Interpose: Poetry Zine

Artist Statement

We invite you to explore Interpose, a digital zine centered around Asian-American femme voices and experiences. Featuring the work of 9 designers and poets from the ILLUMINATE Poetry Series, the zine threads together a collage of image, motion, text, and spoken word. Hover and click as you scroll through for the full interactive audio and visual experience. 

May Kodama

Visual Artist & Designer

May is a graphic designer and illustrator who creates work to connect and communicate with those near and far. She believes that art and design have a transformative power of empathy for viewers and creators and aims to harness this power through her work. In her free time, you can find her climbing, eating something delicious, or petting her cat, Luna.

artist statement

In response to “Victim Directory” by Preeti Vangani

For this poem, I wanted to create a series of infinitely looping animations that went alongside the long and infinite list of victims. Just as each line shows a snippet of who "she" is, each animation shows a snippet of the victims, their lives, and who they are. Using bright colors and stark shadows, you see both the light of the victims as well as the darkness of what they've been through.

Artist Statement

In response to “Arrival as We” by Lauren Ito

As the last piece of the zine, our goal was to end with an uplifting and positive note as a symbol of the healing journey we are all going through, as well as the sense of support and solidarity we hope that this zine can hold for AAPI women. I wanted to create a video directly translating the visuals I imagine in my mind while listening to the poet's reading. Using a mostly warm color palette against a dark background, the animations give a sense of being enveloped and supported by the women around us, and the women who came before us.

Jamie Chen

Visual Artist & Designer

Jamie is a Bay Area designer and illustrator currently working in fintech. She hopes to tell authentic and visually compelling stories with her work. When she's not creating, she is eating potatoes, camping, and reading comics.

Experience more of Jamie’s work on Instagram.

ARTIST STATEMENT

In Response to “On the Back Porch, In Response to Andrew Yang” by Anouk Yeh

Unseen/Seen is a visual collage and archive of Asian American stories that have shaped the American landscape and its' history. Whether or not these moments are recognized, people of Asian descent have always been a part of the American fabric. Just like this piece, they are simultaneously moving, complex, and obscure from the mainstream yet profound in the making of this country. Unseen/Seen is a reaction to the poem, On the back porch, in response to Andrew Yang by Anouk Yeh.

Sarah Im

Visual Artist & Designer

Sarah Im is a designer and illustrator located in the Bay Area. She is excited by human-centered design and enjoys capturing delightful everyday moments in her illustrations. The Croton Petra is her favorite plant, and she prides herself in her ability to respond with the perfect gif.

artist statement

In Response to “object permanence” by Jireh Deng

This piece examines transience as it relates to a loss of identity and feeling unseen. The subject in each gif is undefined, morphing organically from one frame to the next in an infinite loop. We get a fleeting, layered glimpse of the character as abstracted forms flow into one another. This piece was created as a counterpart to Jireh Deng’s Object Permanence.

cat hong

Visual Artist & Designer

Cat Hong is a multidisciplinary designer who finds joy in new snacks and mystifying textures. She is passionate about people finding their own eureka moments as well as animal facts. It is not unusual to find Cat fascinated by a small object or surprising graphic.

ArTist STATEMENT

In Response to “Prayer for the Season” by Christine No

In response to Christine No's piece, "Prayer for the Season", For Your Little Monster is a satirical dollhouse that illustrates moments of covert racism. Inspired by the line "It takes a village to raise a monster," white-presenting figurines demonstrate rejecting parts of the Asian-American experience if not mutating it into a palatable version for their modern home. The format of a dollhouse is derived from the belief that a person's childhood experience critically shapes their perspectives and relationships with other people. Colors and camera angles were selected with intentionality inspired by movies like Parasite and Get Out while paralleling white representation in media. Woven in the piece are events that have left lasting impressions on the artist.

Jireh Deng

Poet

Jireh Deng (she/they) was born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley of Southern California. Her words appear with the Asian American Writer’s Workshop, podcast “VS”, Edsurge, Level Ground’s “Blooming in the Whirlwind”, and YouthSpeaks’s anthology “Between my Body and the Air”. She is a workshop participant in Get Lit Words Ignite 2020-21 Poetic Screenwriters Lab. Summer of 2021 she will be an editorial pages intern at the LA Times. Connect with her on Instagram and Twitter (@jireh_deng).

Christine No

Poet

Christine No is a Korean American poet, filmmaker and daughter of immigrants. She is a Sundance Alum, VONA Fellow, two-time Pushcart Prize Nominee and Best of the Net Nominee. You can find her work in: The Rumpus, Entropy, Columbia Journal, The Harpoon Review, Story Magazine, sPARKLE+bLINK, Vagabond City, Apogee, Atlas And Alice, Entropy, & various anthologies. Christine is the Advocacy Program Manager at ARTogether, a Bay Area nonprofit organization committed to building community, awareness and dialogue within and about refugee and immigrant communities through art and storytelling. Her first full length poetry collection “Whatever Love Means” is forthcoming by Barrelhouse Books in 2021.