Ginger #19: Winter 2020 by Ginger

Ginger Networked feminism

Issue 19

Winter 2020

Mission

IRENE CAVROS

CLARE BOERSCH

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 ISSUE 10

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HANNAH NELSONTEUSCH

SOPHIE OAKLEY

STEPHANIE VON BEHR

LEYLA TULUN

KRISTINA HEADRICK

ABIGAIL HENNING

LANI RUBIN

KAYA YUSI

MOLLY ADAMS ALEX CHOWANIEC

ISSUE 11

CAROLINE LARSEN

ISSUE 12 ISSUE 13 ISSUE 14

BRE WISHART

JULIANA HALPERT

MARTHA WILSON

ISSUE 15

DREA COFIELD + GABY COLLINSFERNANDEZ

ISSUE 16 ISSUE 17

LEAH JAMES

GABRIELLA PICONE

ISSUE 18 ISSUE 19

EMILY LUDWIG SHAFFER

NINO SARABUTRA

JENNY BLUMENFELD

AVIVA ROWLEY

SALTY XI JIE NG JESSI LI

SOPHIE KNIGHT

ERI KING

JULIE ZHU

S.E.A.

JEN COHEN

MISIAN TAYLOR

LAURA BERNSTEIN

HANNAH MODE ELIZABETH TANNIE LEWIN

AMY BERENBEIM

LAUREN ARIAN

LEJLA KALAMUJIĆ + JENNIFER ZOBLE

ELAINE HEALY

MS. NIKO DARLING

CAITLIN ROSE SWEET

NICKI GREEN

SARAH MIHARA CREAGEN

JEAN SEESTADT

ANNA GURTONWACHTER

PAOLA DI TOLLA

C. CHAPIN KATY McCARTHY

ANDREA GUSSIE

CARMEL BROWN

EMILY WUNDERLICH

LAURA PORTWOODSTACER

FELICIA URSO

JORDAN REZNICK

KAVERI RAINA

STAVER KLITGAARD

ASHNA ALI CHRISTINE SHAN SHAN HOU

CHARMAINE BEE

SHALA MILLER

JILLIAN JACOBS AMIA YOKOYAMA

ANNIK HOSMANN

CRAIG CALDERWOOD

ERIC DYER

CARLY FREDERICK

Ginger is run by Markee Speyer and Jacqueline Cantu. Reach us at gingerthezine@gmail.com.

Winter 2020

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ISSUE 1 ISSUE 2 ISSUE 3 ISSUE 4 ISSUE 5 ISSUE 6 ISSUE 7 ISSUE 8 ISSUE 9 ISSUE 10

GRACIE BIALECKI

ISSUE 11

JULIA DUNHAM

EIRINI PAPAEFTHEMIOU

ISSUE 12 ISSUE 13

NP SANCHEZ

ISSUE 14

LIANA IMAM

ISSUE 15 ISSUE 16 ISSUE 17

ANNA CONE

KRYSTA SA

ALLI MALONEY

LANE SPEIDEL

CARLA AVRUCH

ISSUE 18 ISSUE 19 CAITLIN WRIGHT

CLAUDIA GERBRACHT

MARTY MANUELA

MARIE HINSON ERICA McKEEHEN

ALEX VALLS OLIVIA JANE HUFFMAN

KATIE MIDGLEY JESSE HEIDER

ANNE MAILEY

LEANNE BOWES

ISA RADOJČIC

MEGAN SICKLES

SAM CROW LEIGH SUGAR

KERRI GAUDELLI JOEY BEHRENS KAITLIN McCARTHY

LAUREN BANKA

HAYLEE EBERSOLE

MEREDITH SELLERS

KATIE FORD

DEVIN DOUGHERTY KASIA HALL

JAN TRUMBAUER HEIDI BENDER

JENNIFER FANDEL

ASTRID KAEMMERLING + BECCA J.R. LACHMAN

AMBER HOY

CARRIE GREEN

AMANDA LÓPEZKURTZ

MADELINE DONAHUE

COURTNEY KESSEL + DANIELLE WYCKOFF

JENNIFER WEISS

NATASHA WEST

ASHLEIGH DYE

JESSICA LAW

WOLFGANG SCHAFFER

HALA ABDULKARIM

JANE SERENSKA MOLLY SCHOENHOFF

RACHEL WALLACH

DELILAH JONES MICHAELA RIFE

DOROTEA MENDOZA

BRITLYNN HANSENGIROD

ALEXIS CANTU

KIRUN KAPUR

LA JOHNSON

LORI LARUSSO LETITIA QUESENBERRY

NATALIE EICHENGREEN

MEGAN BICKEL

JACQUELINE MELECIO

JORDAN LANHAM JAZZY MICAELA SMITH

NATASHA MIJARES

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ITZEL BASUALDO

ALEX PATRICK DYCK

DEVYN MAÑIBO

JULIANA LUJAN

MARIA R. BAAB

AGROFEMME

MARIE SÉGOLÈNE

MIMI CHIAHEMEN

BONNIE LANE

KATHERINE TARPINIAN

MOLLY HAGAN

JESSICA KIRKHAM BIA MONTEIRO

KATRINA SORRENTINO

TONI KOCHENSPARGER

CAMERON RINGNESS

ARIEL JACKSON

BRIE LIMINARA

MARTHA NARANJO SANDOVAL

ANA GIRALDOWINGLER

YI-HSIN TZENG

MINNY LEE

GROANA MELENDEZ

VERÓNICA PUCHE

ISSACHAR CURBEON

KAT SHANNON

LUCA MOLNAR

EEL COSTELLO NANDI LOAF

TRACI CHAMBERLAIN

LEXI CAMPBELL

BIRAAJ DODIYA

MARISSA BLUESTONE

MARIA STABIO

COURTNEY STONE IVY HALDEMAN

VANESSA GULLY SANTIAGO

JESSICA PRUSA

SONYA DERMAN

BRIE ROCHELILLIOTT

KAITLIN McDONOUGH

KATIE VIDA

HARRIS BAUER

EMMALINE PAYETTE

HANNAH RAWE

JESS WILLLA WHEATON

NATALIE GIRSBERGER

SOFIE RAMOS

RACHEL ZARETSKY

LAURA McMULLEN

REBECCA BALDWIN

PAULAPART

KATHARINE PERKO

ENA SELIMOVIĆ

LEIGH RUPLE

JESSICA WOHL

MAYON HANANIA

RACHEL BRODY

SOFIA PONTÉN

FREDRIKA THELANDERSSON

HERMIONE SPRIGGS

LAURA COOPER

SARA LAUTMAN DEENAH VOLLMER

NATALIE BAXTER

JOLENE LUPO

KATE WHEELER

EMILY ROSE LARSON

COLLEEN DURKIN

INDIA TREAT

ERIN MIZRAHI

TYLER MORGAN

ELIZABETH SULTZER

B. NEIMETH

MOLLY RAPP

TIFFANY SMITH

MARIA NIKOLIS COREENA LEWIS BECKY BRISTER

RACHEL KANN ULRIKE BUCK

ANNELIE McKENZIE

HANNAH MCMASTER NEELA KLER

PRIYANKA RAM

KATHLEEN GRECO

DEBORAH DAVIS

CATHERINE AZIMI

ALYCE HALIDAY MCQUEEN

Winter 2020

Issue 19 contributors

Aviva Rowley........ PAGE 06 Minny Lee........ PAGE 11 Neela Kler........ PAGE 17 Bia Monteiro........ PAGE 21 Salty Xi Jie Ng........ PAGE 28 Nino Sarabutra........ PAGE 34 Kirun Kapur........ PAGE 37 Kaya Yusi........ PAGE 42 Megan Bickel........ PAGE 49 Jennifer Fandel........ PAGE 55 Jessica Kirkham........ PAGE 58

On the cover: Untitled, 2018, by Jessica Kirkham

Winter 2020

Aviva Rowley Wet Vessels

Ginger

AVIVA ROWLEY

Winter 2020

AVIVA ROWLEY

Ginger

AVIVA ROWLEY

Wet Vessels is the ceramic practice of artist/ florist Aviva Rowley. It is centered around the idea that historically, humans with wombs have been considered to be mere vessels in which to deposit seed … to grow another life. The Wet Vessel enjoys the act. The Wet Vessel reclaims pleasure. The Wet Vessel enjoys being filled but can also stand alone. Aviva Rowley is an artist, florist turned ceramicist born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated Cooper Union with a BFA in 2011. She has been finding nature in Brooklyn her whole life, whether it’s playing with mud or tending to her indoor jungle. All pieces are hand-built one of a kind stoneware ceramics with a black Gun Metal glaze. All flowers and photos are by Aviva Rowley wetvessels.com • avivarowley.com • @avivarowley

Winter 2020

Minny Lee Presence (2011–ongoing)

am no different from any other person—presently formed due to past experiences. Living apart from my parents from the tender age of two to six due to economic necessity affected me deeply. During these formative years, I viewed the world as a quiet, lonely place. Being reunited with my family at age seven was a surreal experience; I felt alienated in my own house. Growing up in South Korea during its industrialization and military dictatorship allowed me to find comfort in anonymity. Self-expression and individual identity were unexplored concepts, perhaps even unpatriotic. When I started a self-portrait series in 2011, I had to accept myself as being the central figure in my photographs. It was a foreign concept to me—playing both the role of photographer and subject simultaneously. In the beginning, I chose places that were used during wars and in some cases, those that had been abandoned after military use. Later on, I started to respond to a specific place with its history in mind. Performative and narrative aspects became important when I made photographs in Norwegian costume. With an Asian face in a western costume, I was questioning how a person’s identity may be perceived through appearances. I am interested in what is not shown in the photograph—what just happened, what may happen, and the story behind it. I like to create subtle tension and mystery in my photographs, traversing between past and present and dream and reality.

Self-portrait, Hotel Bethlehem, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 2011, Archival pigment print, 24" x 30"

Winter 2020

MINNY LEE

Self-portrait, Santa Maria delle Grazie, Mestre, Italy, 2011, Archival pigment print, 24" x 30"

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MINNY LEE

Self-portrait, Hotel Bethlehem, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 2011, Archival pigment print, 24" x 30"

Self-portrait, Asbury Park, Asbury, New Jersey, 2012, Archival pigment print, 24" x 30"

Winter 2020

MINNY LEE

Self-portrait, duCret School of Art, Plainfield, New Jersey, 2012, Archival pigment print, 24" x 30"

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MINNY LEE

Self-portrait, Halsnøy Kloster, Halsnøy, Norway, 2013, Archival pigment print, 24" x 30"

Self-portrait, Concord's Colonial Inn, Concord, Massachusetts, 2016, Archival pigment print, 24" x 30"

Minny Lee is a Honolulu-based artist and curator whose work contemplates the concepts around time and space and the coexistence of duality. Lee obtained a Master of Arts in Art History from the City College of New York and a Master of Fine Arts in Advanced Photographic Studies from ICP-Bard. She was awarded a fellowship from the Reflexions Masterclass in Europe and participated as an artist-in-residence at Halsnøy Kloster and the Vermont Studio Center. Her photographs have been exhibited at Datz Museum of Art, The Center for Fine Art Photography, Ise Cultural Foundation Gallery, Les Rencontres d’Arles, and Espacio el Dorado, among other venues. Lee is a faculty member of the Honolulu Museum of Art School. minnylee.com • @minnyleephoto

Winter 2020

Neela Kler Khaki is a loanword, meaning soil-colored

This collection documents works in progress and completed pieces. For these pieces I explored concepts that have been on my mind for a while, particularly layering, hiding, revealing, and through that, thinking about how our experiences build up in a layered way and affect our perception of the world.Â

Untitled (In Studio) 2019, Film Photography, dimensions variable

Untitled (Dusting) 2019, Digital Photography, dimensions variable

Winter 2020

NEELA KLER

Deflection (1/4) 2019, mixedmedia on corrugated plastic 6.5" x 8"

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NEELA KLER

Protection (2/4) 2019, mixed-media on corrugated plastic 6.5" x 8"

Neela (Neelam) Kler is an artist/ designer/ earthling/ daughter/sister/ friend/etc. living and working in Vancouver, Canada. neelamkler.com @neelamegha

Winter 2020

Bia Monteiro Re-measuring the Dry Land, 2018

he Europeans were the first non-indigenous people to explore the Amazon forest: they came, studied and abused the natives with their objectifying gaze. The forest was often portrayed as exotic, magical and otherworldly by these colonizers. This symbolic depiction eventually dominated the imagination of foreign and local people, myself included. While at the Adolpho Duck Reserve, I began work on Re-medindo aTerra Firme (remeasuring the Dry Land), an investigation and reworking of the initial allusions and actual references that were employed by the Europeans explorers—those that have been absorbed as a genuine reality. … Here I am. Two hundred years after Von Martius drew the depth and complexity of this forest. How do I decode the images and concepts embedded within me by an alien experience? I insert myself in this landscape—a place that has been object of subjugation for centuries— and use my body to experience real dimensions, to understand the impression of its size and to reassess memory through this, my own experience. Each tree, I hold. Each tree, I measure with my hands. A repetition that facilitates my own corporal connection to the landscape and reveals a forest as fragile as my being.

Study For Re-Measuring The Dry Land, 2018 Archival Pigment Print Appropriated Image By Von Martius 22.5 x 12cm

Winter 2020

BIA MONTEIRO

Buriti, 2018, Archival Pigment Paper, 75 x 100cm

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BIA MONTEIRO

Virola, 2018, Archival Pigment Paper, 75 x 100cm

Winter 2020

BIA MONTEIRO

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BIA MONTEIRO

Palmeira Andante, 2018 Archival Pigment Paper 75 x 100cm

Winter 2020

BIA MONTEIRO

Louro De Capoeira, 2018 Archival Pigment Paper 75 x 100cm

Bia Monteiro was born in 1976 and lives between Rio de Janeiro and New York. She received a MFA degree from the International Center of Photography in New York where she was awarded with the Director’s Fellowship in 2015/16. Bia is a visual artist working primarily with photography, video and installations. Her work references post-colonialism problematics, displacement, as well as environmental concerns through the use of human body, historical references and architecture. Bia has exhibited her work in Brazil, Equador, Europe, Japan and New York, and is part of the Studio Duo collective in NYC and Abapirá Mercado de textos e imagens in Rio De Janeiro. biamonteiro.com • @bmonteirop

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Salty Xi Jie Ng Senior Women’s Erotica Club, A project of The Grandma Reporter

A few months ago, aged 31, I found myself sitting in the Hollywood Senior Center in Portland, Oregon, discussing with a group of older women their sexual frustrations. We were crafting a piece that we did not find in senior erotica I researched— one that centered emotional intimacy in senior women’s sexual experiences. Our regular huddle felt revolutionary in contrast to Taichi and crafts happening in the center’s main space. This was part of The Grandma Reporter, a collaborative project I created about senior women’s culture across the Earth. The intimacy issue delves into a taboo subject with a group of women aged 22 to 84. The Senior Women’s Erotica Club was envisioned as a space to acknowledge the uniqueness and challenges of senior sex through discussing what the erotic and physical intimacy mean to women as they age. The club explored how senior erotica can be crafted as an affirming, tender, real-yet-fantastic experience. Read more at thegrandmareporter.com.

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SALTY XI JIE NG

Prompts for the Senior Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Erotica Club

Winter 2020

SALTY XI JIE NG

THERE’S SOMETHING JUST AS INEVITABLE AS DEATH, AND THAT’S LIFE By Salty Xi Jie Ng in consultation with the Senior Women’s Erotica Club

hinoceros or rabbit?” she asks. The toy shelf of the Hollywood Senior Center thrift store is filled with stuffed animals made from stiff acrylic yarn. One of them will make a perfect gift for their six-year-old granddaughter. “I don’t know, I just want to get my cinnamon bun, go home, and rewatch that Chaplin film with you,” he replies. His favorite bakery is about to close. She is going to be 75 in July. He is going to be 80 in September. She walks over to another shelf, and picks up a red wool beret, limp and blazing amidst soft chiffon scarves. It has a thin paper tag pinned on it that reads, ‘Hollywood Golden Treasures. Handmade by a Senior Citizen.’ He smiles and walks over. “Looks just like it.” They both stare while she caresses it. “Okay,” he breaks the silence, “She’ll like the rhinoceros. Quick, I’m hungry.” Fifty years ago she was a struggling writer working as a mailwoman and he was a math teacher living in the last house on her daily mail route. She wore a red wool beret from fall through early spring. It perched above the curly black hair on her petite frame. He would spot her from his window and greet her at the door. They fell in love quickly. Algebraic equations

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flew through her poems, which she fervently penned late at night. He would send himself mail cheekily addressed to the both of them. Eventually they got married and she moved in. At first, they were always desirous. Hastily stripping the other, they took delight at each piece of clothing falling off until they were two thin, naked fish flapping in bed. He stayed hard long, was passionate and tender. She was playful and adventurous, wanted it in the bathtub, in the middle of the night, straddling him in different positions. It was frustrating to slow down and work hard on her orgasms, but they tempered the speed of youth with patience and care. She would come eventually to a swell of loving emotion. And then they would hold each other in bed, silently at first, then chatting about what to eat, for they were always ravenous after. A boy came to them. She was done delivering mail. Then a baby girl. He changed schools and they moved house. Another girl. She cooked non-stop, baked the occasional pound cake, cared for them all day, and tried to write at night. She and he argued all the time, almost didn’t make it. The kids got older, got busier, got more difficult. The boy broke his leg but they all went to the desert in New Mexico anyway (it had taken a while to save up for a family vacation). She and he disagreed over who should drive and how much money to spend. He got her a limestone from a gift shop on their last day. She accepted it with a wan smile, then turned to see where the kids had run off to. That night they had sex in

their economy motel room. They were exhausted, and hearing their teenage children talking loudly next door reminded them of lives no longer quite their own. But they both needed sex and felt a certain pressure to commemorate the last night of their rare holiday. Slowly taking off each other’s clothes, a mixture of love and resentment hung in the air. He cupped her breasts and squeezed them, sucked her nipples. She looked wanting, but sad. She rubbed his penis. He was very erect, but she took a while longer. He fingered her as they lay looking at each other, unexpressed feelings welling between them. The kids kept shouting next door. When she was wet enough he got on top and inserted himself less gently than he had intended. She tried not to gasp loudly. They were upset with each other, she more than him, and this made their sex rough and fast. He had to muffle her with each angry push that was welcomed with a grinding of her hips. He came too soon. When he started kissing her navel and moving downwards, she gently guided his head away, and said it was okay if they ended there. She was already tired. She gave him a peck on the cheek and made him hold her hand while they fell asleep to the kids’ laughter. The kids went away to college near and far. The house felt a little hollow. They cuddled or held hands in bed most nights. She got a job at the zoo and kept writing poetry. These days they volunteer at the senior center, take long hikes, care for their grandkids, are active members of a bird watching club. She has chronic lower back pain and arthritis. He had a stroke two years ago, got a knee replacement,

SALTY XI JIE NG

moves slowly. Four years ago, on her 70th birthday, she wrote a poem. He read it and nodded, not saying much. The last stanza read: already arthritic, strangely iridescent from shriveled womb to fragile elbow faithfully downing pills for osteoporosis Today is their 49th wedding anniversary. Both forgot, which has happened only three times. Today they remember a red wool beret.

n Limelight Chaplin plays an older, failing vaudeville clown named Calvero who mesmerizes Terry, a young, beautiful dancer he nurses to health after her suicide attempt. She wants to marry him. He thinks she should be with a young, handsome composer. She convinces him to make a stage comeback. It works. But later, watching her dance gloriously on stage, he dies in the wings from a heart attack. Terry: What is there to fight for? Calvero: Ah, you see, you admit it. What is there to fight for? Everything. Life itself, isn’t that enough, to be lived, suffered, enjoyed. What is there to fight for? Life is a beautiful, magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish. Besides, you have your art, your dancing. Terry: I can’t dance without legs. Calvero: I know a man without arms who can play a scherzo on a violin and does it all with his toes. The trouble is you won’t fight. You’ve given in, continually dwelling on sickness and death. But there’s something just as inevitable as death, and that’s life. Life, life, life. Think of all the power

that’s in the universe, moving the earth, growing the trees. That’s the same power within you if you only have courage and the will to use it. “My mum watched this once and cried.” The credits roll, illuminating their faces in the dark. “Mmm,” she responds, turning away slightly to hide her glistening eyes. They each sit in their favorite armchairs on either side of the television. “If you were Terry and I were Calvero, you would’ve convinced me to marry you,” he says playfully. Her back turned, she smiles. “Want me to prepare your hot flask for the night?” she asks. He yawns.

e is already in bed, awash in the soft glow of their bedside lamp. She peels open the blanket and slides in slowly, her arthritis acting up on a cold night. Both on their backs, breathing in the dark. “Hey?” She reaches a hand over and finds his. The hand she’s held for fifty years. Once sturdy, it is now knobby and frail. Still comforting. She’s tired from the day and emotional from the film. Maybe Terry did not deserve Calvero. Maybe she did not deserve to shine her beautiful, blooming body like a martyr of youth upon his aged, flabby one. Conversely, she did not deserve to be inundated with his fabulous, almost frivolous litanies on life. Who was Calvero’s true audience then? With a grunt he turns his big body over, a signal for her to roll on her side. He hugs her from behind and in this position they warm

each other up. This is how it has been on countless nights. Over the years his belly got bigger, now like a little third person between them. Tonight, as always, she is lying on her left, the good side, without the chronic pain. He plants a small kiss on her back, then slides his hand to her belly and below. Perhaps it was the anniversary unbeknownst to them that aroused this seed of desire. They lie there for a few minutes, breaths getting heavier as he stroked her crotch. This is how it usually begins if initiated by him. She used to feel him becoming a little hard between her legs, but with his belly now she cannot tell. “Should I take Viagra?” Even though she was tired, she cared for his needs. After all, she would be aroused soon enough. “Alright.” He reaches for the bedside drawer and finds it. Then he removes his dentures and places them in a glass of water beside the bed with a clink. “My back isn’t doing so well tonight, just so you know,” she says matter-of-factly, gently, a reminder for him as much as for herself. He nods. They each undress themselves slowly. There is no hurry; the Viagra will take a while to kick in. Her breasts sag, hovering over her waist. The sight of them is comforting, the breasts he’s known forever, that nursed their children. He is over young bodies with perky breasts, doesn’t know what he would do with them. They are a lifetime away. How their bodies have changed, now blessed with a sheath of wrinkles like criss-crossing constellations.

Winter 2020

SALTY XI JIE NG

Five years ago her lush pubic hair started turning silver and falling out. Now a small patch remains, barely covering her loose vagina. She is no longer bothered by how she looks down there. She reaches her knobby, arthritisravaged hands out, and runs them up and down his thick arms. Soft and wrinkly. “They’re sore from all that gardening today,” he says. “We did a good job getting all the seeds sown on time,” she replies. He leans over and kisses her nipples. They find the right position to accommodate his bad knee, her bad back. Parting her white pubic hair, he gently sucks on her below. She melts predictably into arousal, the endorphins making her forget arthritic pain. Already riding a wave of tiredness, they lie facing each other, looking into the eyes they know so well. They are both less responsive than before, and take time to tease each other’s genitals with slightly shaky hands. They have done this a thousand times. Even as they flush with pleasure, their minds wander. Tonight she thinks about her granddaughter’s birthday party tomorrow, whilst he worries for his best friend in the hospital with lung cancer. But these thoughts dissipate as they start moaning gently. As the Viagra takes effect he soon becomes turgid enough to enter her. The sight of him hard for her ignites a small fire in her lower belly. Even though she is aroused, she is too dry. With generous amounts of lube and a massage between her thighs,

she finally gets wet enough to insert him while she sits on top. They rock slowly and let out small sounds of pleasure, interlacing fingers. After a while as the wetness wears off it starts to feel abrasive, and then without warning he becomes soft and slips out of her. “It doesn’t always stay hard,” he says, although they’ve been through this a lot recently. It is always frustrating, but today the tenderness of age softens bleak familiarity. They find comfortable positions lying down on their good sides and he sucks on her for a long time, in the ways she likes. He was always good at this. She feels lucky; she’d heard from the few friends who confided their sex lives that their partners didn’t enjoy doing it. Deliriously aroused now, she moans for more, and he patiently works hard at it till she comes, splayed on the bed. His knee hurts a little, but he doesn’t say anything. They rest a while, holding hands. “Do you want to try again?” she asks. “Yes.” Licking and sucking on his wrinkly penis, she teases it while rubbing its flaccid stem. After so many years with his body, she knows what to do. Sometimes she gets bored, but even when it takes a while he eventually gets erect again. To try and finish off, they get into their favorite position. She stands at the side of the bed with her bum facing out, resting her torso on stacked pillows. He gets behind her, supports himself with a nearby chair, and enters from behind. The very thought of ‘fucking like rabbits’

used to turn her on endlessly, secretly: partly from the use of that word, partly because it spoke to an animalistic passion in her. Now there are a lot of maneuvers and interruptions to readjust. It is all part of how it has to be now. As he pushes into her she writhes in pleasure even though the penetration isn’t as deep, because their bodies are in the way. His erection doesn’t hold for long, and again he slips out limply. They are both a little disheartened, mostly tired. “It’s okay,” she says, turning around and holding his hand. He looks her in the eyes. “Yeah, it’s okay,” he says. After cleaning up, they put their flannel pajamas back on and crawl into bed. Cuddling with arms and legs intertwined, they are not yet asleep, listening to each other breathe, ensconced in the warmth of their bodies.

Salty Xi Jie Ng is an artist from the tropical metropolis of Singapore. Her work explores possibilities in the poetic, eccentric and infinite everyday from an often personal place. She makes collaborative encounters that are intimate, semi-fictional paradigms for the real and imagined lives of humans. She sees this as a kind of activism that implicitly proposes a world in which she would like to live. saltythunder.net • @saltythunder13

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Nino Sarabutra The Ripple Series

ino has a passion for food. She is known for cooking and entertaining. She sees tableware as being more than a vessel for food. Her tableware is designed to express the value of the food, the value of entertaining and the importance of sharing beauty and nourishment with friends and family. She believes food tastes better when shared with the good company of friends and family. ‘The Ripple’ series is inspired by the beauty of the sea. Nino started developing it after returning from a month of kite surfing on the beach, inspired by the gentle movements on the surface of the summer sea, when the Thai ocean is nearly smooth and the board glides through the water, creating an endless flow of ripples with the sun dancing off them. The Ripple series started with few bowls, but has now expanded to a whole range that can cater to a big dinner party. Each piece is hand crafted individually and fired twice. The range has been tested party after party and has been proven to lift the level of joy of the whole gathering every time. ‘People often asked me when I will open my own restaurant. That’s not my point. My joy in cooking is really for people I love though. I can choose who to invite to each lunch or dinner. They have to be those I care and those I enjoy spending time with. Otherwise, I don’t cook. It’s cheap to eat out in Thailand.’

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NINO SARABUTRA

Nino Sarabutra is a Bangkok-based Thai artist, best known for her large ceramic installations. She also works with glass, metal, acrylic and other media. Nino studied Ceramic Arts at Silpakorn University in Bangkok. In the past 10 years, Nino has held regular solo and group exhibitions, in Bangkok, New York, Manila, Singapore, Berlin and Venice. Ninoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work explores human emotions and existence. Her previous exhibitions have included filling a gallery with 125,000 porcelain skulls to remind us of the precious nature of life, lit ceramic bottoms to remind us of the warmth of human contact and, perhaps Ninoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most recognizable image, walls of ceramic hearts framing images of all that we can love. Nino believes that the role of the artist is to make people reflect on how they live and stimulate energy and passion in her viewers. ninosarabutra.com â&#x20AC;˘ @nino_sarabutra

Winter 2020

Kirun Kapur Excerpts from Women in the Waiting Room

SLEEPLESSNESS (OR IMAGINING SITA PREPARING TO STEP INTO THE FIRE)

Winter 2020

KIRUN KAPUR

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KIRUN KAPUR

HOTLINE

Winter 2020

KIRUN KAPUR

USELESSNESS GHAZAL

Kirun Kapur is the winner of the Arts & Letters Rumi Prize and the Antivenom Poetry Award for her first book, Visiting Indira Gandhiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Palmist (Elixir Press, 2015). Her second collection, Women in the Waiting Room, a finalist for the National Poetry Series, is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press (2020). Her work appears in AGNI, Poetry International, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares and many other journals. She serves as poetry editor at The Drum Literary Magazine and currently teaches at Amherst College. kirunkapur.com â&#x20AC;˘ @kirunkapur

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Kaya Yusi Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll Never Know When I Forget About You

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KAYA YUSI

Winter 2020

KAYA YUSI

Ginger

KAYA YUSI

Winter 2020

KAYA YUSI

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KAYA YUSI

Kaya is 28 years old and graduated from CalArts. After graduating she ran an art gallery and music space in East Hollywood called Sunday Los Angeles, which closed its doors in 2016. She currently lives and works in Ridgewood, Queens. @kayayusi

Winter 2020

Megan Bickel _we_are_inside_the_fire_

Cigarettes Make Me Nervous, Now. 2019 Acrylic paint, Industrial House Paint lycra textile with inkjet printed holograph, wood 22" x 29" PHOTOGRAPHS BY KEVIN WARTH

Winter 2020

MEGAN BICKEL

OF AN EVENT, ASSIGNED A DATE THAT IS TOO EARLY fiction, 2019

96.73% of this document is an appropriation. It is also a fiction. What we are reporting is a very complicated new process of anthropological activity. We are in a period of invention, of dealing with many concepts that we never had to consider before, and recognizing that one of the tasks of anthropology is culture building. Where is my pick. . . . “ Tugging. . . tugging. .. tugging. What did O’Neil want earlier with that rotary sander? . . . Speaking of terms, the use of the term ‘Space Colony’ has been expressly forbidden by the US State Department because of anticolonial feeling around the world. In their accumulation of the massed there seems to be little cherished in the process of cultivating—other than amassing. “How do you think about yourself in the present— nameless, experiential, at times fictional?" “I came here to …” “Yes?” I quizzed insolently? O’Neil’s origin story and question suggests something more subtle about the implied subject of space colonization, that it might not even be human at all. Future self ? The environmental activist, conservationist, and marine biologist Rachel Carson once said that when life came ashore millions of years ago it brought a piece of the ocean with it. The real blue was inside, the blue of the profundity of space, the blue of my kingdom, of our kingdom! One of the strange constructive constraints of being on a land filled with things was the eventual birth of trade and debt of water. Other than accumulating, there doesn’t appear to be inherent

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humanely a hypocrite, the sinner and the civilian. 2019 Decal with mural approx. 23" x 27"

MEGAN BICKEL

_we_are_inside_the_fire_ 2019 Acrylic paint, Industrial House Paint lycra textile with inkjet printed holograph, wood 7" x 61" PHOTOGRAPH BY KEVIN WARTH

Winter 2020

MEGAN BICKEL

value in their objects in the same way value is applied to objects of little more than two hundred years prior. There are no words in the English language that I could use to drown them out. Under this metaphorical construction, technology and capitalism broadly grasped those privileged fields that take us to a world of pure fluidity. . . But was there a mad-woman or madman of theory up to the task of navigating these waters? What we are reporting is a very complicated new process of anthropological activity. . You said you were bored. In Zeroes and Ones Sadie Plant ironically recast this Edenic fall as a wave of possibility: we were once in a kind of oceanic happiness and then things went wrong, but how facetious was she being, since the fall she describes is now life itself ? They took it and hoarded it and loved it. For scholars of postcolonial theory, colonialism is explicitly connected with the production of certain kinds of subjects, the re-creation of certain others, and, when necessary, the suppression and elimination of still more. But Polly, were you a shadow? Were you an other? Is Nathan projected to me by light through film? I want to take his hands off my hips and put them on a statue’s hips. ‘We get it all,’ the dump philosopher repeated. ‘Just give it time to travel, we get it all.’ Displacement in the form of assimilation, removal, or genocide, is the process of colonization. Effectively the space natives are Californians —Californians, your veins are using up the redness of the world. Do not believe those serious-minded people who tell us that writing began with economics and the ordering of jars of oil. What mile-deep drills and missiles wrought by hands more violent now probe at Earth’s defenses? Her hour

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_we_are_inside_the_fire_ show exhibited at Quappi Projects, Louisville, KY in November 2019 PHOTOGRAPH BY KEVIN WARTH

has not yet come. No remnants of flesh are attached to these relics. But ‘Juliana’, 23, wanted to be a parent and have a family. This tone, this tone is still alone—it roams the land to face the hands. Right now there is no one in space to displace, yet the project promoted by O’Neil is involved in the assumed production of space natives—the productive, young, urban, capitalist, Western technological subjects that overwhelmingly dominate the narratives and imagery in the project. I have no desire to get O’Neil into trouble. So I shall say nothing tonight when they visit, and in the morning we will make a brief, discreet visit to the warehouse, yes? A recent project that examined the materials used to make bark paintings by aboriginal Australian artists led us to travel to a “warehouse” in the northern reaches of Australia, collecting ochres directly from a traditional gathering site, with permission from the artists. The painting had perished.

Forever burned in the ether of the time and the place and lost and longed. Frank Stella’s colossal 1959 enamel on canvas work, The Marriage of Reason and Squalor, II. Squalor evoked deepest infinitude, and a surrendering to optical ambiguity. Catalytic, he revealed, to “emotional ambiguities.” Stella’s monochromatic compositions parallel those of another American Minimalist, Ad Reinhardt. We are in a period of invention, of dealing with many concepts that we never had to consider before, and recognizing that one of the tasks of anthropology is culture building. There are thousands of images of this one painting, but the painting doesn’t exist. The painting has perished. Someday, such a factory might replicate it, or at least produce most of its own components, so that the number of facilities rises from the surface of the moon. On my desk lay the lance points of ice age hunters and the heavy leg bone of a fossil bison. You know, I wanted to like you.

MEGAN BICKEL

Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re Put in a Place Where Everyone Has the Same Delusion. 2019 Acrylic paint, Industrial House Paint lycra textile with inkjet printed holograph, wood 22" x 29" PHOTOGRAPH BY KEVIN WARTH

The Laziest Theologian 2018 Acrylic, spray paint on reflective lycra, wood approx. 26" x 18"

Megan Bickel is a multidisciplinary artist and writer based out of Louisville, Kentucky. Bickel is currently working toward her Master of Fine Arts at the University of Louisville (candidate 2021) and received her BFA / BA with Honors from the Art Academy of Cincinnati in 2012. She has since then been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions regionally and nationally. Bickel was the Co-Founder and Editor of Five-Dots, an artist ran online magazine collaboration with photographer and LGBTQ activist Cassandra Zetta and is the Founder and Gallerist for houseguest, a house gallery ran parallel to her partner, Jacob Wilsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (Sous Chef, 610 Magnolia), SUPPERCLUB LAB. In the spring of 2020 she will be the Printmaking Artist in Residence at Eastern Illinois University as well as the Artist in Residence at Opossum House (Oregon) in the summer of 2020.

Winter 2020

Jennifer Fandel THE ESTATE

You never had a fancy house, money in the bank, but you had land, which was mostly space and a view, the kind of dirt for potatoes when the frost doesn’t come early or leave late. It’s a place you don’t think of leaving until you’re gone, and even then, the body hovers above the hummocky fields, one touch away from the day when most everything is right— cool air sifting through the curtains with the warming sun, and the peaches cooking down, bright crescents in thickening juices, the jars sterilized and ready. There’s a richness everywhere you look— in the knickknacks in the curio cabinet, the wall of faces—so many of them— who carry a piece of your name. It’s amazing how everything comes back, as alive as it was then. It’s okay to not know anything else when everything you need is here. You find possibilities on the pantry’s shelves. You gather windfall apples to bake pies. People don’t know what they have. Taste it. The sweetness that leans out of long-light summers tempered by unexpected frost.

Winter 2020

JENNIFER FANDEL

BLUEBERRY PICKING

In the ditches blighted by fire, wild blueberries lit the bushes. We couldn’t have said no to her. The sun bore down and songbirds hushed. Wild blueberries lit the bushes. We waded deeper with our pails. In the midday sun, songbirds hushed. The tangy berries were so small. We waded deeper with our pails, our cut fingers blued by the juice of ripened berries that were small— and, without care, easy to lose. Our cut fingers blued by the juice, we nursed our wounds, tasted sweetness. Our cares were so easy to lose. We asked her for forgiveness while licking wounds, tasting sweetness, for complaining of the hard work. Her actions implied forgiveness: she crimped each pie crust with a fork. In the ditches blighted by fire we wouldn’t have said no to her.

Jennifer Fandel received her MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato. For the last two years, she has taught poetry for the Oakhill Prison Humanities Project at a state prison south of Madison, Wisconsin. She has also taught at women's shelters, in parks and rec programs, and at grade schools. She worked in publishing for more than a decade. Her published work includes poetry, book reviews, and nonfiction books for children and young adults. jenniferfandel.net

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Jessica Kirkham

he photographs are an act of deconditioning; the reawakening of an old soul before it was molded and defined. Once that soft voice is uttered, it can’t be taken back. You can try to stop the roots from growing, but they’ll push through cement. It is the act of eroding the things that don’t fit anymore. Some will speak, flowers pouring out of their mouths for you. Others will grow walls. The photographs are reflection and revaluation. The boundaries that were crossed, the boundaries that you let people cross. The trauma trapped in your body. They are the child, the mother, the family. They are denial. The photographs are gender, sexuality, and the definitiveness and infiniteness of being queer.

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JESSICA KIRKHAM

My hairbrush, 2018

Yolanda on her 16th birthday, 2019

Winter 2020

JESSICA KIRKHAM

Untitled, 2018

A necklace I wore when I was young, 2018

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JESSICA KIRKHAM

Winter 2020

JESSICA KIRKHAM

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JESSICA KIRKHAM

Woman at a the LGBTQIA youth ballroom, 2019

Blanket on 167th street, 2019

Jessica Kirkham is a Bronx-based photographer making long term work that explores concepts of youth, sexual trauma, healing, and queer identity. She is a 2014 graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology with a BFA in Photography. Jessica is a recipient of the Bronx Council on the Arts BRIO award in 2019. Currently, she is an educator teaching photography to Bronx youth and older adults at the Bronx Documentary Center. She believes photography is a powerful tool for healing, connecting and empowering communities. @jess.kirkham

Winter 2020

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