MISSED CALL Icía Vázquez

CYBORG AS A MIRROR?

Time Plays Mean Poker

Tonight, reticence is mutual. Time has dealt you the hand you cannot hold. Reach into the months and pluck out a well polished stone; hold it tenderly, put it back. Time has dealt you the hand you cannot hold and the phantom limb of someone else’s heart that now beats for other ears. Put it back, for now, it hurts. Hold up the therapy mirror That reflects the empty space Where they no longer are. Time has dealt you the hand you cannot hold. Do you wait for the river?

Photo by Callie Wohlgemuth

Monsoon Season

This morning my dad taught me the word “technically”. I can handle big kid words though because yesterday was my 10th birthday. Well, technically, my birthday was 3 months ago (April 18th) but it was too rainy to have a party till now. I don’t like the rain much. Thunderstorms make me jumpy, and I get sad seeing all the dead worms the next day. My parents say that somewhere in my DNA are the instructions to weather Vietnamese monsoons. I don’t really know what they mean but it makes me feel braver.

I guess, technically, my birthday was made up by the orphanage anyways. People who aren’t adopted always think that’s very sad. Adults are worse than kids because they try to be polite by pretending they don’t notice I’m not white like my mom and dad. It feels rude to tell them that I know I’m Asian– like telling a little kid that Santa isn’t real. Anyways, I guess technically, today could be my birthday for all I know– I think I’m going to pretend it is, and maybe tomorrow too.

July seems like a pretty good month to have been born, except that it’s way too hot. I grab a pirate hat out of my dress-up chest. It’s the only hat small enough to stay on my head, and big enough to keep the sun out of my eyes. I skip and cartwheel through my front yard, and then I find a shady spot under a tree. The boy across the street is selling toast. Most kids have lemonade stands in the summer, but not Carter.

There are 5 boys on my street, all older than me, and all white. It’s always 4 of them ganging up on Carter because he does things his own way, and that makes them mad. It doesn’t make them mad when I do things my own way, cause I’m already different. I can wear a pirate hat, or a sparkly purple cape anytime I want. I can sit on my front lawn and practice my harmonica solos to my stuffed animals and they don’t care. But sometimes I think I would rather get teased than be different. Sometimes I get annoyed at Carter because he was made like them and he’s blowing it. I am a girl (only technically though– not really in most other ways) in all the ways that they care about.

I see the 4 boys at the end of the street. They are looking at Carter, and I know that there’s about to be trouble. They are kicking rocks and stomping on sidewalk cracks. Punching mailboxes and shoving each other around. Pointing, laughing, coming closer. Carter sees the storm coming, but it’s too late. They are already in front of his toast stand. They are much taller and stronger than me or Carter, and we are outnumbered anyways.

I think to myself, “They are all mean and angry on their turf, but technically, they wouldn’t stand a chance in a Vietnamese monsoon.”

I don’t really know what I mean but it makes me feel braver.

Ella Giordano

Salmon Belly

Callie Wohlgemuth

aftan

South Hadley, Massachusetts

Rupali Agrawal

New Delhi, India Rupali Agrawal is currently pursuing Masters in Fine Arts, Sculpture at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi India. Rupali is highly inspired by Indian traditional and tribal art of India and is currently experimenting with a fusion of contemporary and traditional art. Rupali’s work attempts to express the general ideas surrounding us yet those we choose to ignore. For example, IDENTITY shows how every single circumstance of our life changes or shapes our identity but we don’t notice them or question them yet we recognize ourselves after so many changes. POUT shows the expression of the decade. This one expression has changed the way we look and click photographs. Lastly, Co-existence shows how two people live together or are at least meant to like the branches and leaves of a tree. They might cross each other but are a vital part of each other’s existence.

AzeliA

Brooklyn, New York

Dewa Ayu

Camila Blanco

Frances Castro

Frances Castro is a 21 years old content creator, born in the Dominican Republic and raised in the South Bronx. The majority of Frances’ looks are done with oil face paints and makeup taken using a DSLR Camera (Nikon D3500). They then transfer it over to Pic Art, or Photoshop/Lightroom for finishing touches. Frances uses photography and undertakes a variety of what they call, “bizarre” projects, not only as a way to fill their time and cope with quarantine during the pandemic, but also to create a name for themselves as an emerging artist and makeup artist of color. Frances’ social media handles are: Instagram: @ElizerSkylight1401 // Twitter: @Francesc7689

JoliAmour DuBose-Morris

Queens, New York JoliAmour’s piece is called ‘Water is Cruel until I Float.” It is about what we hope to never lose. In simpler words, cause of death: summer, control, floating.

Ella Giordano

Northampton, Massachusetts

Sophia Hess

Sophia Hess (she/they) is a queer artist with a multinational heritage living on Tonvga territory, also known as Los Angeles, CA. They’re an undergraduate student studying visual art and work primarily with multimedia sculpture involving textiles and digital collage. She centers her artwork around themes of identity, nature, migration, while critiquing modern manifestations of settler-colonialism as they try to untangle their own participation within these systems.

Lexi Jean

Northampton, Massachusetts / Mesa, Arizona Lexi Jean is a black artist and student from Smith College (‘23) who wants to showcase intimacy between people of color with their art, hoping to emanate how special queer people of color and their love are through their work.

Jie Venus Cohen

Springfield, Massachusetts Venus Cohen is a Frances Perkins Scholar at Mount Holyoke College, and a mixed, transgender creator. Their body of work explores the intersections of surrealism and identity. Their writing and visual art has been published or is forthcoming in Serotonin Poetry, ENBY Magazine, Fahmidan Journal, Wrongdoing Journal, The Hungry Ghost Project, The B’K, and Nat-Brut. They are the founding editor of LUPERCALIApress and assistant editor at Smoke and Mold Journal.

Olympia Villa

Rio Grande Valley / San Marcos, Texas As a proud trans woman, Olympia Villa is humbled by this opportunity of representation of her artistic work. Both pieces were originally a birthday gift for Nicolis Cantu (“Iconic” being the main birthday present). Olympia (re)presented the character “Ursula” in the second piece.

Ishan Summer

Icía Vázquez

Icía Vázquez is a Spanish fashion designer from A Coruña who graduated from the University of Vigo.In 2015 she started actively collaborating as a volunteer in several ecologist organizations. From that activism, she got in touch with sustainable fashion and started applying this perspective to her work as a creative and also as a consumer. In 2019 interns for Rochambeau, a fashion brand located in New York and finalist at the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund and winner of the US Woolmark Prize. Taking inspiration from designers like Yulia Yefimtchuck or Vivienne Westwood, her work is characterized for the importance of its narrative, focusing on expressing the designer’s concern about the actual issues of modern society and becoming a political statement whose relevance is emphasized on a visual level. This is noticed in her thesis, being a critic of the consumerist system of the actual economies. In 2020 she won a Fulbright scholarship and travels to New York, where she is currently studying a One Year Conservatory Program in Photography at the New York Film Academy.

Callie Wohlgemuth

Rockaway, New Jersey / Shutesbury, Massachusetts Callie’s work in this edition of Open Call explores the human relationship to technology, food, animal and media.

Back cover: AzeliA

Inside back cover:

Untitled (Volcano Thoughts)

Sophia Hess

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