Description
May 2024
Consider gifting a subscription to yourself or a friend.
Editorial Note: Surface
By Jasmin Fookes, Managing Editor
Our Spring 2024 issue considers the theme of surface in relation to artistic practice, criticism, and writing. Planning of this issue began in the autumn of 2023, when BlackFlash extended a call for pitches with the following prompt:
What kind of boundary is the surface? The notion of a surface or the surface suggests delimitation, an outside or uppermost layer. But as a verb it also implies a movement, surfacing out of water and towards air. As a durable layer of our everyday surroundings, it might mean texture, plastics, wood, or other human-made or extracted materials. Hands plunged beneath the surface of the earth to push plant roots down or knees abraded on concrete sidewalks. How does the surface shape engage with the material world? How do some surfaces come to be considered permanent while others permeable? How does the idea of a surface translate to the digital realm? How did the surface become understood as a metaphor for a (lack of) profundity of knowledge? How is the surface implicated in the status of the image itself, as a support or as a medium?
I don’t believe BlackFlash has extended a formal call for pitches before. On November 3rd, the submission deadline arrived. Compiling the pitches, I was elated to find that we had received over 50 strong submissions. With one part-time employee, a contracted editor to do the substantive editing (much appreciation to Alison Cooley), and a volunteer editorial committee, a new but exciting hurdle was upon us: how would we carefully consider them all? A very happy problem indeed.
The wrap-cover of BlackFlash 41.1 points towards an artist project by Mariam Magsi which presents a history of othering through their many photographed veils. The issue opens with a reflection by artist Aralia Maxwell on the viewer’s perpetual translation of her unconventional painting practice, from sharing space with the physical object, to scrolling upon it online, to finding it now in the pages of this magazine. In their conversation with artist Jennifer Laflamme (Mifi Mifi), Dhvani Ramanujam discusses the human imprint on their work, from the fabrics employed to the interactivity the finished object invites. In LEGS L’EGGS LEGS, Jennifer Still attempts to connect the dots in reverse, tracing the many collaborative iterations of her poem through a conversation with collaborators, Christine Fellows and Chantel Mierau. In her profile piece, Sage Wosminity explores the rich terrain of Chukwuduben Ukaigwe’s multidimensional work.
In the first of two features, Lauren Prousky treats the fluctuating colour and form of the cuttlefish as a lens to investigate how and why one creates within an adverse cultural and political climate. In the second feature length contribution, Mika Yassur examines the ways in which aerial photography renders surface geography. Yassur considers the flattening in military photos of the Negev in Palestine alongside artist Fazal Sheikh’s photography, which situate and give dimension to the same land and to the struggles it holds. Closing out this issue, Trey Le considers how 2SQ artist Jeneen Frei Njootli situates their body as a mechanism of reciprocity in engaging with Indigenous ways of being and making.
For a writer, pitching can be scary. I admire this vulnerability tremendously. This call not only yielded the remarkable texts found in the pages of this issue, it also cultivated a promising pool of writers for future engagement for which I feel so much gratitude.
Editorial Note – above
Artist Project:
Material Conversations
Aralia Maxwell
Conversation:
Ghosts in the fold: in conversation with Jennifer Laflamme (Mifi Mifi)
Dhvani Ramanujam
Conversation:
legs l’eggs legs
Jennifer Still in conversation with Christine Fellows and Chantel Mierau
Feature:
My cuttlebone is a broken heart and it propels me forward
Lauren Prousky
Artist Project:
Purdah: Veiled Realities
Mariam Magsi
Feature:
Reconfiguring the Aerial: (In)visibility in the Naqab and Fazal Sheikh’s Desert Bloom
Mika Yassur
Profile:
Locutions: Fragments out of a Deluge
Sage Wosminity
Profile:
Infinity first dwells within a mortal body: Jeneen Frei Njootli
Trey Le
Cover: Mariam Magsi. Where is Home. 2021. Digital photograph. 91 x 61 cm. Photographer: Mariam Magsi. Image courtesy: the photographer.
BlackFlash is grateful to Canada Council for the Arts and SK Arts for the production and dissemination of this issue.
To be distributed in May 2024. Consider gifting a subscription to yourself or a friend.
