issue five // march 2017
true to its name, "void of course" leaves the familiar for the uncertain, the inconclusive, the esoteric. featuring the work of twenty three contributors, our fifth issue explores the shadow realm, the twelfth house, and the rays of light in between.
available for pre-order // ready to ship 4/20
contributors
Alaz Ada is a student of social sciences born and raised in Istanbul, currently residing and studying in the French Riviera. She likes reading, writing, learning languages, looking for cheap plane tickets on the Internet and cooking more than she needs to. She smells fruits and vegetables before buying them and wants to study sociology and become a writer. Alaz writes poetry, fiction and a political column in her campus newspaper. She can do cartwheels but cannot whistle.
Ava Alamshah is a photographer + dreamer. Born in Glendale, CA, Ava approaches photography with a sense of whimsy and childlike wonderment. A constant dreamer and collector, forever enchanted with thoughts of nostalgic fancy. She currently resides in Los Angeles. "It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present, you know what I mean?"
Shelby Black is a University of San Francisco graduate and recent New York transplant. A native Memphian, she spends her time paying for overpriced coffee, prowling through used bookstores, and trying her hand at freelance writing.
Ilana Blady is a graduate of Pratt Institute, and currently works as an in-house illustrator and designer for Love and War Associated, as well as a freelance illustrator. She has worked for the Plaza Hotel, Hermès, and Toyota.
Rhea Bozzacchi is a writer/filmmaker and Columbia College Chicago grad based in Los Angeles and originally from Franklin, WI. She can be found making lattes to survive financially, playing drums in a feminist punk band to survive mentally, and humming Alanis Morrisette to survive emotionally.
Dorothy Chan is a poet living in Tallahassee, Florida. Follow her on twitter: @dorothykchan.
Brooke DiDonato was born and raised in Ohio, now based in New York City. She graduated with a degree in photojournalism from Kent State University in 2012. Her work explores the complexity of human cognition, and what happens when psychological anomalies manifest in reality. By placing viewers in the context of a narrative with no clear beginning or end, she forces them to ask "How did we get here?", "What happens next?", And finally, "Can we go on?" Her work has been featured by Vogue.it, PDN, Creative Quarterly, and iGNANT, amongst others.
Gabrielle Gilbert is a strange senior at Pratt Institute working on her thesis. She has work published in Dum Dum Zine, Vanilla Sex Magazine, Crab Fat Magazine, Witch Craft Magazine, Literary Orphans online and the second issue of Selfish magazine. She is anxious to announce that her first chapbook will be published through Dancing Girl Press sometime next year.
Delilah Jones is a mixed media collage artist, photographer and poet from New York. Her work has been featured by SFMOMA, Hyperallergic, Beautiful/Decay, Not Paper, Bust Magazine, The Rumpus, Serial Optimist, NYFW, and has exhibited locally and nationally. She has collaborated with numerous artists on a diverse range of projects and continues to connect with her creative community at large. She is currently working feverishly from her tiny cottage in the Hudson Valley dreaming all the impossible paper dreams with perpetually sticky fingers and her more-human-than-dog Baisley.
Freshie Juice is a multi-media artist. Model, Photographer, Painter and Filmmaker. She is a self-taught artist based in Philadelphia. Her work is a reflection of her own journey of understanding self, and others through performance. Most shoots she does either as model or photographer; she is heavily involved in the art direction, often resulting in a unique perspective that comes from a collaborative place. Her candid nature when exploring tough subject matter allows her work to be organic, at times hitting very close to home for her viewers.
Hsinyu Lin’s feminist practice is inseparable from their art practices. They were raised by a single mother and as a child, they were surrounded by single women of all types - widows, gamblers, maids, mistresses, businesswomen, hustlers, outcasts. From these encounters they observed both the resilience and the imprisonment of womanhood under patriarchy. Hsinyu’s passion for women’s liberation lead them to organize voidLab, an intersectional feminist collective for women, non-binary, gender-nonconforming, trans and queer people to express individual identities through arts and technologies. Their work had been exhibited at the Hammer Museum, IndieCade Festival, and Gene Siskel Film Center.
Kate Olsson is a New Jersey native, currently studying writing at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. She loves everything about her new home except the absence of her five cats. When she misses them too much, she finds local bodega cats to hug instead. You can find her work in issue four of Selfish. Keep up with Kate by following her on IG: @kate.linnea.
Mari Pack is a poet, short story writer, and recovering academic from the outskirts of Washington, D.C. She earned her M.A. in English Literature from the University of Toronto in 2013, and promptly abandoned the ivory tower to work for a social justice nonprofit in Israel. She loves deserts, tundras, and all other forms of wasteland. She co-hosts a radio show, the Badass Lady-Folk of Brooklyn, and her work has been published in Quail Bell Magazine, Fourth & Sycamore, Thought Catalogue, and Art Refurbish, among others. She lives in Brooklyn, and desperately wants a whippet.
Jayleen Perez is an interdisciplinary New York based artist who is pursuing her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Within her work, she incorporates photography, videography, and performance to actively distort the human body and atmosphere within the context of the studio environment. She comments on issues relating to social disintegration and suppression, and is obsessed with the transient nature of light. She has recently found extreme comfort in finger knitting and has accepted her ironic fate of not being a photogenic individual, for you can find her in uncomfortable and awkward poses while making work.
Nona Schamus is a filmmaker, editor, and photographer living in New York City, currently completing her MFA in screenwriting and directing at Columbia University. Her other passions include diner food and sex-positive, consent-based sex education.
Regina Schilling is an artist who works in print publications & fine art. She is the managing editor of Hey Lady, a quarterly that she runs from her studio in Olympia, WA. Despite her range of mediums, the thread that runs through her work is feminism, humor and the color olive green.
Sable Elyse Smith is an interdisciplinary artist and writer based in New York. Her practice considers memory and trauma while enacting an undoing of language. She works from the archive of her own body creating new syntax for knowing and not knowing, thereby marking the difference between witnessing and watching. To see is unbearable. She has performed at the Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum, Eyebeam, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA. Her work has also been screened at Birkbeck Cinema in collaboration with the Serpentine Galleries, London, Artist Television Access, San Francisco, and MoMA Ps1, New York. Her writing has been published in Radical Teacher, Studio Magazine and No Tofu Magazine and she is currently working on her first book. Smith has received grants & fellowships from Creative Capital, the Queens Museum, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Franklin Furnace Fund, and Art Matters. She is currently part-time faculty at Parsons The New School for Design.
Jia Sung is an artist assembled in Minnesota, raised in Singapore, and working out of Brooklyn. Her work is a conduit for her questions about cultural and postcolonial identity, and the female body, in all its fragmented and fraught forms. In her spare time, she is a monkey. Clients include Lenny Letter, Nautilus Magazine, and TED.
Genevieve Texeira is a Native NYer, Boriqua Afro-Latina multimedia artist. She is trying to continue living in New York as gentrification takes over and her 9-5 tries to eat her soul.
Brynn Trusewicz is an artist and designer working in Providence, RI. Through writings, social interactions, and adornment, her work explores the tensions between identity and appearance, especially as it relates to queer identities and the bodies that carry them. Presently, she instructs courses in digital embroidery and ornamentation at RISD. You can most often find her in the beyond section of Bed Bath & Beyond snacking on the samples and chatting with the moms.
Tamsen Wojtanowski is an artist living and working in Philadelphia, PA. She received her BS from Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY and her MFA from the Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. Her work has been included in recent exhibitions at Artist-Run, The Satellite Show, Miami, FL; COOP Gallery, Nashville, TN; Soil Gallery, Seattle, WA; Lux/Eros Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; and The Black Box Gallery, Portland, OR. She has taught at Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA; Arcadia University, Glenside, PA; and the Corcoran College of Art + Design, Washington, DC. She was added to Fotofilmic’s Shortlist 2016, and was a top ten finalist in The Print Center’s 89th International Juried Competition in 2015. She is a founding member of the artist-run exhibition space NAPOLEON, Philadelphia, PA. Upcoming solo shows include one in May 2017 at 621 Gallery, Tallahassee, FL, and the other in April 2018 at The Fleisher Art Memorial, Philadelphia, PA.
Kristen Wrzesniewski is a self-taught photographer who grew up in South Texas. Influenced by her degree in literature and a love of classic films, her ethereal, minimalistic portraits elevate the ordinary with elegance. In stripped down settings filled with natural light, her lens draws focus to the person filling the frame. She is regarded for her candid and authentic images. Kristen admits she likes shooting unconventionally, be it creating double exposures in-camera or simply allowing a shoot to flow naturally.
Nichelle Wyatt-Whyte lives a hermit-esque lifestyle in Northern California. She helps sell art in a small gallery, is interested in everyday aesthetics, human kindness, plants, art, and writing poetry and short stories in her free time. She owns multiple pairs of sweatpants.