP
MAYON HANANIA
EMILY ROSE LARSON
INDIA TREAT TRACI CHAMBERLAIN
SARA LAUTMAN NATALIE BAXTER
KATE WHEELER
ELAINE HEALY
DEENAH VOLLMER
TYLER MORGAN
RACHEL KANN
MARIA NIKOLIS
BECKY BRISTER
JILLIAN JACOBS
ERIN MIZRAHI
ULRIKE BUCK
B. NEIMETH
TIFFANY SMITH
KATHLEEN GRECO
DEBORAH DAVIS
ANNELIE McKENZIE
CATHERINE AZIMI
HANNAH MCMASTER
ALYCE HALIDAY MCQUEEN
G I N G E R 3
LEIGH SUGAR KATIE FORD
LAUREN BANKA
JOEY BEHRENS
HAYLEE EBERSOLE
KAITLIN McCARTHY
HANNAH NELSONTEUSCH
CLARE BOERSCH
JAN TRUMBAUER
COURTNEY KESSEL + DANIELLE WYCKOFF
AMANDA LÓPEZKURTZ
HEIDI BENDER
ASTRID KAEMMERLING + BECCA J.R. LACHMAN
AMBER HOY
STEPHANIE VON BEHR
JESSICA LAW
ALEX CHOWANIEC
ABIGAIL HENNING
JULIANA HALPERT
MARTHA WILSON
MOLLY SCHOENHOFF
MICHAELA RIFE
MOLLY ADAMS
CAROLINE LARSEN
SOPHIE OAKLEY
LEAH JAMES
NICKI GREEN
CARLY FREDERICK LANI RUBIN
EMILY LUDWIG SHAFFER
ANNIK HOSMANN
JORDAN REZNICK
JENNY BLUMENFELD
LAURA PORTWOODSTACER
ERIC DYER
BRE WISHART
LAURA BERNSTEIN ERI KING
CRAIG CALDERWOOD ELIZABETH TANNIE LEWIN
KAT SHANNON
MARISSA BLUESTONE
LUCA MOLNAR
LEJLA KALAMUJIĆ + JENNIFER ZOBLE
JEAN SEESTADT
ANNA GURTONWACHTER
CHRISTINE SHAN SHAN HOU JESS WILLLA WHEATON
SONYA DERMAN
REBECCA BALDWIN
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C. CHAPIN
STAVER KLITGAARD
ASHNA ALI
MARIA STABIO
PAOLA DI TOLLA
KATY McCARTHY
LEXI CAMPBELL
BIRAAJ DODIYA
SARAH MIHARA CREAGEN
KAVERI RAINA
SHALA MILLER
KAITLIN McDONOUGH
AMIA YOKOYAMA
KATIE VIDA
Spring 2019
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Spring 2019
Issue NO 16 contributors Kat Shannon .... PAGE 09 Itzel Basualdo .... PAGE 14 Elizabeth Tannie Lewin .... PAGE 19 Lejla KalamujicĚ + Jennifer Zoble .... PAGE 22 Heidi Bender .... PAGE 27 B. Neimeth .... PAGE 31 Jazzy Micaela Smith .... PAGE 37 Biraaj Dodiya .... PAGE 42 Julia Dunham .... PAGE 48 Molly Schoenhoff .... PAGE 53 Ashna Ali .... PAGE 59 Christine Shan Shan Hou .... PAGE 61 Amia Yokoyama .... PAGE 67 Eri King .... PAGE 71
Co-founders EDITO R
Markee Speyer D E S IGN E R
Jacqueline Cantu
On the cover: Red 40 Zen MSG Rock Garden by Eri King, 2018, Hand-pulverized Hot Cheetos, Monosodium glutamate sodium salt rocks, stretcher bars, Zen rake, plastic Mickey Mouse glove, marble mortar pestle, plastic shower curtain, 64 in x 64 in
G I N G E R 7
Kat Shannon Support Systems, 2019
K a t S h a n n o n 9
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Spring 2019
K a t S h a n n o n 11
Kat Shannon (b. 1991) is a multidisciplinary artist working in photography, text, performance, and video based out of Brooklyn, New York. Her work confronts and interrogates notions of intimacy, human connection, gender, community, and culture. She holds degrees in photography from Savannah College of Art and Design (BFA 2012) as well as Bard College (MFA 2015). In 2014 Shannon co-founded the publishing house Silent Face Projects and in co-founded 2017 the artist run initiative Memory Foam. KatShannon.com • MemoryFoamProjects.com • @KatShannon 12
Spring 2019
Itzel Basualdo INSTRUCTIONS FOR WHEN I DIE, 2018
In the event I die, which I eventually will, I just don’t know when, it may be around the corner, or it may be in fifty years, or 69, I don’t know, I invite you all to be held partially accountable for the proper execution of my funerary services.1 Amen. 1 This is a nonbinding agreement.
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1) I don’t want to ask for much, but lather my body in Gucci Guilty. 2) Call the event: “Carnaval Toda La Vida.” a) Offer a meager translation: “Carnival All Of Life.” i) Use a ticketing system for the funeral function but do keep original event title. Do not translate for the sake of being better understood. (1) Aim for a classy-meets-Miami-ratchet-meetskitsch aesthetic. Glossy paper. 3) Make me late to the funeral because I was always late and will always be late. 4) But give me an excuse to be late, say I fell out of my casket or some shit. 5) Curse words are acceptable—and encouraged. a) Some of my favorites included: coño, pinga, come pinga, fuck, shit, fuck this shit, fuck me, fuck me up, me cago en dios, me cago en la puta, es un hijo de puta, que hijos de puta, damn. 6) Offer a tearjerker during the eulogy. Discuss my unduly devotion to the arts (and any other devotions I may have developed along the way), but also give the people what they want and I think we know they want to laugh. a) I also think they may want to drink piña coladas because that’s what I would’ve wanted, but more on that later. 7) Nails: a vibrant, ladybug-crimson red. A deep, deep red. Ladybugs were, after all, my top favorite insect. 8) Trim my nails because they may appear to be longer once my skin begins to dry and retract.
a) P lease ensure cremation has occurred before this takes place. Contact the Neptune Society for Cremation for all the details on my pre-established cremation plan.
i) D isperse my ashes while aboard a private yacht party on the Miami coastline. SouthBeachPartyBoats.com has a yacht available with a 49-person capacity, but push for them to allow 69 guests. I likely never had the guts to go on this kind of odyssey, but I think it would’ve been great fun. For whoever may desire my ashes, place a small amount in a jar and place a label on this jar that reads, “MAGIC DUST.”
(a) P lay “Oh Yeah” by Yello during the dispersal at approximately -6 dB.
I t z e l B a s u a l d o 15
(i) A ccompany this act with the release of party poppers, but be sure to have guests point these towards the boat and not the sea. Minimize contamination.
1. Save a small ash jar. See bottom of the list.
(b) S erve croqueticas from Rosy Bakery. Buy upwards of $100 worth of croquetas from them. Ham. Only ham. Toss in the whole Cuban pastry medley.
2. End the ceremony with “Rhythm of the Night” by Corona. Do not serve Coronas at the function, however.
(i) D on’t buy any Argentinean pastries despite the pressing encouragement of the relatives from this side of the family.
b) More on my dead body. I am smiling: a coy, half-smile, smirk where my lips curl into mischief.
i) A light lip, just enough for it to be obvious I have any lips.
9) Dress: well. Perhaps some of my closet staples. Some bright colors interweaved with black basics (use your best judgement or consult with someone who can appropriately advise. I’ve left their numbers at the bottom of this note).
a) S erving piña coladas decorated with mini, bright parasols and one of those hyper artificial cherries is indispensable.
i) I never liked them but I think they work for the occasion.
(1) Indispensable is much more beautiful in Spanish, as is everything.
(a) To amplify the potential of the cherries, play something like “El Disco Anal” or “I Wanna Be Your Lover” at the wake, maybe even live.
(i) It would be an absolute dream to have Julio Briceño from Los Amigos Invisibles sing an acoustic version of “El Disco Anal,” the anal disco, as his voice and his face were always among my preferred avenues of ecstasy.
1. T he aforementioned phrase is a euphemism.
b) As identified by my 2012 Florida license, donate any working and worthy organs.
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a. But then end the function with something with soul: “Estoy Pensando En Tí” would work just fine.
i) I suffered from minor heartache in life and so I guess my heart should be in full working order.
Spring 2019
10) My social security number: 009-12-6755 (just in case). 11) Please have my dearest loved one handle my finances unless they are a horrible person. Gauge their integrity by revising their voting records, bank account statements, and the frequency with which they claimed to have loved me.
a) Actually, I don’t care.
i) Give it all away.
12) T he password to my computer, in case you’d like to publish me posthumously and let me live on as an artist who was troubled and tormented in their waking life but achieved much fame and fortune after death, think Van Gogh style: FuckMeUpandCaca--xxx-69 13) C onsult with Andrew Asuncion and Daniel Almeida for tips on how to style my dead body. I hope they outlive me. 14) T ake the small jar of ashes that was originally saved to the only cemetery in Santiago Maravatio, Guanajuato, Mexico. Have a local, or one of my relatives, accompany you if you are not a Spanish speaker and/or look white. Follow my parents’ old tip: no English. Also, don’t wear shorts. Only gringos wear shorts. They will know you aren’t from around and that may up your chances. Walk down the main street of the town and it’ll lead you to the gated cemetery, which you will see on your right-hand side. Continue walking down the main pathway, through an archway of green, fruitful branches, until you reach the cement blocks also on your right. On the lower level of these stacked graves, look for the one without a plaque and maybe some fake pink flowers no longer pink, just the ashy brown of the dirt, and the trace of fingers on once wet-cement that says ANA MARIA CHAVEZ. 22-11-2004. Dig a small hole in front of this tomb, two-feet-deep, six-inches wide, or look up an adequate depth to protect me from erosion (although the Mexican spirits are on our side) and place the small jar of ashes in this hole. Cover it up and leave the land as it was. Leave me here beside her.
a) L eave incognito mode.
15) Tell my mother I loved her.
Itzel Basualdo is an interdisciplinary artist from Miami, Florida. She hated the place for many years, but now misses it terribly because she lives in Chicago. Her practice often involves photography, video, installation, text, sometimes all at the same time. Her work has appeared in The Acentos Review, The MFA Years, Sinking City Lit Mag, Creative Nonfiction, Saw Palm Magazine, and the documents folder on her laptop. Born to a Mexican mother and Argentinean father, Itzel is currently writing about what her heritage holds in a chapbook titled “La concha de tu madre.” She is a MFA Candidate in Writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. itzelbasualdo.com • Instagram: @lalicenciadaitzelbasualdo
I t z e l B a s u a l d o 17
Elizabeth Tannie Lewin Simulation: Haenyeo
G
rowing up I used to daydream about our birth mother. My daydreams were neither aggrandizing or damning; they were vignettes of a faceless woman moving through life independent of us, engaged in pedestrian activities such as eating dinner in front of the TV, walking down a crowded sidewalk, or picking produce at the grocery. These banal glimpses satisfied me. In 2010 my sister, Nora, was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to teach conversational English in South Korea. While she was there she decided to search for our birth mother. I did not want her to. Communicating, meeting, or seeing our biological mother would make real a woman whose history, physical features, and future were no longer subject to my imagination or whimsy. During my sister’s search she and I, by proxy, learned that the information we were given, the story we had grown up believing, was fictitious. In this new reality, our birth parents were married and already had two daughters; and the reason we were given up for adoption was that our parents wanted a son. Even though I was told as a child that due to Confucianism, males were valued over females in Korea, I never thought that gender played a role in our adoption until 2010. The Haenyeo are the only semi-matriarchal society in the heavily patriarchal country. The Haenyeo live approximately sixty miles south of the Korean mainland on an island called Jeju, and until recently, the Haeyneo served as the main source of Jeju’s economic wealth. For me, the Haenyeo represent the only community in Korea where the birth of my sister and I could have been accepted. I went to see the Haenyeo in 2015. I believed that if a Haenyeo were to see me it could resolve the new tumultuous reality surrounding our adoption. I believed that there was a healing property that could be transmitted from one woman to another through momentary eye contact. However, when I arrived on Jeju I realized that the resolution I was searching for was not grounded in reality.
E l i z a b e t h T a n n i e L e w i n 19
CLICK TO WATCH SIMULATION: HAENYEO
Simulation: Haenyeo (2016) is a three-channel interactive video installation. Three videos of computer-generated waves are projected onto three clear acrylic sheets each with a webcam attached at the top. These videos only play if the webcam recognizes a face and, if the viewer turns their head or leaves, the video will pause. The viewer emulates the sort of exchange I sought when I went to see the Haenyeo; a simple turn of the head, the subtle acknowledgment of one’s gaze echoes the sort of recognition I was seeking as I stood along the shore watching the Haenyeo. Simulation: Haenyeo weaves together the post WWII history of the Haenyeo and Jeju Island, Korean folklore, Ieodo, a submerged landmass, and the semi-biographical story of a woman who dreams of the Haenyeo and visits them seeking, but not finding, a resolution.
Elizabeth Tannie Lewin is a research-based artist interested in technology, landscape, identity, disappearance, and history. Lewin uses various technologies to achieve special effects such as 3D modeling landscapes, hacking a computer mouse to scan images, and reprogramming web-cameras to initiate or pause video playback. Lewin received her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2009) and her MFA from Hunter College (2016). She was recently a resident at Squeaky Wheel in Buffalo, NY. Lewin is currently working on two projects. The first, Endemic: The_Marshall_Islands, a 3D scanned and animated archive of 35 species endemic to the Marshall Islands, that will be exhibited via holographic displays submerged in coral aquariums. And Nuclear Set, a video that will incorporate videogame landscapes of Bikini and Enewetak Atolls, author Jorge Luis Borges’s Library of Babel, poet and WWII resistance fighter Rene Char, the founder of the Italian Futurist movement Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, and the early history of the United States’ nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, once known as the Pacific Proving Grounds. www.ad-acta-lewin.com. 20
Spring 2019
Lejla Kalamujić + Jennifer Zoble “Bella Ciao” excerpt from Call Me Esteban
Translator’s note: “Bella Ciao,” from the short story collection Zovite me Esteban (“Call Me Esteban”), is a story about recognition—seeing yourself in another person, and longing to be seen by them. It describes how the admiration a young girl feels for an unmarried woman in her community evolves into the recognition that the woman is a lesbian, which the girl, as she grows up, recognizes herself to be as well. It’s also a story about loneliness, the particular loneliness felt by queer people in places where they can’t live openly, and the search for comrades, mentors, survivors who can help them navigate their difficult path. The title takes its name from the famous Italian folk song that originated in the 19th century, became an antifascist anthem during World War II, and continues to be sung by resistance movements worldwide.
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BELLA CIAO
F
orgive me. I know it took me too long. I’m sorry it’s too late. I went up there. I was at your place. But I want to tell you more than that. I need to tell you everything.
I was ten years old. A sultry afternoon. Nana was teary, Papa seething, because who knows how many times they’d nagged Dad to stop going to the bar. They’d been begging him to remarry. They wouldn’t live forever, after all. What would become of them? Of me? But they were whistling in the wind. You know my dad, he didn’t listen to anyone. To me it was all the same. My toys, my bike, the neighborhood awaited me. Papa gave me some money for the store in Mejdan, I bought chocolate and chips, and—I almost ran right into you. You were holding a shopping bag, chatting with an old man I’d seen around. I watched you out of the corner of my eye, so you wouldn’t notice. I thought: it would be super if Dad married you! Never before and never since have I thought this about anyone. But it felt so normal to want to be near you. I couldn’t shake the memory of you: the next day, the day after that, the days that followed. I found out your name. The grownups would mention you sometimes, but I didn’t understand what they were talking about. The atmosphere at home was enlivened by my aunt’s upcoming marriage. Everyone was bustling about, making plans. One morning, two days before the wedding, Nana was breathlessly unloading her bags, pulling out cheese and sour cream for uštipci, those yummy little balls of fried dough. She remarked to Auntie that she’d seen you. I didn’t move: I stuffed a big piece of uštipak in my mouth and listened. She said you’d promised to come to the wedding and bring musicians along. On the big day, my stomach hurt. I felt ill, and no one knew it was from excitement at the prospect of seeing you. They thought it was because Auntie was leaving me, because she was like a big sister to me. I put on my new pants and a red shirt with a white lace collar. I even let Nana put a barrette in my hair. Just one, just this once, for you. Dancing, singing, drinking. It didn’t even bother anyone that Dad was hitting the bottle—they were celebrating. The hours passed, with no sight of you. Maybe you’d gotten lost? You couldn’t find the building? Every now and then I snuck outside. I sauntered along, peering into the alleyways, and climbed to the top of Logavina Street. I stood there, looking for you. I went to sleep just before dawn, on the sofa in the guest room. The next day, it occured to me: you must’ve forgotten. It wasn’t important. The wedding wasn’t all that great, and the marriage didn’t last long. And today I still firmly believe that if you’d been there, the party would’ve been a hundred times better. I begged Dad to bring me along to one of the taverns where I thought I might see you. Papa approved it, thinking we were going for ćevapi at Željo’s and cake at Egipat. I promised I
L e j l a K a l a m u j i ć + J e n n i f e r Z o b l e 23
wouldn’t say a word about visiting bars like Kod Piketa, or sometimes Čarli, where they had framed posters of Chaplin on the walls. We would sit, Dad’s pals would come and go, and whenever he’d say it was time to get going, I’d order one more juice. Who knows, I thought, you might show up unexpectedly. Then the war came and I believed our paths would never cross again. I heard you were in Slovenia, that you were performing up there, that you were doing well. We ran into one another in ‘97 or ‘98, again in Mejdan. You’d come back! Dad had remarried in the meantime, but I no longer cared about that. I’d come to understand you. To understand myself. I peeked at you building your new house. Brick by brick, alone, with your own hands. I was happy. With every new layer of brick the pain I’d felt when someone had snickered at you receded. Bella, no matter how long you kept quiet, they knew. But you know what, fuck them! They pointlessly faked their building permits, locked their gates to hide the two-story houses sprouting in their gardens; in vain they erected new fences and sturdier roofs. They couldn’t protect themselves from the sun or the clouds. They couldn’t do anything! You built the most beautiful house, with the loveliest view of the city. Sometimes I’d walk down your street as if unwittingly. Acting like I was in a hurry, I would constantly check my watch. It’s funny to me now, because I know you knew perfectly well that I didn’t hurry anywhere, that I had nowhere to be. So many times I wanted to ask: What was it like for you? Where did you hang out? Where did you go? One time, I gathered up some courage and lingered a bit near your house. I lit a cigarette and gazed out at the city. Suddenly, something creaked. Your front door opened, and I caught sight of you taking out the trash. I chuckled from panic and stared at Vijećnica like I’d never seen it before. In an instant you looked at me, and I looked back as if by accident. You nodded in a sign of greeting, turned, and went back inside. The door closed. That night, as usual, I played cards with Nermina and Hana. Something had thawed in me. I emphatically proclaimed the sunset beyond compare. The hours passed, and I blabbered on and on. Them: “Deal the cards.” Me: “Just look at the sky’s purple undertones.” Them: “Come on, deal.” Me: “And the bridges over the Miljacka, what a sheen they acquire at twilight.” When I said, “The tram glided past Vijećnica with unprecedented ease. What masterful steering!”, Nermina couldn’t take it anymore. She threw down her cards: “For God’s sake, what the fuck is up with you tonight?” I didn’t know. They told me seven days later. You’d died, and I hadn’t been there. They told me it was cancer, and the diagnosis came too late. They said, “Just two months,” and I had to take their word that you didn’t suffer too much, and that you went in your sleep.
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What can I tell you now? About life? About the city? They say the time to fight will come. I know it will. But every once in a while I encounter someone older, someone in whom I see you. At first, they look at me gloomily and warily. I long to ask them, where did your love blossom? Which hidden passageways were yours, which buildings, which curtains gave you cover? I understand the fear in their eyes. And that they’re pretending not to see me, not to hear me. That they take care not to let our bodies touch inadvertently in passing. I understand. I learned the language of silence. They too are alone, you know, and I have no one to ask whether ultimately that’s how it is? Bella, I’m scared of solitude. I hadn’t been up there in a while. I thought I never would again. When some poets from Sweden came to Sarajevo this summer, and it was my job to take them around, I couldn’t help but show them the most beautiful view of the city. We stood a little uphill from your house, under an old walnut tree. They took pictures, delighting in the panorama. I moved closer and leaned against the wall you’d built with your own hands. I wanted the asphalt to crack, I wanted a wild rosebush to spring up and bind my feet, the walnut tree to lower its branches and embrace me. I wanted to stay there as long as possible. “Who lives here?” asked one of the poets. “No one,” I said. She looked at me, expecting me to continue, but I didn’t want to go into it, not even with a Swede. Night was falling. I reminded them that we should get going, it wouldn’t be good to arrive late to our poetry event. Ciao, my Bella! The years pass. Bella, ciao! I don’t know whether other worlds exist. I have no answers. But I swear to you I’ll remember you madly. However long I can, whenever I can. Because you must know: you being there made it easier for me. Know this, too: people will pass by. They’ll come better and braver than I. They’ll snap photos, they’ll admire it . . . With your eyes they’ll see the city. “What a lovely house,” they’ll say. They will, Bella, they will.
Author: Lejla Kalamujić (b. 1980, Sarajevo) writes prose, plays, and essays. Central themes of her work include sexuality, madness, and death. She has published two collections of stories, Anatomija osmijeha and Zovite me Esteban, the latter of which won the Edo Budiša Award in 2016. She recently wrote the engaged play, Cannibal - or how I killed my family, which was staged in early 2019 at the Bosnian National Theater by director Lajla Kaikčija. Translator: Jennifer Zoble translates Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian- and Spanish-language literature. Her translation of the short story collection Mars by Asja Bakić was published by Feminist Press in March 2019. She received a 2018 NYSCA grant for her translation of Call Me Esteban by Lejla Kalamujić . She’s an assistant clinical professor in the interdisciplinary Liberal Studies program at NYU, co-editor of InTranslation at The Brooklyn Rail, and coproducer of the international audio drama podcast Play for Voices.
L e j l a K a l a m u j i ć + J e n n i f e r Z o b l e 25
Heidi Bender The Talking Petals Project
“ When a language dies, a way of understanding the world dies with it, a way of looking at the world.” —George Steiner
It was autumn, the kind of Indian summer day that makes one feel that the now is steeped in potential. My friend Bella was messaging her estranged husband, fully believing that their differences would soon be reconciled. Instead, their ten-year marriage ended with the delivery of one line on Instant Messenger. “I want a divorce.” In a cold blow, the agency of words on screen removed the writer from his recipient. I was reminded of the book on Victorian flower code that I had just read. How would the nature of the communication shift if instead Bella had received a bouquet of handpicked ivy and orange butterflyweed? (Sentiments of marriage and “let me go”) I began the Talking Petals project, an experiential text messaging project using the flower code, in the period after this event.
ABOVE
Warning of Marital Deceit, Infidelity, 8” x 10”, 2015. Digital image composed from free sourced images, digitally traced and mechanically cut.
The Talking Petals Project merges the poetry of the flower code with the speed of text messaging, the handpicked with the digital. In our current era, it is impractical to take the time to cultivate a flower for the purpose of communication. We are so used to speed. It is more our style to find our chosen blossom for free online. Each flower that eventually lands in the archives at the cart is sourced from free use images found online. Each image was digitally traced by hand, then cut out by a digital die-cutter. Visitors at the Talking Petals cart arrange these cut flowers on a green screen, then send the images to recipients via text. A follow up message with a link to decode the meanings at the project blog is then sent. The cart has been travelling around the Midwest for the last few years, most often at the Adena Mansion, a nineteenth century historical site. Eventually, the goal is to translate this project into an app.
H e i d i B e n d e r 27
RIGHT Talking Petals Mobile Cart, Instructions for Participants. 2017. Documentation of signage accompanying the Talking Petals mobile station.
ABOVE Greenscreen In Use At The Adena Mansion.
April 9, 2016. Participant composing a message with flora components. Photo by Kimberly Roush. LEFT Talking Petals Cart, Downtown Chillicothe,
Ohio. July 17, 2015. The mobile station set up for participant use. Archive of free sourced, digitally traced, mechanically cut flora, greenscreen for image staging, floral dictionary, and custom cart. Signage approx. 24� x 13�.
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Hardiness, Ambition, and Time. August 11, 2015. Text Messaged Photo. Dimension variable. Photo contributed by participant.
I Wound To Heal, Abuse Not, Beauty Is Your Only Attraction. April 10, 2017. Dimension variable Photo contributed by participant.
Congratulations Son, With Affection and Levity. April 9, 2016. Text Messaged Photo. Dimension variable. Photo contributed by participant at historic Adena Mansion.
Heidi Bender is an artist who investigates the intersections of globalized communities, shifting technologies, and physical place. Bender has performed or sited works throughout the country, and has exhibited at venues such as The Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, COOP exhibition space, and ROY G BIV. Bender received an MFA from the Ohio University in 2009, and a BA from Hope College in 2004. She currently resides in Pike County, OH. laboflostarts.com
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B. Neimeth Beverly Hills, FL
Erika from the Archive 3, 1974/ 2018, Archival Pigment Print
B . N e i m e t h 31
S
hot in Beverly Hills, Florida, I’m exploring the immigrant Jewish experience through my family archive, photographs of my grandmother’s home and the small town it resides in, which exists in stark contrast to its ubiquitous namesake in California. These photographs represent not just the narratives of Austrian-Jewish refugees of the Holocaust, but a more universal tale of family life and migration. Further, the images from the archive appear unlinked to geography allowing them to exist beyond their American reality. The landscape is unrevealing and allows an alternative narrative of family life in Austria to permeate and reimagine the history. The narratives embedded in the photos and objects that also made the transatlantic commute carry snippets of history that can’t be accessed. These objects exist in a similarly fallible way to our memories, which often subtly or boldly rewrite stories.
Beverly Hills, FL 3, 2018, Archival Pigment Print
My exploration begins with the memory fragments and small reveals the archive of photographs offer. There is something beautiful, banal and common about family photos. All laid out they represent decades of interwoven American and European histories, the Jewish immigrant experience, the cliche migration of New York Jews in the 80s and 90s to the South and Florida, and, poignantly, the moments left undocumented. Erika Neimeth and Berta Deutsch, 2018, 12 x 9.5 inches, Archival Pigment Print.
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Erika from the Archive 4, 2018, Archival Pigment Print
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Erika 3, 2018, Archival Pigment Print
Beverly Hills, FL 7, 2018, Archival Pigment Print
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Erika from the Archive 5, 2018, Archival Pigment Print
B. Neimeth is a Los Angeles-based visual artist and educator whose research examines familial and intimate relationships, the body and the flexibility of memory. She has shown internationally at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Singapore and ROSEGALLERY in Los Angeles. Her work has been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal and she is in the collections in the California Institute of the Arts and Yale University Libraries. BNeimeth.com • Instagram: BNeimeth
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Jazzy Micaela Smith Excerpt from forthcoming novel Daughters and Motherfuckers
THE WEDDING
L
os Angeles comes to Alma as a dream, thinking this is the land where the love will grow. Alma assumes all of the United States will be like Los Angeles.
Flying for the first time, Alma’s face is faithful in looking out the window. Charles reaches out to hold her hand then kisses it again and again. A gesture too sentimental for Alma to where she has to say, “Okay Charles, okay,” not even articulating a “no,” but nudging towards discomfort. Los Angeles is so modern, roaring like a machine. So vast and hot but a hot that doesn’t suffocate like Manila. Even in deciding to marry Charles, an American and one that is often drunk, maybe Los Angeles will love her the way she needs. The upside, the perk. For what Charles can’t do, maybe Los Angeles can. But they leave Los Angeles quickly. Alma is surprised that Charles says they have more driving to do. She thought Las Vegas must have been closer. The clean green lawns and salty air while driving along the 1 in Santa Monica become farther and farther away as they enter the desert. This misunderstanding Alma would take on as her own fault. How could she not know? Little doubts like this begin the fraying. Alma assumes she’s the idiot between the two by default, because of being from a woman from the Philippines, which really means by default because of being a brown woman. She’s the one who has the learning to do. The green passes by quickly in the car and the terrain turns brown and dry. The mountains form an ongoing crooked mouth as if trying to tell her something. Alma’s face changes as she looks out the window. The desert and whatever its mouth is trying to say, terrifies her. What can survive here? Charles cuts in front of another idling car in comparison to his speed. He turns to Alma and sees the fear on her face. “I love you Alma,” trying to alleviate her, not totally understanding her fear, but grabbing her hand, again, as one knee takes over for the missing hand on the steering wheel, “Get excited.” Charles was married once before and he convinced himself that this new energy for Alma was unfounded, that she was a truth to his life. He confused passion for truth, but he felt young again and that’s all that matters.
J a z z y M i c a e l a S m i t h 37
Las Vegas starts as one long road like a runway. The Strip is built for gawking. Each building has its moment then it’s gone. Vegas is flashing: the lights, the moving from one place to the next, the faces, then eventually the memory of any of it. Las Vegas, above the grandeur and the debauchery, is about speed above all. In the hotel room Charles rushes Alma to get ready but Alma stares at her open suitcase and can’t find anything nice enough. High waist slacks, flats, t-shirts. Charles waves her off, saying not to worry about it and gives her his gold silk button down. It’s so big on her that she gets lost in the fabric, but she ties up her hair in a ponytail so she can at least see her face. Charles loves that shirt, wears it with a few buttons unbuttoned along with his gold coin on a gold chain. The shirt topples Alma. Not only in its size but in its material and color, in its volume. She’s barely there. Alma doesn’t register much of anything as she’s led inside. The parking lot to the wedding chapel off the Strip is all dirt. The chapel shares the lot with a broken beige motel. Her head is heavy. The flash of the couple of polaroids, the painted white altar, plastic flowers, fake doves, a man in a cowboy hat laughing, Charles laughing and grabbing her chin. Charles presses his cheek tight to Alma’s, squeezes his arm around her waist. Where’s her eyes? Her smile confused but sweet. She doesn’t look directly at the camera. Alma doesn’t know what to say as they walk back out to parking lot, dirt crunching under their shoes. This was her wedding. Was this her wedding? Something surfaces inside her. Alma wants to cry but she doesn’t really know why. She thinks maybe this is what being a woman must mean—feeling like you’re going to cry. Charles will relay this event to their daughter in the future. He’ll describe Alma’s disappointment as an unfulfilled desire of what “every Filipina woman wants”: big wedding, flashy, lots of family, publicly elevated social status. His misunderstanding, even after so many years of being married to Alma and still not really knowing what she wants, will be a testament to how the union was doomed. This is not what Alma wants at all. As someone who is willing to take anything that will get her out of not having food be a given every day, it doesn’t occur to her to all of a sudden have preferences over the details. It isn’t that she doesn’t want choices, it’s that she’s never had many of them. What dream fabric would she pull from to construct an exact picture of what she wants? She just thought her wedding would be something more than her wearing her husband’s shirt in a houseconverted-chapel that’s over in twenty-five minutes.
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CASINO
C
harles takes out bills for the slots, buys chips for the tables. Charles loves the feeling of rolled up bills in his palm. Before he hands Alma cash, he rolls it up, imagining she would feel the sensation he feels. He puts the tightened bills in her palm, cups her hands. Her hand can barely clasp the mass. Alma looks down to see the grey green frozen hurricane. He looks in her eyes for the rumble, his eyes glazed from small unfallen tears from their Vegas chapel wedding and from his second drink. Alma’s smile contorts. She searches for an explanation in his face. “Charles this is too much. What do I do with this?” “Celebrate! Go have fun!” She stutters, never having to defend her frugality before, unable to summon a defense quickly enough. Translation jamming on deeper levels than just finding adjacent words. She says, “Th-this is too much.” She doubts herself in those last few seconds of saying the word, “much.” Maybe she’s wrong. Charles’ smile narrows. The recorded audience screaming WHEEL - OF - FORTUNE followed by the recording of coins clanging onto metal, drones in the background. The thought creeps into to her throat: maybe I can’t be an American. Charles tisks, starts to raise his voice, “Now Alma, this is our wedding night for God’s sake. Loosen up.” Alma stretches the smile but can’t hide the pain in her face. “C’mon, let me show you,” Charles walks her over to a slot machine and narrates the steps on how to play. Charles gives the machine a bill, pulls the handle, pushes buttons. It dings and presents lights but no coins fall into the tray. He laughs like a little boy when he doesn’t win. He turns to Alma and says, “See? Just play.” Play. Alma feeds the machine a bill and it eats it. Her face looks like she’s chewing nails. For her to both hold so much money in her hand at once, a sum she’d have to work for a month to earn in Manila, then to have to play a machine to lose it within minutes—deeply pains Alma. It isn’t fun at all. Something Charles doesn’t understand. Alma feels Charles waiting for her to react with a fresh laugh and she does it as best she can. Charles’s disappointment plants something in Alma. It shows her how to she will have to change.
J a z z y M i c a e l a S m i t h 39
It is more than getting to the States. It is more than marrying an American, the thought always silky and so far away. It’s about not being bothered. Being American is this infinite yes, flashy nihilism, letting go of this survival instinct she’s sharpened all her life. Her belonging here would require an undoing of roots and discipline that ironically brought her this far. Poor people worry. Americans always have more: more money to hold, more food to eat. Here, between clanging coins and onslaught of winking lights, is the birthplace of a shift in Alma, the opposite of love, small now but will mature in time. Yet in this moment, Alma is still young. She keeps smiling. Charles leaves Alma at the slot machine after she pulls the slot arm a couple of times, mirroring what he taught her. Charles kisses her, beaming and satisfied with his beautiful bride. He wanders to play at the tables with a drink in hand. Charles becomes the casino. His love for not gambling, and not drinking—but the amalgamation of choosing risk, what he thinks is the highest point of being alive, is what he lives for. Just playing felt like winning and actually winning felt like God. Even in losing it all, Charles still finds pleasure because loss still has that aftertaste for the initial jump. That’s what happens. He loses. Hours later, thousands lost, he remembers his new wife. He looks around, the same table with the same people multiplied all over the room. How long was he playing? Charles shouts, “Alma!” He feels the first twinge of doubt that Alma may leave him, that she may be mad or sad, something other than the usual sweet, shy, kind woman she usually is. Charles walks fast among the different rows of purple and red machines. Then at the end of an aisle he sees a woman. He walks closer to her, his new wife, sitting at a slot machine, head in her hand, falling asleep.
Jazzy is a writer and filmmaker. Jazzy’s writes about Filipina American narratives, assimilation, immigrant coping mechanisms, mental illness, internalized colonization leading to self hatred, absurdity, slugs, sex, incessant miscommunication, glinting intimacy—oops where?, listening, and teeth. Can be found in The Journal Petra, Oyez Review, Muse Magazine, and FNews Magazine. Lives in Chicago but hella crushing on New York. jazzysmith.com • Facebook: yzzzaj • Instagram: jazzybrrd 40
Spring 2019
Biraaj Dodiya Dying is never being with friends again
Postponed bliss I, 2018, Temporary tattoos from 2001-2003 on canvas, 18� x 14�
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Speed Racer, 2019, 35mm photograph
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Pyre, 2019, Oil on linen, 18” x 14”
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Heavyweight champion I, 2018, 35mm photograph
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Thirteen fake doorways, 2018, Oil on linen, 18” x 14”
Biraaj Dodiya (b. 1993) is a New York based artist from Mumbai, India. She is interested in the languages around death and mourning, and the various ways in which human beings handle loss, memorabilia, and distance. Dodiya received her MFA from New York University, and BFA from the School of the Art Insitute of Chicago. biraajdodiya.com • Instagram: @biraajdodiya 46
Spring 2019
Julia Dunham On the Threshold
O
n the Threshold is a process-based body of work produced by exposing chromogenic paper with the light of a screen. The image is projected through the lens of an enlarger and captured as pixels on color darkroom paper. The project began as an obsessive collection of screenshots made from thousands of public surveillance feeds online. Tracing the progression of these images, I began to question the purpose of these cameras and the current state of our relationship to the camera. It’s as if I have carried it through this multi-faceted machine to a place of finality, freezing something that was always meant to move. Surveillance is ubiquitous; cameras record and stream without thought or judgment. The cameras allowed me to exist and not exist at the same time, to occupy empty space. There is a voyeuristic nature of having a private view, the sensation as an out-of-body experience or a duality of self. The feeds are always silent, there’s no hum when the wind blows, there’s no chatter or rumble of engines, the pixels dance without music. These tiny squares of information are interwoven into a digital fabric. The persistence of the grid speaks to the infrastructure of the internet that facilitates life online and reliance on these technologies to hold a fractured version of all its participants. This work seeks to capture this in-between state, the digital ghost, with the merging of digital and analog photographic practice.
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Julia Dunham is a conceptual photographer and artist working in New York City. She received her BFA in Photography from Pratt Institute in 2015 where she produced her thesis work, surveil. Julia’s work centers on the role of photography in the age of information and her experience growing up with the rise of social media. Her work has been exhibited at Field Projects, Local Projects, Greenpoint Gallery, The Nave Gallery Annex as well as several zines and publications such as Yo-New York and The Hand Magazine. When she’s not taking photos, Julia is a retoucher and lab technician at My Own Color Lab, a traditional c-print darkroom and fine art printing service in Manhattan. juliadunham.com • Instagram: @juliatdunham
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Molly Schoenhoff Shame
This body of work includes photographs of manipulated clothing in conversation with first-person monologues, told from the perspective of a girl raised in a working-class Catholic family in the South. Making this work helps me remember and make sense of my experience.
In 1992, Penguin Books published a book by Linda Valins titled, When a Woman’s Body Says No to Sex: Understanding and Overcoming Vaginismus. One year later, the book found me at a public library on an otherwise ordinary day. It was an unexpected invitation. These were pre-search-engine days. With courage I had not known before, I checked the book out and brought it home. When it became less radioactive, I started reading—about Vaginismus, and about my confused, isolated, mortified, humiliated, why-can’t-I-have-sex, marriedbut-should-have-been-a-nun, disappointment-to-my-husband, keep-it-secret, must-be-a-freak-of-nature self. On paper, Vaginismus is a condition involving involuntary spasming of a woman’s vaginal muscles. It prevents penetration, or makes it very painful. In real life, it is a condition that feeds anxiety, erodes confidence, threatens partnerships, creates intense shame, and confounds those who experience it. The story of my adult life is inextricably linked to the condition, which has become one of my teachers. In 2017, I read about embodied consciousness in The Atlantic. Scientists tell us a human being is not unlike an octopus, who may have more neurons in her arms than in her brain. The human mind, with its many capacities, inhabits the whole body. My own body was coded to protect me from penetration long before I knew what penetration was. I know some of the reasons this happened, but am still on the way to understanding. We each embody our own particular, innate wisdom, along with a host of cultural messages about who we should be— messages that keep us from knowing who we are. Perhaps these translations of my experiences will give others a sense of curiosity about what their bodies are holding.
M o l l y S c h o e n h o f f 53
You Know The Type, digital image of girls clothing
Seven Years In 1973 I am trying to stop biting my fingernails. I want to see them barely touch as I gently put the tips of my fingers together. That is the perfect length for fingernails. Sister Marie told me so. I won’t let them grow any longer than that, because long fingernails make girls look cheap. But fingernails as short and raggedy as mine are proof that I can’t control myself. They show the world I have a nasty habit.
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Nine Years In 1975 Hardly anybody knows about the mole at the top of my leg. It is a big brown spot so close to my underwear, I can’t believe God put it there. It always stands out at tap dancing recitals, so I cover it with makeup from the bathroom cabinet. Then, nobody can see the spot. So they won’t think about what is right next to it. I agree it is a shame the way girls wear their shorts so short these days. They are tacky girls. That is an ugly habit. I never wear shorts that show the mole at the top of my leg. That is how I decide whether my shorts are alright to wear. If they cover the mole, my shorts are long enough, and I am not filthy.
Prissy, digital image of stapled underwear
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Haircloth, digital image of stapled underwear
Twelve Years In 1978 I feel dirty because you are staring at me. Your eyes scan my body without blinking. It is ruining this tank top my mother made me from the fabric we picked out together. My skin wants to crawl out from under the cotton while you lean against the fridge, drinking water. Pretty soon, my face will catch fire, and you will know all about it. I feel guilty for looking in the mirror this morning, thinking how pretty I looked. If you stare I deserve it; I decided what to wear. Both of us know you are going to keep staring— until I feel cheap, until I feel invisible, until I forget what I feel.
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Foreshadow, digital image of girls clothing
Best, digital image of girls clothing
Molly Schoenhoff experiments with the material of language and the language of material. Since childhood, she has connected with her internal landscape through writing, drawing and making. She approaches creative practice like a cultural geographer, ever curious about the relationships we have to the places, identities and messages that form us—and the potential we have for shaping culture. She has worked in academia, design firms, foster homes, soup kitchens, prisons, and a donut shop, among other environments. She holds an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. She was born and raised in Kentucky. mollyschoenhoff.com • Instagram: @mschoenhoffstudio and @mollyschoenhoff
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Ashna Ali Upon each of my returns
Upon each of my returns my mother and I sit at the kitchen table surrounded by cuckoo clocks. My birdcage chest already demands grief while her mothersong begins. I tell myself, “It’s only lunch,” but my mouth is not her mouth she cannot hear my sounds they are not in the same register our lips open & close open & close quiet like fish behind glass. To this disharmony my body dances apart slips from a small lithe navigator back into her inelegant marionette pigtailed, cracked upon arrival something too alive oozing from the eyes. No wants a doll with a too-long memory unable to stop reciting the dates of battle & names of the dead.
How do I play the right kind of charades to explain? Mother, I have grown into a constellation! I drag magic around by the ankles!
But silence, too is inheritance. This will always be the scent of us: sour indelible leak under everyone’s dinner plate.
One day, I will learn not to jangle the strings in your hands try to lift a tapered finger remind you, this beautiful singing woman so committed to my dancing of everything she must obliterate as her fishmouth opens in my direction to the beat of electric birdsong. Ashna Ali is a queer diasporic Bangladeshi poet, researcher, and educator from Italy. Her poetry has appeared in HeART Online, The Felt, Bone Bouquet, femmescapes, and Nat Brut. She is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and teaches in the English department at Queens College and the Food Studies Department at The New School. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner and three cats. Instagram: @dushtuash
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Christine Shan Shan Hou Conditions of Secrecy
the shameful part, 2017, Collage on paper, 6.7 x 9 inches
C h r i s t i n e S h a n S h a n H o u 61
English words (Nice n’ Easy), 2017, Collage on Paper, 9 x 12 inches
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i do a lot of yoga, 2017, Collage on paper, 6.75 x 10 inches
C h r i s t i n e S h a n S h a n H o u 63
habitat loss, 2017, Collage on paper, 9 x 7.7 inches
i could be anyone, 2019, Collage on paper, 6.75 x 7.5 inches
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we always knew it was coming, 2017, Collage on paper, 6.5 x 10 inches
Christine Shan Shan Hou is a poet and collage artist based in New York. She teaches poetry at Columbia University and yoga in Brooklyn. christinehou.com • Instagram: @christinehou • Twitter: @christineshou
C h r i s t i n e S h a n S h a n H o u 65
Amia Yokoyama
I
see my work as a continual re-examination of the concept of origin. The idea that the place from where I come is a constantly moving/shifting location that is tied to the context of the present and to each other. What occurs in the moment when the boundedness of the initial source of one collides with the boundedness of another? I am interested in states of change not in a linear direction, but out in all directions, in favor of multiplicity and illegitimacy. Not in opposition to identity or history, but in defense of sometimes not knowing and sometimes existing outside framework. The failure of language and definition to describe something that is interstitial, because definition is preliminary to judgement which is used to create value. I am not interested in judgement. I am interested in relation. In panoramas where everything is timelessly reforming, pointing-at and pushing-against pre-formed systems of judgements and value. A process of actualizing. A space called love. I lust after something real by breaking down systems of desire, control, and authenticity. Videos become gossamers of pixels, particles, effects, optical tricks that do not worship the holiness we call reality. Life comes together regardless of limitations, within my fantasies, within animation, within algorithms of the computer brain, as if together we were masters of material and digital manipulation. Processes and ideations that disrupts imperious and industrial thought streams that try to tell me where I come from and how to name my thing called, Body. Always simultaneously tongue in cheek, one finger in your mouth, two fingers on side of neck just below the jaw, with the sound of a laugh that happens when I fall.
A m i a Y o k o y a m a 67
“SIMULTANEOUS OCCURRENCE OF CONTRADICTORY EFFECTS” 2015, HD video, Stop-motion Animation
A science-fiction/science-fetish animated scene which probes the dynamic between parasite and cure, object and self, a thing that is and a thing that is becoming within a perpetual laboratory of endless trials. Simultaneous Occurrence of Contradictory Effects. Pleonasms and models of palpability catalyze pressure between touches resulting in a Chabudai gaeshi, meaning to flip [the] chabudai (table). Click to see installation
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“Initial Conditions� 2-channel video. HD video, Stop-motion animation, CGI animation
A land that forms a body that forms a landscape of knowing oneself. The place of knowing is a constantly shifting location tied only to the context of the present and the feelings that come from inside. I imagine a panorama where everything is alive and tirelessly reforming, forming against preformed expectation. Error gently placed in the hands of the digital eye to watch it disrupt placid technological truths and remind us once again of our own humanity. Click to see installation
Recent solo exhibition at Jace Space in Los Angeles (2018). Amia has received fellowships from Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Vermont Studio Center, and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2017). She graduated from CalArts (2017) with a Masters in Fine Art from the department of Experimental Animation, received a Bachelor of Arts from New York University, Gallatin School of Individualized Studies (2010) with a specialization in Sustainable Development, New Digital Media and Contemporary Art Theory.
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Eri King
Red 40 Msg Studio Lab, 2018 Mixed Media, Size Varies
E r i K i n g 71
144 (Climbing up the walls), 2016, 144 Plastic scrubs, 72 in x 30 in
Make Offer detail (Studio study), 2016, 8372 Price Labels on plastic shower curtain, 72 in x 72 in
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Oh Hannya (Study After Bernini’s Rape Proserpina), 2019, Digital Study, Size Varies
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Installation shot of Red 40 Zen MSG Rock Garden, 2018, Hand-pulverized Hot Cheetos, Monosodium glutamate sodium salt rocks, stretcher bars, Zen rake, plastic Mickey Mouse glove, marble mortar pestle, plastic shower curtain, 64 in x 64 in
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Monochrome Red 40 Square, 2018, Xxtra Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, acrylic, plastic on canvas, 38 in x 38 in
Tech No Logic, 2013, Sound, video loop, and various discarded objects, Size varies
Eri King is a conceptual artist working in various modes such as installation, sculpture, textile, drawing, video, sound, and painting. She draws on the vast reservoir of the banal, unnoticed, and repetitive actions as a way to increase visibility and perceived value of these overlooked aspects of lived experience. Often exploring her own lens as a first generation immigrant of mixed Asian heritage raised in Las Vegas, her conceptual framework examines the interconnectedness of seemingly disparate subjects and cultural narratives as a way to unpack the associations and perspectives of established American customs. Working out of a syncretic methodology of disciplines, King’s assemblages of cultural references, everyday materials, detritus, and time-intensive handmade processes utilize deconstruction as a means to look at something familiar in a new frame. eriking.net • Instagram: eriking
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