Issue #1
art + media
Edited by David Ng and Kriveena Chand
“Distorted Boundary”
by Feixue Mei
Feixue Mei is an interdisciplinary artist based in Richmond, Virginia and Maryville, Missouri. She is fascinated by mass media and internet culture. Her work explores diverse media such as publications, videos, performances, illustrations, comics and installations, and examines how they may be used to address such context as globalization, cultural manipulation, language adaptation, intimate relation, as well as fluid identity. She is also an art educator at Northwest Missouri State University. She earned an MFA in Design with a concentration in visual communications from Virginia Commonwealth University, a BFA in Graphic Design from Colorado State University, and a BFA in Visual Communications from Central China Normal University.
“Diaspora Blues”
by Belle (Bom) Kim
Belle (Bom) Kim is a cartoonist and PhD candidate in English literature at University of Washington. Her comics are deeply informed by her lived experiences of navigating economic and visa insecurities, systemic racism, and mental health concerns as a non-citizen woman of color. In her work, she seeks to interrogate how marginalized communities have been displaced, racialized, and instrumentalized, as well as how they have resisted such practices in creative and powerful ways. Ultimately, her comics attempt to engage with the hidden potentialities of the everyday and mundane, while also reminding us that writing is always a deeply political act. Her comics are forthcoming in Exposition Review and Pangyrus, and can be found at bunboti.com.
COVID Lungs: A Trilogy
&
A Series of Self Portraits: The Valkyrie, Athena and Kali
by C. Christine Fair
C. Christine Fair is a professor in Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program within the School of Foreign Service. She studies political and military events of South Asia and travels extensively throughout Asia and the Middle East. Her books include In Their Own Words: Understanding the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (OUP 2019); Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War (OUP, 2014); and Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States (Globe Pequot, 2008). Her forthcoming book is Lines of Control: Lashkar-e-Tayyaba’s Militant Piety,with Saifina Ustad (Oxford University Press, 2020). She has published creative pieces in The Bark, The Dime Show Review, Furious Gazelle, Hyptertext, Lunch Ticket, Clementine Unbound, Awakenings, Fifty Word Stories, The Drabble, Sandy River Review, Sonder Midwest, Black Horse Magazine, Barzakh Magazine, Bluntly Magazine, Badlands Literary Journal, among others. Her visual poetry has appeared in pulpMAG, The Indianapolis Review, Typehouse Literary Magazine, The New Southern Fugitives and forthcoming pieces in Existere Journal of Arts & Literature PCC Inscape Magazine. She causes trouble in multiple languages.
Twitter: @CChristineFair
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/c.christine.fair
“Veronica's Cloths”
by Johnson Bowles
K. Johnson Bowles has been featured in 80+ exhibitions and 60+ publications. She is the recipient of fellowships from the NEA, Houston Center for Photography, the Visual Studies Workshop, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She received her MFA from Ohio University and BFA from Boston University.
Instagram: kjohnsonbowles1
Twitter: @BowlesJohnson
“Pocho”
by Cheryl Aguirre
Cheryl Aguirre is a poet based in Austin, Texas. Their work focuses on queer and biracial experiences in a red state. You can find their previous work in Ghost City Press and The Whorticulturalist. You can follow them at @drowsy_orchid on Instagram, or @wheat_mistress on Twitter.