Ginger Networked feminism
Issue 17
Summer 2019
MISSION GRACIE BIALECKI
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 ISSUE 9
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MEGAN SICKLES
JULIA DUNHAM
EIRINI PAPAEFTHEMIOU
LIANA IMAM
ANNA CONE
LANE SPEIDEL
CARLA AVRUCH
CLAUDIA GERBRACHT
ELIZABETH SULTZER
MARIE HINSON ALEX VALLS
ISSUE 10 ISSUE 11
DOROTEA MENDOZA
ISSUE 12 ISSUE 13
ANNE MAILEY
LEANNE BOWES
ISSUE 14 ISSUE 15 ISSUE 16
KERRI GAUDELLI
IRENE CAVROS
ISSUE 17
MEREDITH SELLERS
DELILAH JONES
DEVIN DOUGHERTY S.E.A.
LEYLA TULUN
KRISTINA HEADRICK
OLIVIA JANE HUFFMAN MADELINE DONAHUE
MISIAN TAYLOR CARMEL BROWN
MS. NIKO DARLING
NATASHA WEST
SAM CROW NATALIE EICHENGREEN
CAITLIN ROSE SWEET
ANDREA GUSSIE
EMILY WUNDERLICH HALA ABDULKARIM
ALEX PATRICK DYCK
ERICA McKEEHEN
JANE SERENSKA
FELICIA URSO
JAZZY MICAELA SMITH
JACQUELINE MELECIO
AGROFEMME
BRITLYNN HANSENGIROD
ALEXIS CANTU
MARIA R. BAAB
JEN COHEN
RACHEL WALLACH NATASHA MIJARES
ITZEL BASUALDO
DEVYN MAÑIBO
MARIE SÉGOLÈNE
BONNIE LANE
LA JOHNSON
KATHERINE TARPINIAN JULIANA LUJAN
Ginger is run by Markee Speyer and Jacqueline Cantu. Reach us at gingerthezine@gmail.com.
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MOLLY HAGAN
SOPHIE KNIGHT
HARRIS BAUER
LAURA McMULLEN
HANNAH MODE
TONI KOCHENSPARGER
CAMERON RINGNESS
AMY BERENBEIM
ISSACHAR CURBEON
RACHEL ZARETSKY LAUREN ARIAN
ENA SELIMOVIĆ
ARIEL JACKSON
BRIE LIMINARA
RACHEL BRODY
YI-HSIN TZENG
FREDRIKA THELANDERSSON
SOFIA PONTÉN
LAURA COOPER
KASIA HALL
HERMIONE SPRIGGS
JENNIFER WEISS
NANDI LOAF
WOLFGANG SCHAFFER IVY HALDEMAN
NP SANCHEZ
BRIE ROCHELILLIOTT
ANA GIRALDOWINGLER
KRYSTA SA
ALLI MALONEY
EEL COSTELLO VANESSA GULLY SANTIAGO SOFIE RAMOS
HANNAH RAWE
COURTNEY STONE
CAITLIN WRIGHT
MARTY MANUELA
JESSE HEIDER
ISA RADOJČIC
COLLEEN DURKIN
EMMALINE PAYETTE
LEIGH RUPLE
KATIE MIDGLEY
JESSICA PRUSA
MIMI CHIAHEMEN
ASHLEIGH DYE NATALIE GIRSBERGER
JESSICA WOHL
JOLENE LUPO
PAULAPART
MOLLY RAPP
MAYON HANANIA
KATHARINE PERKO
EMILY ROSE LARSON
INDIA TREAT
SARA LAUTMAN NATALIE BAXTER
KATE WHEELER
TYLER MORGAN
RACHEL KANN
TIFFANY SMITH
MARIA NIKOLIS
BECKY BRISTER
JILLIAN JACOBS
ERIN MIZRAHI
ULRIKE BUCK
B. NEIMETH
TRACI CHAMBERLAIN
ELAINE HEALY
DEENAH VOLLMER
KATHLEEN GRECO
DEBORAH DAVIS
ANNELIE McKENZIE
CATHERINE AZIMI
HANNAH MCMASTER
ALYCE HALIDAY MCQUEEN
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LEIGH SUGAR KATIE FORD
LAUREN BANKA
JOEY BEHRENS KAITLIN McCARTHY
JAN TRUMBAUER
AMANDA LÓPEZKURTZ
HEIDI BENDER
ASTRID KAEMMERLING + BECCA J.R. LACHMAN
AMBER HOY
CLARE BOERSCH
HAYLEE EBERSOLE
HANNAH NELSONTEUSCH DREA COFIELD + GABY COLLINSFERNANDEZ
COURTNEY KESSEL + DANIELLE WYCKOFF
ALEX CHOWANIEC
JESSICA LAW
STEPHANIE VON BEHR
ABIGAIL HENNING
JULIANA HALPERT
MARTHA WILSON MOLLY SCHOENHOFF
SOPHIE OAKLEY
MICHAELA RIFE
MOLLY ADAMS
CAROLINE LARSEN
LEAH JAMES
NICKI GREEN
CARLY FREDERICK LANI RUBIN
LORI LARUSSO
EMILY LUDWIG SHAFFER
BRE WISHART
JENNY BLUMENFELD
LETITIA QUESENBERRY JORDAN REZNICK
ERIC DYER
JESSI LI
LAURA BERNSTEIN ERI KING
CRAIG CALDERWOOD ELIZABETH TANNIE LEWIN MARTHA NARANJO SANDOVAL
KAT SHANNON
JESS WILLLA WHEATON
Ginger
C. CHAPIN KATY McCARTHY
MARIA STABIO
STAVER KLITGAARD
ASHNA ALI CHRISTINE SHAN SHAN HOU
SONYA DERMAN
CHARMAINE BEE
KAITLIN McDONOUGH LAURA PORTWOODSTACER
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ANNA GURTONWACHTER
LEXI CAMPBELL
BIRAAJ DODIYA
REBECCA BALDWIN
PAOLA DI TOLLA
LUCA MOLNAR LEJLA KALAMUJIĆ + JENNIFER ZOBLE
MARISSA BLUESTONE
SARAH MIHARA CREAGEN
JEAN SEESTADT
KATIE VIDA
ANNIK HOSMANN
SHALA MILLER
KAVERI RAINA AMIA YOKOYAMA
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Issue NO 17 contributors
Lori Larusso .... PAGE 09 Juliana Lujan .... PAGE 15 Letitia Quesenberry .... PAGE 20 Martha Naranjo Sandoval .... PAGE 25 Anna Cone .... PAGE 29 Natasha Mijares .... PAGE 35 Jessi Li .... PAGE 38 Charmaine Bee .... PAGE 51 Drea Cofield + Gaby Collins-Fernandez .... PAGE 57
On the cover: Detail of Leda Altarpiece, 2018, Framed archival pigment print, 60 x 72" Inspired by Lucille Clifton’s poem, “Leda 3,” this altarpiece re-interprets the ambiguity of art-historical ‘Leda and the Swan’ depictions as an examination of consent, while allowing my subject to reclaim her own power of representation. Clifton’s subversive poem closes with these lines: “You want what a man wants/ next time come as a man/ or don’t come.”
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LORI LARUSSO
Lori Larusso Noncompliance
If you can Mop a Floor, you can Exercise Total Personal NonCooperation, 2017. Acrylic on (3) shaped panels, 60 x 84 x 32�.
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LORI LARUSSO
If you can Perform a Striptease for your Husband, you can partake in Lysistratic Non-Action, 2017. Acrylic on shaped panel, 36 x 48�.
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LORI LARUSSO
(Detail)
If you can Bake a Cake, you can Make a Bomb, 2017. Acrylic on (2) shaped panels, 42 x 64 x 2�.
(Detail)
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LORI LARUSSO
If you can Moonlight as the Toothfairy, you can Participate in Collective Disappearance, 2017. Acrylic on (2) shaped panels, 36 x 58 x 2�.
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LORI LARUSSO
If you can Pen a Thank You Note, you can Write a Manifesto, 2017. Acrylic on shaped panel, 18 x 28 x 2”.
Lori Larusso earned her MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art’s (MICA) graduate interdisciplinary program, the Mount Royal School of Art and a BFA from the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP). She maintains a rigorous studio practice and has consistently exhibited work in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. Lori’s work is represented by Skidmore Contemporary in Santa Monica, California. She currently lives and works in Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky. lorilarusso.com • @lorilarusso
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JULIANA LUJAN
Juliana Lujan Letter to Flavia Dear Flavia After a year of living together, I am about to leave the house, our house, and you will be left alone for a little bit. When I moved here about a year ago, you lived in a little hole by the window, next to the toilet. I realized you had been living there for quite some time because your spider web was so sturdy and well formed; it was a solid engineered habitat. It felt rude to ruin your spider web, and it felt like I was invading your space and destroying your life with my huge presence. So I tried to pee a little sideways and careful of you. I will not pretend to know you very well, and it feels wrong to call you Flavia because you are your own spider and you need not a name to be identified for who you are, so I apologize for naming you. You became such an interesting roommate that whenever I told a story about you, or us, people seemed less estranged when I would speak about Flavia, rather than “the spider I live with”. Somehow, calling you the spider I live with vs. Flavia, starts a cascade of conversations that are most irrelevant to you and me, like “are you sure it’s the same spider?” or “do you know if its venomous?” and so forth. When I refer to you as Flavia, on the other hand, then the questions that follow, if any, are mainly relevant, like “has Flavia had babies yet?” but in this regard we are very similar, we were each other’s sole company for an entire year, or a lifetime, and neither of us had babies. I am going to the city to find a job. I don’t know yet where I will be living. I think I won’t be living alone because I can’t afford to live alone. To live with someone now seems quite scary, but I must do this. You too once moved - from the toilet to the shower, so you understand my decision. You found a bigger house, closer to the water and maybe with a better view. Moving sometimes is to look for something better, like when I moved from Venezuela to the United States for a nice job, or like when my friend Nebras moved from Iran to the U.S. Except that she is now moving back to Iran, maybe because she likes her Farsi better, or because they care more about coffee and dreams, or maybe to find in Iran what she hasn’t found here, but I am not moving back to Venezuela, because I don’t think there’s much for me to find there at the moment. I am just moving downtown. I wish I could take you with me, but I don’t want to impose on you a new habitat, and since we don’t speak the same language, I don’t really know if you would like to come, and if we were to live with other people, they might be scared of you and might kill you right away, so I rather you stay here alone, but alive. Living with other roommates is not super easy. Just like when we started
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living together, I will now have to re-adjust to someone else’s presence and try hard not to invade their space, but at the same time, try to carry on with my life as naturally as possible. You were great from the beginning; I was never too uncomfortable by your presence. Even though I started by sitting sideways in the toilet, I very quickly felt safe to sit in the middle and I would even bend my head down with utter confidence that you would not attack me. Since you moved to the shower I started adjusting to your presence, and I can now raise my arms with ease and I can very comfortably put on the shampoo and the conditioner, and also, wash my armpits. I sometimes wonder if you would like to get closer to me. If I were to put my hand super close to you, would you climb on it without attacking me? I would like to hold you real close to see you better, to see your lines and colors and all that is wonderfully yours and that makes you a spider. I wonder if you have the same curiosity towards me. You do have better eyesight than I do and more sensorial elements than I do, so you might have already travelled all over me with your senses. Perhaps, this is why you do not attack me, because you can sense that I mean no harm. And so our agreement was born: you would not kill me and I would not kill you. And I was told that spiders don’t have memory, at least not like humans do, so this means that we established this pact every morning, we would let each other live every morning, and every morning our decision was the same as the day before. You might have thought I was mean once, the time when that other spider came to visit and you were scared at first but then you were so amazed by the bravery of this new friend, and how he went about and all around the bathroom never staying in one place, surprising me with his new decisions. I could see you peeking out everyday with more and more curiosity, and every day standing taller away from the depths of your web. I don’t know if you guys made love or not but it would have been a disaster for both of us. I will assume we are about the same age in spidertime because we both want to have unprotected sex, and are very lonely, but think of the consequences. Our house is so tiny, barely big enough for the two of us... filled with your thousands of babies... Someone would notice the over growth of our homepopulation and will eventually come in and kill all your little babies, and maybe they would even try kill you! And you would die and so will your offspring and I would be left without a spider friend. And because I didn’t want this for us, I had to expel your friend from our home, but I made sure he kept his life and his tenacity and bid him farewell. You must miss him. Maybe now when I leave you will be able to find another spider friend, or they might be able to find you, because you rarely leave your spider web so it’s more likely that someone will come to you. I wish the same would happen to me. So the next person to come live here might be surprised at first to see you, but be patient because it is always so hard and scary to move to a new place and fit in. This person might try to kill you, I warn you, and so to prevent this, I will leave this letter next to the shower, or in front of the toilet for them to read. I am not scared at all to be alone without you. I wish you could also write a letter for my next roommates and tell them about our life together. I understand you cannot write, so I will have to reach new agreements, and try hard not to kill anyone, while at the same time, domesticating our new experiences together. Farewell dear Flavia. Juliana
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JULIANA LUJAN
How long will I have to sit in this chair? I try to do as many things as I can from this chair without getting up. I can prepare myself a small something to eat if I get super hungry, but it must be small and practical, so I do not spend that much time outside of this seat. Something like fruits or nuts. Water works fine as well. I can also write messages to friends that I have not talked to in a long time. This way, not only do I manage to do something without leaving the chair, but I also nourish a friendship. I kill two birds with one stone. And sometimes friends can help out on stuff like this. They send you good vibes, and they distract your mind by telling you of their babies and their life in partnership. The chair is quite comfortable. It is made out of a burgundy plastic that wants to be leather. It is already chopped in some parts because the chair was here before me. I do not really know if I would buy a burgundy chair. But it certainly is the one I use to sit in front of this desk. The chair is a little low, so when I sit I have the desk at my sternum level, but I do not usually rest my sternum to the desk. I sit some 15 cm apart and then I rest my arms up on the desk. I only need to move my arms from time to time so they do not get numb so fast, but I can do this without getting up. The other thing that I do most frequently when I am in this situation is to play with my hair. My hair is long so I grab a lock of hair that sits on my shoulder. I grab the bottom part and I look at the ends. I am looking for split-ends. It is a very relaxing activity because you go to it knowing what
you are supposed to do - a defined purpose, and having a defined purpose is one of my favorite things to have; I usually do not have many so I really cherish the times that I get to have a defined purpose. You take a hair that has a split-end and you have two options: either you grab both ends and split them apart slowly trying to split the hair in two, all the way to its origin in the scalp, or you try to find something similar to a very small, tiny, minuscule knot above the split, and then break the split off of the hair. If I choose to split the hair it is because it happens to be a thick, strong hair, one that can sustain the division of its individuality and become two. On the other hand, if I choose to break off the split it is because it is one of the thin hairs, one that can only be broken but not divided. Another good thing to do while I am sitting on this chair is to look at porn. I think that looking for clothes to buy, or where to go on a vacation, or checking your savings account are not the best things to do during this time, but watching some porn is just wonderful. Sometimes, it is the first thing I do when I sit down, like throwing myself a little welcome party to the sitting down business. But other times, especially if I know that I have something to do, and I know that I will have a hard time doing it, I leave porn to the end. Sometimes porn can be an encouragement, and sometimes, a reward. I have been using the same porn site for about four years. I discovered it once when I was searching for my
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specific interest directly on Google; several videos appeared from this one site. The first thing I noticed was its motto: “just porn, no bullshit”, and I knew this was a good sign. To this day they remain true to that statement, they are very serious and considerate with their content. They do not have that many ads, and very rarely do I get invitations to fuck a mom or a dad in, or around my area. I created a username and a serious password to the site. It turns out that my name is an anagram for many great words, like “analju”. I realize that it is missing the “i” but maybe that can be o.k. After getting my account I started saving the videos that I liked because they are so pretty and hard to find. But saving the videos is not the same thing as downloading the videos. You can save your favorite videos on your own account on their website, instead of downloading the video to your computer. This is a great idea. I only ever downloaded one video. But I erased it after a few weeks. Having porn on my computer is not a good thing because if my computer breaks and I have to take it to the Mac store, they would have to analyze its insides in order to understand what went wrong. If they find my porn I would not be so comfortable, mainly because they might think that it could be an invitation of sorts. But I do not usually invite people with porn, unless it is under a specific context. So to avoid confusion, I do not like downloading porn to my computer, even when I find the perfect videos. Finding the perfect video can be a very lengthy process, most of the videos out there are quite loud and overworked, and when all is said and done my mind does not have any wiggle room to get lost and wonder around. Still, diving into the porn sea makes my brain very happy, because I go to it with a defined purpose.
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I am looking for a video where the people in it seem pleasantly lost and weightless. I am looking for a video that can take me to a place where I can get pleasantly lost and feel weightless. Until it happens. I find The Perfect One and I am humbled. Encountering these videos means that I am in the presence of a sublime craft - the craft of building a bridge to a lush and brilliant land that is inside of others. This magnificently engineered bridge breaks the distance from the body to the pleasure-land, and defies time, and what happens is that I become them, and their land takes over my burgundy reality. Those who are best at this craft can manage to transform the me that is sitting on the chair into an uncontrollable landscape where I am guided to its edges by a wise hand that unsuspectingly belongs to me. In this osmotic flux of our beings, their explorations respond directly to my curiosities, and it is in this spectral coincidence where I find the happiness that makes me float down their waters, our waters, in a banana leaf. My vision is partially impaired now, but on my insides I can feel my parrots flying low and full of colors, and the air around me tastes like salted butter, and the smell is of tree bark and hammocks, and the water stops flowing in the normal rivers and begins to flow inside of our hands with an upward, circular motion, and the mouth waters, and the heart pounds heavy like the mountains or like mangoes, or like Caribbean rum. The illusion begins to vanish but not before the video is over. During the last few seconds you see everyone come back to life, and slowly regain individuality, and what remains is a simple present, and something like the smell of coffee, and the sternum expands, and the memories makes us smile, and the smile is of perfection and of the bodies.
Juliana Lujan, born and raised in Venezuela, has a profound love for arepas. She enjoys having them for any meal, preferably breakfast and dinner. Juliana prepares her arepas from scratch and the roundness that she achieves for each circular paddy is of extraordinary precision. Her favorite ingredient as an arepa filler is Cheez-Whiz. She began cooking her own arepas at the young age of seven. Her younger sister, the fashion designer Sofia Lujan, has referred to Juliana as the “arepa machine,” which vividly portrays the relationship Juliana has with the arepas, in the capacity of creator and eater. juliana-lujan.squarespace.com • @julianalujan
Letitia Quesenberry
Hyperspace 17, 2016. panel, lacquer, plexiglas, LED 20.5 diam x 4�.
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LETITIA QUESENBERRY
Somewhere so high, 2019. Panel, lacquer, film, resin 10 x 8 x .25�.
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LETITIA QUESENBERRY
As of yet 61, 2019. polished plaster, panel, acrylic, color film, resin 17 x 14 x 1 “.
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LETITIA QUESENBERRY
How this came to be 10, 2018. Panel, spray paint, resin 10 x 8 x .25�.
Letitia Quesenberry lives and works in Louisville KY. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Cincinnati. Through the play of material, process, surface and technology, her work surveys the boundaries of visual perception. She often employs photographic sources as a jumping of point. Specifically the SX70 Polaroid format stands in for ideas of ephemerality, loss and chance. Recent works move toward abstracted forms and symbols suggestive of female power and energy. letitiaquesenberry.com • @lettyq_
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MARTHA NARANJO SANDOVAL
Martha Naranjo Sandoval Petén 411
I
have been outside of Mexico for 5 years. The more I am out of my home country, the more I feel like a tourist when I go back. Among the places that I think of the most is the apartment where I grew up, Petén 411, Apt 1. The building is situated in the Narvarte neighborhood in Mexico City; my family refers to it as just “Petén”. To understand my relationship with this building, it is necessary to go years back, before I was born. My mother comes from a numerous family, with 9 siblings to be exact. They have a close relationship because they have been orphans since they were young. When the oldest one of them moved to Mexico City to go to college, she found a small room in Petén. As more and more siblings kept moving to the city, they settled into different rooms and apartments in the building, only 2 of the 9 never lived there. The last of the siblings to live in Petén was my mother. My mother, my father, an aunt, my brother and I, lived in apartment 1 until we moved to the suburbs when I was 7 years old. “Petén” never belonged to us, and yet it’s impossible to tell my family’s story without
Master Bedroom, from Petén 411, 2017. C-print paper collage, 4 x 6”.
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talking about it. I remember Petén with both sharp and foggy memories. I remember that the dining room and living room were adjacent, salacomedor, and they had ceiling to floor windows, outside there was a Jacaranda tree and in spring the window was covered in purple flowers. I remember my mom breastfeeding my baby brother in a rocking chair by her bed. I remember the kitchen with dark green tiles, with a round table right in the middle, a table that didn’t make it into our new house. I remember my mother’s long dark black hair.
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She never wore it as long after. I remember my dad walking from the apartment to the record store to buy albums for his CD collection, he was still young and enjoyed all kinds of music. I remember my aunt walking me to nursery school and reading what another nursery school were serving for lunch that day along the way... she said it was the same as what I would be served but that was never the case. I remember sitting down in the dining room with my father’s work laptop and hitting “no” by accident when MS paint asked me if I wanted to save and being very frustrated
about it. I remember my parents going on a lot of work trips and how I will always ask them to bring a sorpresita back. I remember the daughters of the owner of the downstairs hair salon with their chewing gum and high ponytails. I remember the girl from apartment 4, Natalia, who could control the lights of her room with a round dimmer. There are some things I don’t know if I remember or if I’ve been told, there are some others, that I only remember through photos. I remember moving away from Petén as my first big loss.
Living Room, from Petén 411, 2017. C-print paper collage, 6 x 4”.
MARTHA NARANJO SANDOVAL
Dining Room, from Petén 411, 2017. C-print paper collage, 6 x 4”.
Staircase, from Petén 411, 2017. C-print paper collage, 6 x 4”.
Entrance Hall, from Petén 411, 2017. C-print paper collage, 4 x 6”.
Martha Naranjo Sandoval is a New York-based immigrant filmmaker and visual artist from Mexico City. Her work focuses in the materiality of image; in the difference between how time is portrayed in moving and still image; and in how images gain significance culturally. mnaranjosandoval.net • @martha_mydear
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ANNA CONE
Anna Cone
F
oremost my work is about reclaiming the body. Initially it was a reaction to my experience as a fashion photographer—a way to resolve the personal issues I had with perpetuating such a narrow acceptance of female beauty and sexuality. The industry’s dark side— the body manipulation, the objectification, the exploitation of young girls— spurred my pursuit to retrain my gaze and repurpose my commercial tools to subvert its ideals. Inspired by Helene Cixous’s essay, The Laugh of the Medusa, in which Cixous directly compares women’s writing and their physical bodies, my art asks women to raise their voices and insert themselves into the canon in an effort to subvert the possessive and colonizing characteristics of the patriarchy. “Censor the body,” Cixous writes, “and you censor breath and speech at the same time.”
Persephone, 2018, Archival pigment print frames in antique planter, 14.5 x 41 x 6”. This piece was inspired by my subject sharing that she had been working through a period of depression and wanted to be a part of this series to reclaim her confidence and re-enter the world with new light. Those are feelings I’m very familiar with and I immediately recalled the story of Persephone as a metaphor for rising out of darkness and despair and being able to feel the warmth and light and connect to this world again. Here, Persephone with the help of her plant allies, frees herself from Hades’ grasp and recovers her autonomy. It’s her choice now whether or not she returns.
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I photograph women in studio, allowing them complete autonomy. I then photograph paintings in museums and weave together their elements to create an idyllic setting for my subject. I go on research pilgrimages, immersing myself in museums and palaces. I question who writes history and how our preserved spaces reveal what we deem worthy of remembering. Where has our history been revised, and how can we re-revise our present to correct for the skew? I scavenger flea markets and eBay to shop the looks. I place ads for models— open to anyone femaleidentifying—on Craigslist. By visually employing a Baroque extravagance with Kitsch undertones, I aim to democratize opulent, elitist, and once inaccessible spaces. Many of the women share their reasons for participating and I incorporate their narratives, layering modern experiences in with ancient myths and archetypes. The symbolism in my work addresses religious art in the context of a canon of art history that expunges women and a religious history that subjugates them. I shuffle the symbolic language of the paintings to give my subjects power and agency through their heroic and often revisionist acts: in one, Daphne flips the script and turns Apollo into the tree; in another, Leda adds clarity to her everambiguously portrayed tale as she reclaims her power of consent and creates a
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ANNA CONE
Judith, 2018, Framed Archival Pigment Print, 25 x 46.5”. Judith beheading Holofernes seems to be collectively on women’s mind recently. I’ve had an uptick of women asking to pose as her. This is an artist friend of mine who was especially dedicated, she even brought her own sword to the shoot. She wanted to stress that she’s Judith, not Salome, as she does her own dirty work, so we went with a classic depiction.
Leda Altar Installation View, 2018, Mixed Media, 7 x 9’. Leda altarpiece chapel installation—I’ve printed matching imagery from the main piece onto suede fabric to upholster the kneeler Venus, 2017, Framed archival pigment print, 11.4 x 14.4”. Depiction of Venus, goddess of love, art and beauty, framed in a vanity mirror.
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swan-repellant force field. The paintings form the basis of our visual lexicon, so I juxtapose those idealizations with the credibility inherent in photography. My found materials speak to the elevation and visibility of domestic/women’s spaces, as vanity mirrors, fire screens, and furniture become frames. By bringing interior realms into the public sphere and shining light on the erasure of powerful women, I hope to contribute to a more just perception of art and history. Anna Cone is a Brooklyn-based photographer, digital collage and installation artist. She received a B.A. in Art History and Studio Art from the College of Charleston, and a diploma of Professional Photography from Speos Photographic Institute in Paris. She has exhibited in galleries and art fairs including the Wassaic Project, Sotheby’s Institute, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, 4heads Governors Island Art Fair, Space Mountain Miami and The Untitled Space, New York. She is stimulated by psychic readings, 70s vampires and witches, old master paintings, surrealist films, 19th century Spiritualism, radical women and the body. annalouisecone.com • @annacone
Cone sits at the Babylon Vanity Set installation at SPRING/BREAK Art show PHOTOGRAPH BY HARRISON O’BRIEN
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Diana and Actaeon, 2018, Framed archival pigment print, 14.5 x 31”. Did Diana “overreact” in her punishment of Actaeon? While Ovid makes it clear that Actaeon is a hapless victim (personally I think Ovid doth protest too much re: Actaeon’s innocence), painters’ renderings have been more ambiguous as to who is to blame and whether the encounter was by chance or if there was criminal intent. Was Diana fearful or vengeful, or both? Who was the aggressor and who was the victim? John Heath established a pattern starting with Apollo and Daphne, of virgin huntresses becoming hunted, and then either transformed after assault or to avoid it. In this pretext Heath concludes, “the goddess reacts to the only paradigm she understands, that of the the narrative pattern which makes her open to assault.”
ANNA CONE
I Sit as Queen, 2019, framed archival pigment print, 33 x 45 x 1�. From Women of the Apocalypse Series. In this fantasy the female archetypes band together, reclaim their subjecthood, destroy the Patriarchy and hearken their ancient power and goddess origins to form a new reality. Their actions create an alternate ending to the Apocalypse and a sustainable and just future for our planet.
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NATASHA MIJARES
Natasha Mijares How to Find the Celia Cruz in Everything (excerpt)
There are 2,531 records for Celia Cruz in the White Pages. To this day, people are named Celia Cruz more than any other singer in history. So naturally, I called all of them. Okay, I didn’t get to all of them, but I tried some. Lots of Celia’s do not believe in setting up a mailbox, and the ones that do, do not believe in the art of the follow up. This made me nervous that maybe my script was not clear or convincing enough for these women to feel compelled to discuss their name with me. So I wrote several scripts and varied them with each call.
SCRIPT I Hello, My name is Natasha and I am artist giving a talk about salsa singer, Celia Cruz. Do you know of the singer? Your name was listed in the White Pages. I apologize because you might think that that is strange. Without the need for phonebooks in our lives, the White Pages does seem like an actual invasion of privacy. So I hope you know that this information is out there and maybe you don’t want it there, but I’m glad you do have it there. So my main question is: were you named after the salsa singer, Celia Cruz?
SCRIPT II Hello, I am a writer in Chicago and I am writing a book about Celia Cruz. I am curious to know if you were named after the salsa singer?
SCRIPT III Hello, My name is Natasha Mijares and I am a researcher with the Modern Language Association. I am doing research based on women named Celia Cruz and the connection to the famed salsa singer of the same name. Do you have a couple minutes to answer some simple questions? Okay, great. Are you in fact, named after the Cuban salsa singer, Celia Cruz, or is that an unintentional coincidence? If so, can you relay why you were named after the singer and if there is a familial adoration of the singer or reverence to the genre of salsa that inspired the name? If not, have you ever received this question before?
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If so, how many times and do you find it to be a common question that is asked of you or not? I also looked for ways to have a more convincing number. Apparently, if a phone number has the numbers 5,3, and 7 in it, people are more likely to pick up the call because those numbers are generated for more offices and places of employment than any other combination of numbers. So I looked at the architecture of the numbers that Google Voice provided me. Numbers that only use three digits are incredibly unconvincing, therefore, the combination of script number two with phone number one resulted in two voicemails.
PHONE #1 225-522-2521 Numbers that only use four digits are actually rare, therefore, the combination of script one with phone number two resulted in zero pickups.
PHONE #2 267-999-9285 What takes the cake in number fraud, is toggles.
PHONE #3 530-404-0410 A number that uses a six of a kind pattern is actually closer to what you may want.
PHONE #4 262-261-3222 It is just repetitive enough for people to click on it because it doesn’t look too disjointed, but varied enough to not seem like it is a hotline to ordering at a Denny’s. With this number, I reached four Celias. Two of which had never heard of the singer, two of which had. The first identifying Celia, age 57, from Madison, Wisconsin said “That’s what I like to say when someone asks me about my name, but it’s actually not true.” The second identifying Celia, age unidentified, but I guess 65, from Maryland said “How did you get this number?” And then I panicked because I had forgotten script number one, so I hung up.
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No one was younger than thirty years old in the provided White Pages contacts, but I measured that they are the people who are the most likely to actually be named after Celia Cruz due to her tremendous prominence in 1989 because of her international tours, film and television appearances. Here is a list of ways that I thought I could continue with this so-far failed research: • Become a member of the Modern Language Association so I can get some of their letterhead • Drive to the houses of the people named Celia • Make a GoFundMe page and the money will go to brain cancer research, the cause of Celia’s death • Hold a Celia Cruz convention and pay for all of these people to go for free • Hire a private investigator to figure this all out for me
Natasha Mijares is an artist, writer, curator, and educator. She has been published in Container, Calamity, Vinyl Poetry, Bear Review, and has work forthcoming from Hypertext Magazine. @natmija
JESSI LI
Jessi Li
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JESSI LI
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JESSI LI
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JESSI LI
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JESSI LI
Jessi Li was raised in Jersey City, NJ. In 2009 she graduated from Bard College at Simons Rock in western Massachusetts. She moved to Seattle to pursue a residency at Pottery Northwest where she was awarded the Resident Artist Project Grant. Jessi is a recipient of the Art Bridge Fellowship from Pratt Fine Arts Center, and a graduate of Artist Trust's EDGE program. She has participated in exhibitions nationally. jessi-li.com • @jessililili
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CHARMAINE BEE
Charmaine Bee
Untitled mullein like plant, F-series, 35mm Fujifilm disposable camera, 2019
Untitled #3 portal series dream sequence, 2018. Twine, silk, fishing wire, dimensions variable.
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M
y work explores my being from the Sea Islands of South Carolina and some of the profitable items that were grown there and the ways those harvests were profitable for the south while subjugating the Black people who harvested those materials. Materials like rice, indigo and the seafood industry. I also make work about portals, the dream world, ritual, spirituality, plants, the depths of coded knowledge, organ transformation and health and what portals are created through living the Black American Southern experience. An emphasis on the dream world and the characters and symbols in that space are current in my practice. I have been working on the “Bee Family Dream Dictionary,” which contains dream symbols and their meaning, fictional stories based on true dreams, dreams that I have had, tea recipes for dreaming and visual art. I am also making work about the health of our vital organs and what is born out of their disfunction; how complications in organ function create a space where new worlds and characters are born out of situations that portend to suppress life and voice.
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Still from On our thyroid and voice, 2018. Thyroid and voice explores the function of the thyroid, the function of spirituality and finding “our song” and includes interviews from my hometown of Beaufort, South Carolina.
CLICK TO WATCH ON OUR THYROID AND VOICE
Untitled Indigo Piece, 2017. Tea bags, indigo, gold thread), 144 x 192”.
CHARMAINE BEE
Untitled rose garden #5, F- series, 35mm Fujifilm disposable camera, 2019.
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I was bent over a sink. A singular metal rectangle, squat faucet looming over, the drain seemingly had no end. The sink was was filled with still water and I simultaneously could and could not visually access the bottom. The room where I was standing was dark and I felt surrounded by the weight of energies that would not allow me to name or see them. The only light that entered the space came in from the moon. I reached down into the sink bending my body forward, water reached to my elbows. Moving in a motion where I’d lean forward and then sift the bottom of the sink with my widespread fingers. As each of my hands came up out of the water filled with flowers, water left down the drain. Quickening my movements and as calendula and rose petals slipped through my hands, the water began to rapidly leave the drain slurping loudly. I found myself left with wispy yellow and red flowers and green herbs on my hands. A flood of pink peppercorns rolled and rattled like marbles as they rushed down into the drain as if being sucked in by an entity I could not touch—but that could touch me. I knew the spell had been activated. A hummingbird flitted by my window this morning when I woke up. Sensing my presence she flew back in my view, sustaining her position with rapid movement, letting it be known that she could see and feel me.
Mr. Willie, F- series, 35mm Fujifilm disposable camera, 2013.
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CHARMAINE BEE
Untitled ocean at home, F- series, 35mm Fujifilm disposable camera, 2013
Charmaine Bee received an MFA from Calarts. Through video, movement, sculpture, writing, sound and textile Charmaine explores ritual, movement through space and time; as well as the beauty of our inner worlds and organs: how the complications in their functioning is a space where new worlds and expressions are created out of situations that portend to suppress life and voice. Charmaine has studied herbalism with Karen Rose and has been awarded the Felix Gonzales - Torres Foundation travel grant, Brooklyn Arts Council Community Arts Foundation grant for The Stoop Gallery, a pop up gallery project and Puffin Foundation grant for a gentrification mapping project. Charmaine has been nominated for the 2018 Rema Hort Mann emerging artist LA grant. Charmaine is a current participant in Landing 3.0 with Miguel Gutierrez and was a Summer 2018 artist in residence at Five Myles gallery in Brooklyn, NY. Charmaine has also been in residence at the18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, CA and the Fountainhead Residency in Miami, FL. Charmaine will participate in the upcoming RAW: Craft, Commodity and Capitalism at the Craft and Folk art Museum in Los Angeles, is from the Sea Islands of South Carolina and resides in Brooklyn, NY. @charmainenbee
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DREA COFIELD + GABY COLLINSFERNANDEZ
Drea Cofield + Gaby Collins-Fernandez
With Feeling by Gaby Collins-Fernandez
W
Heat Blush, 2018, 40 x 30", oil on linen
e never know the pleasure that consumes the lotus eaters. We barely even see the sailors who waywardly partake, Odysseus is so busy hog tying them under benches to get back to sea, on course, towards home. The problem with these fruits is not just lethargy and hedonism. This pleasure arises when homeward-ness, the whole point of the epic, is abandoned. Pleasure as the state of emancipation from the need to return: this is an apt way to describe the ethos of Drea Cofield’s paintings and ink drawings, which is not to imply a disregard for consequences. The work is often on the cusp of spilling over into whatever is next emotionally and physically, the particularities of how the scene came to be eclipsed by its momentum. When were the apples not ripe? Everything is ripe in these paintings. Ripe tears and dew, ripe afternoons; figures which ripely chase and tumble into watching shades and leak; limbs ripe for climbing. See: Boughs who threaten heavy drips onto the action of “Noble Bliss”
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from that top left edge. The baked saturation of “Heat Blush” only heightened by the darkened figure in the foreground, which absorbs the glazed, warm atmosphere like a mass of buffed ballpoint ink. The way “Shame with Candor’s” pink river blushes around its peeping and disrobing protagonists. The paintings can be saturated with sex but are not about sex, exactly. Or, they are about sex sometimes, as consensation—the works are filled with the evidence of scattered sentience, a kind of connective tissue. Butts blush and wink. Pools blink, nipples peep, and of course eyes do. Impressions layer like paint and the paint is into it too, as though the surface of each painting were the body in question, reddening from the exertion of producing the tableau and a self-aware pleasure in its content. Cofield’s process of making the paintings through layered glazes feels like an extended blush biological or cosmetic, liquidly emanating a warmth toward these routines in their strange play, moments of sexiness and banality. This self-awareness spreads to the viewer, who, casting a gaze upon these paintings, becomes enmeshed in this network, yet another shrub looking on. Homeward-ness is one way of thinking about allegories, which draw faraway scenarios with homeward lines. They are like day-trips just far enough away that we begin to long for the newly visible
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DREA COFIELD + GABY COLLINSFERNANDEZ
Shame with Candor, 2018, 60 x 50", oil on linen
Blind Ass Man, 2018, 20 x 16", oil on linen
Noble Bliss, 2018, 50 x 60", oil on linen
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contours of the familiar. Most allegories travel back well, and the abstract weirdness with which allegorical texture is built can be tempered rather quickly by the objective to become useful through interpretation and application in real life. Though filled with recognizable gestures and games, Cofield’s allegories don’t quite work this way. I could bring back an image or gesture from the works the way one might carry around an obscure icon, compelled by the image but detached from its function. In Cofield’s works, this is by design. The iconic spools outward, turning into game, myth, the obstinate unintelligibility of the present. The longer I spend with the paintings, the more I settle on the parts of the work that pause, like the expression of the central figure of “Heat Blush.” That face is framed by the limbs of others—the very architecture of these bodies dependent on the figure— and in this spotlight they look away in some daydream or bittersweet thought, lightly un-invested in the proffering of fruit. Or, the faces and thighs of figures, doubled over and stacked but not coupling, which seem as certain in their positions as they are in questioning what, exactly, this might mean. Figures that doze oblivious and those wedged below pyramidal tangles of bodies, participatory but not ecstatic. Because one thing is for certain: these paintings, these gestures, do not add up to a traditional concept of
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Common Rind, 2018, 40 x 30", oil on linen
Be Fruit Full, 2018, 60 x 50", oil on linen
DREA COFIELD + GABY COLLINSFERNANDEZ
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rapture, hellish or edenic. In this world, there is nowhere to be carried away to (for this is the away), yet there is a lot of carrying. This sense of circularity, even ambivalence, saturates many of the rituals in evidence here. What happens beyond puritanism and playing hard to get, when desire is characterized not by yearning but by access, when Sappho’s apples are within reach, to be snacked upon casually? Cofield’s paintings propose a way to move through these ideas. Don’t look back.
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Drea Cofield (b. 1986, Orange, CT) is a Brooklyn-based artist. She earned her BA from DePauw University in 2008 and her MFA from Yale School of Art in 2013. dreacofield.com • @dreacof Gaby Collins-Fernandez is an artist living and working in New York City. She holds degrees from Dartmouth College (B.A.) and the Yale School of Art (M.F.A., Painting/Printmaking). CollinsFernandez is also a writer whose texts have appeared in Cultured Magazine, The Miami Rail, and The Brooklyn Rail. She is a founder and publisher of the annual magazine Precog. gabycollinsfernandez.com • @gmercedescf
Sappho’s Apples, 2018, 60 x 50", oil on linen
Peek-A-Boo, 2018, 16 x 20", oil on linen
DREA COFIELD + GABY COLLINSFERNANDEZ
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