69 Isabel Pedrazuela: The King’s Portrait

The King’s Portrait

Isabel Pedrazuela

The sun entered the room from the tall windows, covering every corner and bringing the colours of the walls to life. Pieter Paul observed the rays and studied them, mentally deciding which wall would be the perfect background for his piece. He slowly turned around, his eyes scanning every curtain, every moulding, every tiny bit of dust. It was a majestic room, only fit for a king. Or for a caliph, he thought. Even though the palace had been renewed and the decoration had changed, Pieter Paul could still see the remains of the Islamic fortress it had once been. He had heard of them, the Muslims that had invaded the peninsula many centuries ago, and he had also heard the stories of the kings and queens that had expelled them. They had taken over the land, with a cross in their hand, and they had sworn to gain back what had never truly been theirs. Two centuries later, the remains of the civilization that had lived inside those walls were still present in every corner of the city. Pieter Paul decided to put those thoughts aside. It was not his place to comment on the politics of the Empire. He had been born far from the capital, and he was considered a stranger in those lands. Humming a song he didn’t know the lyrics to, he started to prepare for the king. First, he set the easel, made of the best wood his master had found. Then, the canvas, white like marble but soft like the king’s clothes. Finally, his tools. Five paintbrushes of different sizes and a box with pigments in glass containers. The pigments had been a gift from the king, and Pieter Paul was now the proud owner of one of the most extensive collections of pigments he had ever seen. He took out the oil and started to prepare the colours. His work was suddenly interrupted by the loud metallic noise the doors made as they opened. An old man, twenty or thirty years older than Pieter Paul but with hair and a moustache as black as coal, entered the room with his chin up. He wore all dark clothes, with puffy sleeves and broad, heeled shoes. Two apprentices walked quickly behind him, carrying his tools. The man saw Pieter Paul and walked straight to him, not pausing a single moment to admire the room they were in. “The painter from Flanders, I presume?” The man spoke with a steadiness that only age and experience add to one’s voice. “I’m Pieter Paul,” he said, and cordially shook his hand. “Diego,” the man replied, quickly turning around. He moved swiftly, like a willow, as if he were being carried by the wind, even though all the windows were closed. It only took the apprentices a few minutes to set Diego’s working space up. Pieter Paul looked back at his own and realised how modest it seemed. “I was thinking that the red curtain could be the background for the portrait,” Pieter Paul said, pointing at the velvet fabric. Diego lifted his eyes for a split second to look at it, and then focused on his tools again. “The red is too juvenile. We will use black, to show the king’s power,” he stated. “But the black is too dark, the people will see the king and think of death.” “Better to think of a king who brings death to his enemies than to think of a king who lives for the entertainment,” Diego replied. “The people need to be reminded of his power,” he concluded. Then he turned to Pieter Paul as if he had just remembered something. “You are the diplomat, aren’t you?” Without waiting for the other painter’s answer, he continued. “Yes, I have heard of you. I saw your paintings in France, they are quite decent. The queen speaks wonders of you.” Pieter Paul felt his cheeks turning the colour of the velvet curtain. He had travelled to Madrid in an attempt to leave the queen, her opulent parties, her dark eyes, and the ghost of the dead king behind. “But of course,” Diego continued, “you must understand that the Empire is not France. We do not indulge ourselves in the kind of behaviours you must have seen in Paris. Here, the portraits are made so the people fear the king, not the

other way around.” The clock struck midday and the doors opened again. King Philip made his entrance, followed by half a dozen of his guards. “Ah, my friends,” he exclaimed as he walked through the room until the distance that separated him from the painters was the exact same that separated them. “I see you have met each other.” The painters nodded. The king looked at them both as one looks at a painting, analysing every detail of their faces, hoping to see himself reflected in their eyes. Philip turned to his guards. “Behold, two of the greatest painters of the continent! Here, in my palace!” He smiled widely. His teeth were yellow, and his nose was too long for his face, but Pieter Paul found him entertaining. “Pieter Paul, I have been waiting for you for so long! And Diego, my dear Diego, my most loyal portraitist!” Pieter Paul suddenly recognised the other painter. He was Diego de Velázquez from Seville. Rumour had it he had been born to a humble family, but he had climbed his way to nobility by delighting the king with his painting skills. King Philip, who was known for his artistic sensibility (and his political agenda to improve the image of the monarchy all over Europe) had been more than enchanted by the painter. Velázquez had been able to capture the power of the institution without shedding too much light on the corruption that had stained the monarchy’s reputation during the last century. “Shall we begin, then?” The king asked. While Pieter Paul had been reminiscing about the history of the Empire, Philip had walked to the black wall Diego had chosen as the background, and he was already posing for the portrait. Pieter Paul examined the king. He had the eyes of a ruler, but his pale skin and his sad eyes shown a weakness the painter was sure he would not want to see in the portrait. His body was strong and his clothes tight and Pieter Paul could almost imagine him on a horse, riding to battle or waving at the people. He was young, less than a quarter of a century had passed since he had been born. He had the physique of a soldier and the youth of a prince. And yet, his face told a different story. He was a descendent of the House of Habsburg and that was written on his eyes. Generations and generations of inbreeding had slowly started to reveal its effects on the poor king’s face. Pieter Paul was convinced that everyone in the court could see it, even if no one dared to say a thing. Before he started to paint, he quickly glanced at Diego’s canvas. The other painter had started at a steady pace, not too fast, but definitely faster than Pieter Paul. On his canvas, the king looked severe and powerful. It was only the beginning of the painting, but the Flemish painter could already see how the king was going to be represented. Dark colours, a hieratical expression and the chin slightly lifted, as if he were defying whoever dared to set eyes on the image. Pieter Paul looked at his blank canvas and knew he had a decision to make. He could follow Diego and create a political portrait that screamed darkness and power, greatness and wealthiness, a portrait that made the world fear the king of the Spanish Empire. Or he could paint the human being who was wearing the crown. He could paint the youth, the ambition, the life that run through Philip’s veins. He could paint his red hair and his dark blue eyes, and he could even add some colour to the obscure background Diego had insisted they both used. Feeling his heart pumping in the temples, Pieter Paul deliberately dipped the tip of the brush in the mix of oil and carmine pigments.

ABOUT Alexander Brand is a poet, writer and spoken word performer from Herne Bay, Kent. His work features publications such as Thanet Writers, Dissonance Magazine and Small Leaf Press. He is currently undertaking a PGCE in English and is enjoying his time teaching the subject he loves. Sylvia Plath and Philip Larkin are his favourite poets and he takes them as direct influences throughout his work. He enjoys travelling and 80s music and is a big fan of those who have the confidence to speak their minds and share their passions. He aims to continue to write as much as he can and he enjoys being part of the writing community.

INSPIRATION The theme inspired me through the link it has towards connection and creative thinking and I immediately wanted to submit something as soon as I saw it. It encapsulates what it means to be a poet and by having that distinct connection shows how we as writers work.

CONTACT Poetry by Alex Brand on Facebook Alexbrandpoet on Instagram Alexbrandy17 on Twitter

Matthew Mullins

ABOUT Matthew Mullins is a poet and painter from Margate, Kent. He is a co-editor of Foxtrot Uniform Poetry and is also a co-organiser of ‘Crank Verse’, a poetry collective that runs performance evenings in Ramsgate. His poetry deals with death, separation, nature, and mental illness.

INSPIRATION I’m interested in ecopsychology, and how, in modern times, we paradoxically feel a sense of seclusion and interconnectivity. Art has been a consoling force during the last year, and I was inspired to explore my feelings towards nature in a collection of poems from which Twilight Fugue is taken.

CONTACT Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/ UCTecSOpfqjjIQfHp pu7-J-A Instagram: @matthewmullinspoetry Facebook: https://www.facebook. com/matthew.mullins.391 ABOUT Miss B is from my new collection of short stories - The Upperthong Thunderbolt – to be published in March 2021. After my career in education, I now write YA/A fiction, short stories, and edit poetry. In 2013 I established Collingwood Publishing Limited. I live with my family in South Devon, England. A Game of Chess is my second novel and the sequel to The Dream Factory – published by Matador. The Upperthong Thunderbolt Short Stories collection will be published in March 2021.

INSPIRATION I believe the Miss B piece directly addresses your theme for the following reasons I loved the theme but wanted to challenge the second sentence - it implied a diminution of social contact. I disagree. Social contact is becoming more diverse in both audience and form – in fact, it is developing so quickly that it is presenting huge challenges to social and political institutions that most naturally crave inertia. Creating Miss B – based on a woman I met when visiting a care home – was a great way to show how enabling and life-giving these interacting technologies are. Miss B has also come to know her sexual identity, hence her ‘conversation’ with Yvonne – also in a gay relationship. Miss B, a disabled woman unable to speak, is liberated from solitude and isolation by a technology that has enabled her to ‘speak’ visually and fully interact. She has rediscovered her ‘inner voice’ – something which we all ‘lose’ by the age of seven. She is also (wickedly!) able to challenge and defeat Mason’s preconceived ideas of what being alive and conscious really is.

CONTACT www.johnsimes.co.uk Twitter: @johnthepoet2010 ABOUT Allison Whittenberg is a Philadelphia native who has a global perspective. If she wasn’t an author she’d be a private detective or a jazz singer. She loves reading about history and true crime. Her novels include Sweet Thang, Hollywood and Maine, Life is Fine, Tutored and The Sane Asylum.

INSPIRATION My inspiration for ‘The hard way’ is sorting through my parents’ things after their passing and ‘and, Joan Crawford left her daughter’ came from a conversation I was having with my son about a book I’d read (not Mommie Dearest) about the arguably misunderstood starlet. I thank him for the zinger last line.

CONTACT FB: /allison.whittenberg.3

Mo Laudi

ABOUT Multidisciplinary artist, composer, DJ and producer Mo Laudi proposes new perspectives in the field of sound installations. Informed by his South African roots, he is renowned for his key contributions to Afro Electronic music in London during the first decade of the millennium and, since then, in Paris. Mo Laudi experiments with sound as material. He creates sonic landscapes, mixing vocals, textures and rhythms, with his core knowledge and experience of video, fashion, dance, design and music as a socio-political critique of society. His work addresses such topics as race, the postcolonial, mobility and erasure. It deals with spirituality, African knowledge systems and Afrofuturism to form new pathways of understanding multiplicities of cultures. Initially influenced by the art of Gerard Sekoto, Ernest Mancoba, Pablo Picasso and Jean-Michel Basquiat, as well as by the omnipresence of music and dance at home and in the streets of Polokwane, Mo Laudi stays tuned to South Africa and Africa in general, while absorbing countless different approaches and encounters to form hsihsaodwonwlaongfuhaugme.anity)

CONTACT djmolaudi@gmail.com

ABOUT Phil O’Neill is 67 (never too old), and fulfilled his dreams by studying for an MA Creative Writing at the University of Kent Paris in 2017. He had been a prolific writer of poetry but felt he needed to learn the craft. He says it was the best year of his life. He remains inspired by the people he met in Paris and continues to write. He hopes to have a poetry book published this year.

INSPIRATION I wrote my first Hopper inspired poem in Paris in 2017. My daughter, Julia, recently sent me a link to a French TV programme proclaiming Hopper as the artist of isolation and lockdown (see also https: //www. overstockart.com/blog/edward-hopper-life-in- isolation). Through writing about Hopper I’d unintentionally plugged right into the Zeitgeist, as well as meeting the theme of The Menteur 2021.

CONTACT twitter @phoney9

Zoe Morgan

ABOUT Based in Tbilisi, Zoe is currently writing her dissertation on French Silent Film and is very inspired by early photography and cinema. She likes to transform old images into imagined worlds and invented discourse, and is fascinated by palimpsest. Most of her poetry is ekphrastic, and she loves creating characters based on figures in visual art. She is also very interested in exploring the relationship between the spectator and spectacle, trying to create a dialogue between them.

INSPIRATION For the theme Rewired, I was inspired to consider the relationship between photography and language — especially how one medium could alter the meaning of the other. This photograph by Albert Londe was an attempt to capture the state of a ‘hysterical’ patient at La Salpêtrière Psychiatric hospital. She’s being made into a spectacle, and so I wanted to give her some autonomy as a performer too. ABOUT Sarah-Jane Crowson’s work can be read in various journals, including the Iron Horse Literary Review, the Wales Haiku Journal and The Inflectionist Review. Alongside writing poetry, Sarah-Jane works as an educator at Hereford College of Arts, which is a small, specialist visual arts college in the UK. She is also a postgraduate researcher at Birmingham City University, investigating ideas of the ‘critical radical rural’. She studied English and American Literature BA (Hons) at the University of Kent.

INSPIRATION All three of my responses ask what a rewired space might look like. Hyphae references plant and human communications, overlaid to create a different language. Information Theory contrasts motifs from communication; carrier pigeons, printing devices and mathematical equations. Intersection wonders about potentially unruly spaces; what kind of hybrid creatures live in the space between digital and analogue?

CONTACT Twitter: https://twitter. com/sarahjfc Instagram: https://www. instagram. com/sarah_jfc Website: https://sarah- janecrowson. com

Colleen Rose

ABOUT Graduating from Wayne State University with a Bachelor of Arts degree with a focus in design, I am a practicing designer living in Detroit, MI, USA. Every new project, or even task, is an opportunity to explore methodology in a way that works accumulatively; constantly building upon the last. Design allows for the growth and implimentation of this archive of knowledge.

CONTACT colleenvrose.com @euphoricrecall ABOUT Reece Cordery describes himself as a language poet at heart. He loves being playful and experimental with language, using the sound and texture of words to elicit sensory and emotive responses. He tends to be interested in domesticity, capturing small moments - for example the noise of a house or the sourness of a lemon sweet - and unpacking the sensation and richness of conscious experience. Occasionally, he pushes into the ultra experimental realm of poetry, defying poetic tradition and familiarity, stretching language to strange places and towards themes that really gravitate to him, such as the body, nature, sexuality and spirituality.

INSPIRATION The interconnectivity between the arts, artists, and writing, is significant especially for poetry. It emphasises how creative writing is an art, and comes from the same techniques used in painting and sculpture - such as tender, careful treatment of material, and a focus on qualities like colour, texture, composition and collage.

Clair Meyrick

ABOUT Clair is a mother, poet, performer and artist. She regularly performs poetry in and around Kent and London. She also has a regular slot on Sheppey FM radio. Published in a couple of journals and online, she is now looking forward to illustrating her first collection of poetry, combining her love of painting and words.

INSPIRATION This poem is trebly ekphrastic. The waltz sequence in the film ‘The Fisher King’, the iconic photo of grand central station and the painting of my relative, Catherine, on the wall of my childhood home inspired the poem. Writing this meant I got to dance with my family history for a while.

CONTACT @houseworkaverse on Instagram and Twitter

ABOUT Isabel Pedrazuela is a writer from Spain. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Film and Media Studies at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, she studied Screenwriting at the New York Film Academy, and she is currently studying her Master’s in Creative Writing at the University of Kent. She is interested in both writing prose and writing for the screen, and her main focus is on historical fiction and fantasy.

INSPIRATION One of the things about art that has always interested me is the fact that every artist has their own way of seeing the world that surrounds them, and this is always present in their work. There is a special connection between the artist and the art. However, is there a connection between artists? How does an artist’s mind work when they are creating? What happens when two different artists are requested to create the same piece of art?

CONTACT Linkedin: https://www.linkedin. com/ in/isabel-pedrazuela- 837246159 Email: isapedrabla@gmail.com

Harrison McIlhargey

ABOUT Harrison McIlhargey is a collage artist currently based out of northern California. When Harrison is not farming vegetables, he is at his desk cutting away at the pile of printed media that he has collected over the years, and piecing them together like a puzzle. He continuously is inspired by the colors and textures found in the natural world, colorful houses, old cars, and the movement of human life. Harrison’s hope is to convey this inspiration through his work and give the viewer’s eyes something to feast on.

CONTACT @dingledong__

Achraf Touloub (b. 1986 in Casablanca, Morocco) lives and works in Paris, FR ABOUT Annalise graduated last fall from the University of Kent with a Masters in Creative Writing. She split her studies between Canterbury and Paris — Paris being where she spent most of her time after the onset of the pandemic. She is from Honolulu, Hawai’i, where she relishes her time under the island sun in a much more sought after guise of isolation. Soon to begin a teaching career in Hong Kong, she is endlessly inspired by the way cultures intersect with academia and is excited to see how her experiences living abroad in Paris will influence her life across the world.

INSPIRATION The theme of collaborative rewiring inspired me to illustrate a navigation for peace during the unbounded solitude of this time. Here, I’ve dissected the feelings that exist within the liminal space of dreams and reality, as well as explored how the two can ultimately impact each other.

CONTACT Instagram @annalisetvin

David Dykes, Setareh Ebrahimi and Bethany Goodwill

ABOUT David Dykes, Setareh Ebrahimi and Bethany Goodwill are University of Kent alumni and regular fixtures on the Kent poetry scene, who have hosted poetry nights in Faversham and Rochester. Setareh recently released her first full-length poetry collection, Galloping Horses, with Wordsmithery, David explores new structures in traditional forms, and Bethany writes poems about death and being in people’s cars.

INSPIRATION We produced Renga: Breaking the Night Open in one of David’s renga-writing workshops during the pandemic. The collaborative process of writing it and the decision-making involved encapsulated the experience of finding ways around being separate and isolated, and reflects the importance of human connection. ABOUT Kathryn Nowinski is a writer who lives in Detroit, Michigan. Trained as an anthropologist studying the relationship between arts communities and gentrification, her work thinks about relationships between artist-selves-as-recorders/thinkers/ writers- *whatever vs. experiential beings living in spaces and places. Memory and affect, performances of identity, and social processes that produce privilege and inequality are all central to her broader work, and she is interested in the ongoing conversations produced by the New Narrative movement. She teaches at the College for Creative Studies.

INSPIRATION This piece explores relationships between artists and close social (sexual?/romantic?) contact. Distances between our colliding lives constantly shift & I’m interested in what I carry of each of these poets-artists-lovedones into art—those who I lived with, got my dog from, or dated—how we exist in each other’s consciousness.

CONTACT Instagram is @freaqkyoatmeal

Niles M. Reddick

ABOUT Niles Reddick is author of a novel, two collections, and a novella Lead Me Home. His work has been featured in nineteen anthologies, twenty-one countries, and in over three hundred publications including The Saturday Evening Post, PIF, New Reader Magazine, Forth Magazine, Citron Review, and The Boston Literary Magazine.

INSPIRATION Archaeological work is an uncovering of the past and a rewiring and reintegrating of that past and history into the present, particularly in a place like mysterious Gobekli Tepe, where work is still in progress.

CONTACT Website: http://nilesreddick.com/ Twitter: @niles_reddick Facebook: https://www.facebook. com/niles. reddick.9 Instagram: nilesreddick@memphisedu Linkedin: https://www.linkedin. com/ in/niles-reddick-0759b09b/

ABOUT Sam Hall is a Kent-based writer of fiction, CNF and plays. Her play, ‘My Mind Is Free’ was shortlisted for the Human Trafficking Foundation’s Anti-Slavery Day media awards 2016. Sam’s stories have been previously published in Litro; Emerging Worlds; The Blue Nib; Dark London, volume 1; Indie Bites vol 1; The Medusa Project; Epoch 2: Aftermath. MA in Creative Writing from City University, London. She is the managing editor of Confluence – a Kent-based literary journal. Currently working on writing and illustrating a fact based graphic novel.

INSPIRATION How people interact with technology has always been a topic of interest. The move to much of life, including art, being online last year, is something that can be perplexing and maybe not entirely healthy. My story is about a developing human/machine interface/intelligence which may, or may not be, positive or benign.

CONTACT Twitter: @Wrdsmithery Facebook: Sam Hall – Writer Blog: samhallwriter.wordpress. com Instagram: wordsmithery.info

Nathan Scherrer nathan.gallery

Eleanor Marriot & Tony Tooke

www.eleanormarriott.com G@eleanor_marriott, Twitter emphotography, FB eleanormarriottphotography William Corwin (born 1976, New York, NY) is a sculptor, curator and writer. Over the years he has worked with and exhibited with The Clocktower Gallery, Theater for the New City, La Mama, Middle Collegiate Church, PS122 and Judson Memorial Church, among other downtown institutions. Internationally he has exhibited at George and Jorgen Gallery and Gazelli Art House in London, Frise Kunstlerhaus in Hamburg, Red gate Gallery in Beijing and the Taipei Artists Village. He has written for Frieze, Bomb Magazine, Canvas Magazine, ArtCritical, and currently writes for The Brooklyn Rail, Art Papers and Arcade Project. Recent exhibition projects include curating and writing the catalog for the exhibition Postwar Women (in 2019) at The Art Students League of New York, a show of the school’s alumnae active between 1945-65 featuring 44 artists, such as Louise Nevelson, Elizabeth Catlett, Lenita Manry, and Carmen Herrera; co-curating 9th Street Club (2020) an exhibition of Perle Fine, Helen Frankenthaler, Mercedes Matter, Grace Hartigan, Lee Krasner and Elaine de Kooning, at Gazelli Art House in London; and a series of exhibitions featuring the work of painters Marguerite Louppe and Maurice Brianchon at Lafayette College, Albright College (Louppe and Perle Fine) and Seton Hall University. He is the author of the book &Model, a history of a grass-roots artist-run gallery in the north of England published by Leeds Beckett University/ Leeds School of the Arts in 2019, and is the editor of the upcoming book Formalism; Collected Essays of Saul Ostrow, to be published in 2021 by Elective Affinity Press. Corwin is curating Downtown Train at PS122 in September 2021 which features the work of Boris Lurie, Penny Arcade, ggggrimes, Gordon Matta-Clark, and many others and his work will be included in the exhibition Roots/ Anchors at the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor Cultural Center in August 2021. He is represented by Geary Contemporary in New York. ABOUT Ayesha is an artist and writer, with a focus on illness and disability. Her work brings emotion to often overly clinical subjects, and is rooted in personal experience. She has shown her poetry, incorporating visual elements, at several exhibitions including ‘Deaf Experience’, a screening of short films from deaf and hardof-hearing artists by The Film Bunch, and ‘Mr W et al’, a celebratory event about art and disability in Hackney Wick. Her recording of her poem ‘Sleepless Sun Things’, written about lipreading, was selected for inclusion in a Poetry Jukebox, which was launched at Belfast International Arts Festival.

INSPIRATION Disability often means rest and pacing, acts which modify the artistic process. I wanted to explore feelings of loss that can come with lockdown and requisite rest. Similarities between experiences can bring further understanding of grieving lost time. Our relationships with nature can provide comfort, inspiration, and even collaboration.

CONTACT Instagram: @weirdbutinteresting Twitter: @AyeshaChouglay

Stephanie O

ABOUT Stephanie O is a British singer-songwriter and instrumentalist living in Paris. Her musical heritage, steeped in jazz, improvisation and collaboration has contributed to extensive time spent traveling the world on tour - her experiences informing her work and new creative projects and themes. ‘The Art of Eye Contact’ is a project she established in 2017 and continues to cultivate in conjunction with her musical endeavours.

CONTACT Instagram: @seestephanieo Web: www.stephanieomusic.com

ABOUT Lee is a Kent-coast based author, focusing on finding the dark humour hidden in dystopian themes, but occasionally making a foray into more literary (and on very rare occasions, poetic) realms. He has had multiple short stories published both on and offline and was shortlisted by the HG Wells Short Story Competition in both 2013 and 2015. In 2017 he abandoned the corporate world to focus on writing. His latest novel, Lodger, is nearing completion, should any agents be passing by...

INSPIRATION In early lockdown, depressed by enforced solitude, a writing friend challenged me to move beyond my comfort zone and produce something beautiful. Cast back thirty-odd years, water lapped at my feet as I sat in a different kind of solitude, on a granite boulder, gazing across a loch. Thank you, Tony, for inspiring me and breaking the block.

CONTACT Web: leestoddartauthor.com FB: /leestoddartauthor

Alexandre Ferrere

ABOUT Alexandre Ferrere is 30 and lives in Cherbourg, France. After a Master’s degree in Library Sciences and a Master’s degree in English Literature, he is now working on a PhD on American poetry and little magazines at the university of Paris-Nanterre. His fiction, interviews, essays and poems have appeared in dozens of magazines, online and in print. He is editor/review manager at Trio House Press and his experimental poetry chapbook entitled ‘mono / stitches’, handmade by artist Sara Lefsyk, is available at Ethel Press (2020).

INSPIRATION As I am a French studying American poetry, many of my poems are linguistic collaborations between French and English and the two languages either confront themselves in sound and/or meaning or enhance each other in terms of poetic possibilities. I’m also interested in spatial connectivity.

CONTACT Tw: @bluesfolkjazz ; neutralspaces. co/alexandre_ferrere ABOUT Hello, my name is Lukas Elstermann, I was born in Berlin and studied History of Art at the University of Kent in Paris, at Reid Hall, to be specific, which, for a year, became the star I navigated home by. Currently, I am a translator, German, English and Italian, and editor based in Berlin and Rome. I mostly work in comics, translating both literary graphic novels as well as mainstream- comics, for Image Comics and others. In my own writing, I like to explore the beauty in the inevitable. I am trying to explore classic fantasy-concepts and original characters in their last moments. The melancholic contrast between elaborate, weird worlds and their simultaneous demise is very interesting to me.

INSPIRATION Paris is a passion of mine, as are stories about the afterlife - this year’s theme has inspired me to explore the famous city from a different angle. I was interested in the notion of Paris ́ smell, its colors transcending into the world of the dead, and was intrigued by the idea of another ghostly Paris that still has some strange beauty to it.The piece is about a different, ghostly version of Paris and is meant to deconstruct language a bit, changing the way we think about life and language as opposed to death and silence. I think it fits the “rewired” theme quite well. Rebecca Rayner is a sculptor and installation Artist, working with discarded materials, namely upholstery foam, fabric cut offs and wax remnants, creating life size foam forms. These ‘fleshy’ forms, contorted, tied, and encapsulated in viscous layers of dripping wax resemble rotting flesh and yet simultaneously reminiscent of icing, sponge and cake, creating ambiguous landscapes that both repulse and attract the viewer. As well as from her passion for vegetarianism and the environment, Rayner draws inspiration from post- structuralist theory, the works of Julia Kristeva and artists including Louise Bourgeois, and Berlinde De Bruyckere. Themes of excess, consumption, objectification and the abject run through her work and contribute towards ongoing research into the psychology of the repulsion. Following her graduation from MA Fine Art at University Creative Arts with Distinction, Rebecca Rayner has exhibited works in the Joseph Wales Gallery, Margate and Lewisham Art House, London as part of ‘Hant’ (2020). Rayner is currently pursuing aspirations to further her research at PHD level.

CONTACT @rebecca.e.rayner https://rebeccarayner.wixsite.com/r ebeccarayner

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