issue 24
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Carlin Praytor BUSINESS DIRECTOR Belinda Yan CREATIVE DIRECTORS Sarah Kersting Enrique Lopez EDITORIAL DIRECTORS Charlotte Muth Josh Perkins DESIGN & BRAND DIRECTOR Sophia Swedback LAYOUT DIRECTOR Cindy Feng MARKETING DIRECTOR Jairo Lima EVENTS DIRECTOR Kai Henderson WEB DIRECTOR Diana Tu CONTACT baremagazine.org facebook.com/baremagazine @baremagazine ASUC SPONSORED
Adesh Thapliyal Alyssa Moreno Anissa Rashid Ashley Zhang Cade Johnson Chanea Smith Chantal Herrera Chesa Wang Cheyenne Tex Cristal Trujillo Diego Palacios Dylan Burgoon Emily Hom Francesca Hodges Grace Moceri Grace Schimmel Gustavo Delgado Hanna Biabani Jacqueline King Jacqueline Wlodarczyk Jah’rel Moyenda Jessie Yang Julia Choi Katherine Sheng Kim Romero Lauren Cohen Manya Naranzog t Megan Hansen Meili Wang Micaela Stanley Mihai Cipleu Nasim Ghasemiyeh Nikki Azerang Nina Rachmanony Olive Curreri Olivia Hanson Paige Strockis Rachel Hokanson Rashmi Bhoj Regina Madanguit Saffron Sener Sara Vargas Simona Zangari Sofia Viglucci Sophia Dawn Sophie Doucet Zahira Chaudhry Zoe Forest
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impressions of class on a digital canvas earthworks on self-indulgence & wet suits genre scene dancing behind glass sculpture garden refurnishing the court portraiture sunshine & noir
Belinda, Sarah, Enrique, Charlotte, Josh Sophia, Cindy, Jairo, Kai, Diana
EDITOR’S NOTE The women’s restroom at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is painted entirely red. I linger at the sink, taking a few shameless mirror selfies—capturing the afterglow. Egoism aside, this moment has been particular to my experience as an active consumer of the arts ever since I first developed such a keen appreciation for long, solitary days spent at the museum. Exhibit-wandering for hours prompts a sensation of artfulness that is so potent, it’s nearly a high. In the mirror, I try to detect this change. I am dizzied and relocated, existing anywhere between complete tranquility and utter disturbance. However, the tenderness of this distinctively post-art state always fades far too quickly, and without a good fight. In the comedown, I’ll exit through glass doors, peel the museum sticker off my shirt, get on the bus, and check my email. Move on. This issue of BARE also exits the museum, only without losing its artfulness. Straying from more controlled notions of visual art and its display, our photoshoots reimagine and reclaim classic motifs. In “Earthworks,” our models mingle with natural elements, inspired by the artist Ana Mendieta; “Genre Scene” alludes to the petit genre style of painting, decorating and complicating a quotidian scene; “Sculpture Garden” enlivens statuesque subjects, theatrical in its stillness;
“Portraiture” rearranges the composition and tone of classic portraits, presenting iconography anew. Our editorial pieces engage with artistic themes in an assortment of contexts. “Impressions of Class on a Digital Canvas” traces leisure as it indicates wealth within a range of art historical frameworks, from Renaissance portraiture to Instagram; “On SelfIndulgence & Wet Suits” grapples with the use of our own selves as artistic subjects; “Dancing Behind Glass” challenges Western modes of statically displaying dynamic performance pieces; “Refurnishing the Court” discusses the aesthetics and spatial organization of power; “Sunshine & Noir” references artists’ takes on California to examine a lust for the place that persists despite its grit. Existing beyond the museum—beyond white walls and exhibit placards—issue 24 is expansive and unfettered. BARE Magazine is artful at its core, and our student-staff has augmented this quality with full force. I am entirely impressed by our contributors’ exhibitionism and ingenuity, their ability to both self-reflect and reconstruct, and I am wholly proud to present their work: a mobile and tactile extension of BARE’s artistic capacity. Our team has created something beautiful, but I hope that it is also challenging and evocative—true to both its form and inspiration. Take this with you, sans admissions ticket. Circulate it. Hold on.
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IMPRESSIONS OF CLASS ON A DIGITAL CANVAS
Illustration by Sophia Swedback
leisuregram
You don’t have to be Orwell to catch it. The photo shows a perfectly manicured hand in front of a pig’s cage, pinky finger flaunting a silver ring, nails bright red, reaching, but not touching. A Marxist approach might describe it in clearer terms, calling it a visual metaphor for the class separations of today. But what stands out to me is more subtle–the polished surface of the ring, the unnatural insertion of the Instagram user into the photo via the hand. Even the pig looks posed, snout peeking between the gate, eyes looking directly at the camera. It’s a carefully constructed image of a fine day on the farm: laborless and leisurely, even a little bit flashy, signifiers of wealth appearing almost superimposed onto the surface of the image. On July 20, 2018, Kim Kardashian posts a photo poolside. This photo, decidedly more posed, by a celebrity who is known for her wealth, projects similar symbols of affluence. The lighting and the quality of the photo create a certain glow. The 6 • issue 24 • baremagazine.org
photographer appears to be inside the pool as she reclines beside it, gaze tilted down at the camera from a slightly elevated vantage point. Whether she’s at a resort in Colorado or the family home in Calabasas, I don’t know, but the background reveals a five-star view of the mountains. The photo looks too carefully composed to be candid, and Kardashian’s pose echoes the reclined portraits first seen in portraiture during the Renaissance. Regardless of intent or purpose, it creates a sense of the ethereal. This genre of photo, which I call the leisuregram, is a paradox. It presents as effortless despite careful composition and curation; it is actively and conspicuously consumptive under the guise of idleness and relaxation, a symbol of status and elitism on a supposedly democratic platform. On the internet, we broadcast recreation as proof of our purchasing power. This paradox, however, is not a novelty in the history
On the internet, we broadcast recreation as proof of our purchasing power. of art. Portraiture of the Renaissance was imbued with material and monetary wealth–the act of commissioning a portrait meant you had money–and the objects that appeared to accessorize the subject accentuated that wealth: jewels, elaborate garments, even pets. In the 1860s, Impressionism gave rise to genre painting, and fine art was no longer limited to the historical picture or the portrait–it could depict the domestic, the personal, the ordinary, and have equivalent artistic merit. Still, still, genre paintings of the time were heavily focused on bourgeois life. In 1882, Édouard Manet paints a barmaid staring out at us from the center of the canvas, and we assume the role of a bourgeois bargoer, fancying a bottle of liquor or indulging in one of those bright orange peaches. In “The Tea,” Mary Cassatt depicts two women, teapots and a saucer, a marble fireplace, and walls adorned with art, giving us a peek into a quintessential upper-class Parisian home and social pastime. On Instagram feeds today, even in leisurely activities that don’t necessitate consumerist behavior, we see parallels to what Thorstein Veblen called “conspicuous consumption,” or the exhibition of luxury goods and services to publicly communicate one’s wealth and power. A bath taken in the name of self-care is released unto the world with a few taps of the finger but must include in its framing a Lush bath bomb, candles, a silk robe waiting to embrace the bather. Photos of picnics include a basket of bread rolls and apples like Cézanne’s, too perfectly round and red to eat, and cheese, literally spilling over picnic blankets with abundance. One’s trip to the Museum of Modern Art is documented with a photo in which the subject has become sandwiched by a work of art and the photographer, showing the contemplating subject from behind, drawing attention to the profiting institution (location tagged above the photo like a header: “SFMOMA”) rather than the art itself. While the material consumption is not generally obvious in these photos, the undertone peeks through like the texture of a canvas thinly painted. The advent of the Instagram story strengthened users’ impulse to share the ordinary and the routine, sometimes even the mundane. While countless representations of the leisuregram exist in Instagram
profiles, the Instagram story made it more popular due to its automatic disposal after a 24-hour shelf life and a slideshow-like viewing feature making it more consumable en masse. It allowed Impressionistic images, fleeting and momentary representations of daily life, to be shared to followers on a more routine basis, leaving the Instagram feed to become the place where images can endure. While the painted surface of leisurely bourgeois figures crack with age, the deeper implications of culture and class composition persist in the leisuregrams we see today. It is important, however, to recognize how Impressionism and Instagram have weakened restrictions on expression in relation to identity. The interest of Impressionist painters in domestic scenes and leisure gave more visibility to the spaces and experiences to which women were limited. Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt painted women sipping tea, women in the home, women together, women alone. Instagram as a platform is free of the institutional constraints women and people of other marginalized identities face in the world of art and entertainment. Of the ten most followed people on Instagram, six are women, three are men and one is the official Instagram account, and half of the top twenty most-liked Instagram posts are by women. Instagram allows individuals a more populist platform, with reach based solely on popularity as opposed to classist measures of taste. It functions as a small drawbridge opening for women to attaining more visibility as artists and personalities. It would be remiss to critique the class culture of Instagram and not point out that the topic of gender is inextricable. Condemning the way we project leisurely activities such as self-care is often driven by the critic’s implicit misogyny, as selfcare is commonly perceived as a feminine activity. To critique the dominant culture of a platform that 39% of adult women use as opposed to 30% of adult men can at times feel like a critique of women, even while writing what is supposed to be a commentary purely on class. People of all genders are implicated in this critique, despite varying ways of performing class. Without doubt, media continually changes and transforms; yet, the conspicuous symbolism of wealth today deviates little from that of our ancestors centuries ago. This says a lot about our public display of class: from the genre painting, to Impressionism, to the leisuregram, we turn riches to recreation. ■
CADE JOHNSON
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Celia wears blouse, slip stylist’s own. Rashmi wears blouse, slip stylist’s own.
e a r t h w o r k s
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Photographer: Sofia Viglucci Production: Chantal Herrera, Jacqueline King, Grace Moceri, Anissa Rashid, Cheyenne Tex, Jacqueline Wlodarczyk Models: Rashmi Bhoj, Celia Davalos, Jae Lee
Celia wears top, pants stylist’s own. Jae wears top, shorts stylist’s own. Rashmi wears top, pants stylist’s own.
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Jae wears slip model’s own.
Jae wears top, shorts stylist’s own.
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Rashmi wears slip stylist’s own.
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Rashmi wears slip stylist’s own.
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Jae wears slip model’s own. Celia wears slip model’s own.
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ON SELF-INDULGENCE & WET SUITS
Model: Sarah Kersting
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Her camera was as simple as a gun: point and shoot. Back in June, my dear friend and I set our alarms for an early morning rendezvous. Since we inhabit disparate ends of the greater Los Angeles area–42 miles or a 1.5 hour drive in SoCal terms–she made the journey the night before and slept over. In the trunk of her car, she packed several belts, two of her father’s oversized suits (an essential part of his 1990s wardrobe), and her digital camera. Our plan was to do a photoshoot in the morning. This tradition hearkens back to my eighth-grade persona: often, my friends and I would expend extravagant time and effort in taking profile pictures for our newly-created Facebook accounts. Being from a beach town, we would trek to the strand in the cloudy hours of the morning to capture good lighting and an absurd quantity of mediocre photos. Over the subsequent hours, we would gleefully pore over these images. At last, we would lay our sacrifices to the altar of the internet to accrue the well-earned “likes” of our friends. While time and experience (thankfully) separate my prepubescent and current self, in this regard, not all that much has changed. That morning, my friend and I woke up to apply incandescent makeup while the coffee water boiled. She painted bright orange rectangles around her eyes, while I tapped lavender lipstick in thick swatches over my eyelids and cheeks, with a dark red lip to contrast. We sipped coffee and made a plan for the shoot–our general idea predicated upon wearing oversized suits while submerged in the sea. Wet suits! Wetsuits! We chuckled at the pun and set off.
We piled everything we might need into my rusty 2001 Jeep Cherokee and took the five-minute drive from my house to the El Porto parking lot. In many ways, this parking lot is emblematic of the town I’m from: it is a space in between the beach and the real world, a place full of cars and camaraderie, lightly sprinkled with sand. As we parked, we kicked off our shoes and filled our arms with towels, equipment and enormous, musty menswear. At that time of day, the Morning People were the only ones on the strand, including old folks taking their dogs for walks before the concrete gets hot, and dedicated surfers enjoying the tranquility of dawn. Notably absent: flocks of hungry seagulls and fitness junkies. For locals, expected beach attire includes T-shirts, bikinis, jean shorts, board shorts, and wetsuits if you are serious about surfing or paddle boarding. You can spot a tourist a mile away for wearing a sundress and wedge-heels, or tennis shoes in the sand. That morning, we were certainly the anomaly, breaking the sleepy silence of my beachy hometown. Her camera was as simple as a gun: point and shoot. We started slowly, stretching out in the sand. Gradually we dipped our toes into the surf, and submerged ourselves deeper and deeper into the Pacific, snapping shots all the while. The water was surprisingly warm and seemed to get colder as the sunlight broke over the hill to the east and as more people arrived at the beach. By 8:00 AM, our suits were heavy with salty water and our task was happily complete.
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We changed back into our regular clothes by the car, paralleling the surfers peeling off their wetsuits in the parking lot. We squeezed out the attire to the best of our abilities and headed home. We plugged her camera’s memory card into the side of my computer, and a tiny mosaic of photos materialized before our eyes, pieceby-piece, pixel-by-pixel. We clicked through them and gasped for joy. We were stoked. The pictures were just what we hoped they would be. Yet, when the tide of our excitement waned, we were at a loss. What do we do now? An absurd concept resulted in an absurdly actualized photoshoot. It was a creative venture without a motive– and similarly, without an outlet. Without hesitation, we shared our work on Instagram. We received immediate, unprecedented approval and positive feedback, a rush of amphetamine. But now what? Did we truly spend hours on a project to publish photos to an outlet where I have also shared a picture of my dog’s face with the caption: “thought I looked cute in this pic, idk may delete later?” We were perplexed. We wanted people to see our art, but also felt some pangs of guilt. Why were we displaying such overt exhibitionism? We could not help but have the insidious suspicion that our artistic venture was truly a land-grab for social capital. Our next thought was to post the photoshoot to the BARE Magazine website–yes, my dear reader, the publication currently in your hands. Nonetheless, we hesitated with that idea too. Because we are both executive directors of the magazine, it felt a bit corrupt to publish such a self-indulgent lookbook–“Wet Suits,” directed, shot, and modeled by Charlotte Muth and Sarah Kersting. Our artistic high faded and our fear of self-indulgence complicated our initial pride. For several months, those photos have lain dormant in folders of our computers until the day I decided to write this article.
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In a conversation over the summer, a high school friend reminded me of the concept of self-discipline. Two summers ago, she told me that she sought to eliminate all distractions to force herself to be comfortable with herself and her boredom. She deleted social media accounts and refused to watch TV or movies. As I thought about it later, I wondered where the restrictions ended. What is business and what is pleasure? Did she stop reading books and painting? Surely those hobbies exemplify a form of escapism. This past summer, she was freshly heartbroken: she told me she sought nothing but distraction, returning to the comforting arms of mindless television and social media. The notion of self-discipline urged me to reflect on my Catholic upbringing, and on the doctrine’s romanticized austerity. Perhaps self-discipline is what allows us to see beauty in the truth. A dead Romantic once thought that the two were interchangeable. In modern times, I think that few would agree with such a sentiment: the ugly truth manifests in the daily news, and layers of sticky falsehood obscure beauty. Thus, many prefer to see beauty where there is beauty, and prefer distraction to truth. Without doubt, we inhabit a society exceedingly interested in the Self. Self-promotion is a primary tenet of any successful college application, resume or career. Selflove has become a stride in psychological development
Many prefer to see beauty where there is beauty, and prefer distraction to truth.
When we craft ourselves into art exhibitions to be admired, we must not be surprised when critics admonish us for our exhibitionism.
at its most profound, and a face mask and hashtag at its most trivial. In her essay “On Self-Respect,” Joan Didion claims that the titular entity “is a kind of ritual, helping us to remember who and what we are.” In moderation, I believe that these matters of Self can be productive, even positive in striving for the nebulous notion of self-knowledge. However, I believe that danger lies in overindulgence, and that a quest for validation is a road to nowhere good. When we craft ourselves into art exhibitions to be admired, we must not be surprised when critics admonish us for our exhibitionism. At the end of the day, I do not believe that Sarah and I did anything wrong. Did we practice an act of selfindulgence by making ourselves the subjects of our own artwork? Certainly. Does that really matter in any significant way? Perhaps not. We felt proud of the products of our venture and felt content with the positive feedback–I do not believe that we were indulgent to a fault. Nonetheless, it is important that we noticed our own scruples with the situation, cautioning us from encroaching into the deadly domain of self-righteousness, a complacent sense of superiority. In times when Self has become a prevalent prefix, we must take a step back to see through the eyes of our audience. When we do, we might find that the image we have created of ourselves is neither beautiful nor truthful. ■
CHARLOTTE MUTH
Model: Charlotte Muth
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Photographer: Sunny Young Production: Dylan Burgoon, Julia Choi, Nasim Ghasemiyeh, Olivia Hanson, Meili Wang, Adesh Thapliyal, Simona Zangari Models: Dominique Bird, Lindsey Chung, Noel Jones, Niki Monazzam, Dana Price
g e n r e
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s c e n e
Dana wears coat, top, pants, boots stylist’s own. Dominique wears blazer, satchel, belt, pants, shoes stylist’s own. Noel wears blazer, belt, stylist’s own, watch, purse model’s own, skirt, loafers stylist’s own. Lindsey wears earrings model’s own, blouse, bustier, pants stylist’s own, shoes model’s own. Niki wears blouse, bustier, pants, loafers stylist’s own.
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Niki wears blouse, bustier, pants stylist’s own. Lindsey wears earrings model’s own, blouse, bustier, pants stylist’s own. Dana wears coat, top, pants, stylist’s own.
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Noel wears blazer, skirt, loafers stylist’s own. Dana wears coat, top, pants, boots stylist’s own. Niki wears blouse, bustier, pants, loafers stylist’s own. Lindsey wears earrings model’s own, blouse, bustier, pants stylist’s own, shoes model’s own. Dominique wears blazer, belt, pants, shoes stylist’s own.
Niki wears blouse, bustier, pants stylist’s own.
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Dominique wears blazer, satchel, belt, pants, shoes stylist’s own. Noel wears blazer, belt, stylist’s own, skirt, loafers stylist’s own.
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Lindsey wears earrings model’s own, blouse, bustier, pants stylist’s own, shoes model’s own.
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DANCING BEHIND GLASS As I wander through the de Young Museum, its portraits and landscapes and sculptures seem to be ingrained into the very fibers of the walls and ground supporting them. I cannot imagine its art residing anywhere else and for many of these objects, aesthetically pleasing or provoking pieces created to be displayed and gazed upon, the museum is the ideal setting for this art to impart its meaning to viewers. But in Gallery 40, situated within one of the cases is a particularly striking object, a “Mask for Okperedegede.” The label informs the viewer that it is a 20th-century work from Nigeria, made of wood painted with orange and black pigment, an object used in the annual Okperedegede masquerade by the Northeast Igbo people. It represents a spirit, and dancers wear it in a unifying purification ritual during the dry season. This is all the visitors who casually look at it for a few moments will know, if they even bothered to read the label. This performance piece, like many others in Gallery 40, is severely limited in its ability to convey meaning by the fixed static view inherent to museums. You can see in the intrigued but easily distracted gazes of the various patrons that they consider it a mere curiosity, an interesting artifact of a culture of which none of them have ever heard. It does not grab their attention like Diego Rivera’s “Two Women and a Child” or John Singer Sargent’s “Caroline de Bassano.” There will always be a mass of people clamoring to view those famous works while this mask slips through their gaze. The spirit that lives within the decaying wood and fading pigment has lost its power behind the wall of glass.
And yet, within this carefully carved wooden mask is so much power, so much life. If only the museum patrons could see the mask in the action of dance, rather than confined behind a sheet of glass, flatly and statically propped up within a display case. If only they could see that there is so much more to this piece than can be condensed to a museum label or really any textual description, including this article. It is crucial to understand that these masks do not represent spirits as the label suggests. They are spirits, often the reincarnated dead who return to participate in a particular ritual. Spirits leave the spirit world to inhabit the masks, which outwardly depict the spirits for the community to see. But though the masks are spirits, the power and significance of this only emerge through performance. They are not relic or artifact, but performance pieces and through performance and dance these spirits are able to exude their force. West African masquerades, the origin of these masks, center around a large collection of multi-faceted spirits and characters that have developed over the centuries. This masquerade serves to unify the community. Often, masks are used to signify and define power and authority by dictating who wears which mask. Here, every member of the community owns an Okperedegede mask and dancers are chosen by skill rather than age or role within the community. None of these notions could be understood just by looking at the “Mask for Okperedegede.” Despite the attempts of certain art historians and anthropologists, these spirits cannot
Illustration by Grace Moceri
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The spirit that lives within the decaying wood and fading pigment has lost its power behind the wall of glass.
be reduced into neat categories of good and evil, male and female, wild and calm, which presents another challenge for museums. The Okperedegede masquerade consists of four to nine characters, including both comedic and frightening spirits. The first character is always Okorompku, a horned troublemaker. Last comes Asufu, the most powerful spirit in the ceremony, accompanied by his two wives. The others may come in any order and once the jealous Asufu joins, he drives the other spirits away from his wives. Through outbursts and violent movement, he asserts his authority and strength. Particularly rebuked by Asufu is the satirically-portrayed supplemental character of the European colonial officer. With his all-khaki suit and contrasting mask, the colonial officer is socially incompetent, taking notes, asking silly questions, and acting inappropriately within the society. The ridiculous behavior of the European in the Igbo ceremony mirrors the problems of putting Igbo culture on display in the context of Western museums. The juxtaposition of the comical, otherized European figure with the other spirits creates unity in the Igbo community, just as the exhibition of foreign cultures was often used as a tool of European colonialism. The eyes and nose of his mask are much smaller and he has a large grimace, rather than the slightly opened mouth of the other masks. In demonstrating complete cultural incompetence, the official adds to the power of Asufu who rebukes this outsider and additionally allows the community to reflect on its own identity.
research the Igbo community and this particular ceremony to better understand, but after intense searching, all I could find on the masquerade was an undergraduate dissertation by Catherine Robinson entitled “The European Image in West African Masquerades and Spirit Possession.” I went back after learning more and stared at the piece longer than I had at first, trying to imagine an Igbo dancer wearing this mask, interacting with the other spirits, inspiring and linking together the community. I am not even quite sure which spirit this mask is. Given the elaborate hair-do, it is not the European, as the hair is an ideal of the Igbo people, nor is it Okorompku due to the lack of horns, but it could be Asufu or one of his wives or another, undocumented character. Despite my efforts, the fullness of this piece can only be witnessed within the context of performance and ritual. Even though viewing this mask in a museum is better than never seeing a piece of this culture, for an outsider it can never be fully appreciated or understood. Without performance, it is merely a piece of pretty wood that was once a spirit. ■
ZOE FOREST
When I first saw the mask, I wanted to fully understand it, but I could not see the history behind it, everything it represents to the Igbo people. I took to the internet to
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Joon wears skirt stylists’ design.
s c u l p t u r e
g a r d e n
Photographer: Enrique Lopez Production: Mihai Cipleu, Olive Curreri, Sophie Doucet, Regina Madanguit, Sara Vargas Models: Hee Joon Youn, Dominique Pillos
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Dominique wears shawl, skirt stylists’ design
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Joon wears top stylist’s own, skirt stylists’ design. Dominique wears top stylist’s own, skirt stylists’ design.
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Joon wears top stylist’s own, skirt stylists’ design. Dominique wears top stylist’s own.
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REFURNISHING THE COURT CW: sexual assault, sexual violence
In a weird, perverse way, I feel lucky enough to have come of age during a time in which sexual assault survivors have visibility in the media, thanks to growing awareness and activism on college campuses, as well as the #MeToo movement. After reading articles and stories and essays by those my senior, I’ve become cognizant that this visibility, up until recently, was not the norm: survivors used to exist entirely behind closed doors, their voices quiet, their bodies in shadow. To discuss assault was to combust. And so part of me celebrates this presence, this loud(er) existence. Another part of me wonders if this type of saturation is the right type, or if it’s too much—it can be overwhelming, everyone’s thoughts welcomed to the table. And now here I am, welcoming my own thoughts to this table, contributing yet another think-piece into the void about the Kavanaugh confirmation and how it makes me feel. Thanks to his intense media coverage, sexual assault has very suddenly transformed into casual conversational fluff—a professor will mention it here, an aunt will post about it on Facebook over there, your roommate will put on CNN’s 24-hour coverage as background noise, like ocean sounds in the rain, or lo-fi 24/7 hip-hop beats. So I find myself confronted, again, with being both thankful for the exposure and disgusted by the normalization. The Kavanaugh story, alongside the general population’s comfort in broadcasting personal opinion, very actively forces survivors of sexual assault to relive their trauma. This makes the media, particularly the social kind, a hostile space. At the same time, in certain corners of the internet there are moments of genuine support— these hearings have catalyzed people to share their stories, be they from yesterday or 56 years ago, and to validate one another in the comments section. Questions and doubts normally imposed upon survivors were magnified, intensified, amplified in the case of Dr. Ford due to the national nature of a Supreme Court confirmation. On September 26, 2018, the president tweeted: “I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with
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I find myself confronted, again, with being both thankful for the exposure and disgusted by the normalization. local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents. I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place!” This sentiment was echoed on my newsfeed by my cousin in Israel, my freshman year floormate, my younger-sister’s-friendfrom-second-grade’s mom and my roommate-fromlast-year’s aunt. These musings, I am here to tell you, are incredibly dumb, and also really really stupid. “Unfriend these people!” you might offer as a solution, but I can’t just unfriend my cousin; last time I did this, his father (my uncle) asked if I was a women’s studies major. I am not. But I am a woman? With an opinion? That I’m sharing? There are scores of reasons survivors wait to report or choose not to report at all. The National Sexual Violence Resource Center states that 63% of sexual assaults go unreported to law “enforcement” authorities, and this figure is most likely much higher. Let’s say I present this statistic to that disparate list of people. Why, they might ask me, don’t people report? And I would tell them: most people find reporting to be an unsafe and unnecessarily uncomfortable process in which their experiences are doubted as truth. Additionally, they often find themselves being blamed, at least in part, for irresponsible actions that led to the circumstances of their assault. I would also, in response to such a question, point to the physicality of pursuing legal action. Images and footage from both the Blasey-Ford hearings and those of Anita Hill, clearly display that the legal spaces in which we ask survivors to relive and recount their traumas orchestrate a theater of intimidation, choreographed and designed into a set of spatial hierarchies. It is one thing to recount in private to a friend, or in a therapist’s office. It is quite another to enter a grand room with lofted ceilings and to take a lowered seat in front of a panel of men, all under the eyes of a live audience of spectators as both women did on national television.
politico.com
Survivors’ bodies in these spaces receive a series of physical, atmospheric messages that they are less, that they will have to fight to be believed.
This not-so-subtle conglomeration of signs and symbols conveying edicts of unfavorable power dynamics can be found not just in the chambers of the Senate Judiciary hearings, but in your regular old Alameda County courtroom, or your campus police center. Survivors’ bodies in these spaces receive a series of physical, atmospheric messages that they are less, that they will have to fight to be believed, inducing feelings of anxiety and danger. It is unclear to me why, after all this time, with so many massive cultural shifts towards visibility, accountability, and support, we still utilize such methods of induced discomfort, requiring the survivor to protect themselves, to suit up for battle. Between 1991 and 2018, an almost 30-year span, no updates were made to the blueprints of such a hearing; the bodies in the chamber mirrored one another, in some cases not just in positioning but in identity. In the same way that I wear steel-toed boots when I go out, or that I might put my arms up in front of a bear, Anita Hill armored herself in shoulder-padded turquoise when asked to face this sort of panel, providing herself with genuine protection equally aesthetic in nature to the tactics of intimidation utilized by the court. Someone needs to draw up new plans, make some new costumes, build a new set, think of different blocking, hire a new cast—anything to reorganize, restructure, so that maybe the images of such setups, when dispersed, are not so discouraging, so archaic. Maybe then more people would report, and my cousin would finally shut up. ■
GRACE SCHIMMEL
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p o r t r a i t u r e Photographers: Maddy Rotman and Zahira Chaudry Production: Zahira Chaudry, Sarah Kersting, Kim Romero, Chanea Smith, Cristal Trujillo, Sofia Viglucci Models: Madison Aubry, EJ King-Berg, Cailyn Schmidt, Doug Schowengerdt, Vanessa Suárez, Keven Truong, Virgil Warren
Photographer: Maddy Rotman EJ, painted by Cristal, wears harness, pants stylist’s own.
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Photographer: Maddy Rotman Madison, painted by Sarah, wears blazer stylist’s own. Vanessa, painted by Chanea, wears blazer, bra stylist’s own.
Photographer: Maddy Rotman Doug, painted by Chanea, wears pants stylist’s own.
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Doug, painted by Chanea, wears pants stylist’s own.
Photographer: Maddy Rotman Virgil, painted by Chanea, wears suspenders stylist’s own.
Photographer: Maddy Rotman Madison, painted by Sarah, wears bra model’s own, blazer, pants stylist’s own. EJ, painted by Cristal, wears harness, pants stylist’s own.
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Photographer: Zahira Chaudry Doug, painted by Chanea, wears pants stylist’s own. Cailyn, painted by Chanea, wears bra, pants stylist’s own. Madison, painted by Sarah, wears bra model’s own, blazer, pants stylist’s own. Virgil, painted by Chanea, wears pants stylist’s own.
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Photographer: Maddy Rotman Virgil, painted by Chanea, wears pants stylist’s own.
Photographer: Maddy Rotman Keven, painted by Chanea and Zahira, wears overalls stylist’s own. Vanessa, painted by Chanea, wears blazer, bra, pants stylist’s own.
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SUNSHINE & NOIR
Illustration by Sophia Swedback
C alifornia is contradiction and confusion, the high and the hangover.
In 1848, when William James Marshall found gold flakes in the Sacramento Valley he tried to keep it a secret. Of course, word got out. The news spread to the rest of the country, and in 1849, initial disbelief was followed by the largest migration in American history. After President Polk confirmed the gold’s presence, thousands left their homes and families to make the journey West to capitalize on the discovery. Soon, the gold was gone and California’s scenic valleys were left mostly destroyed by the mining techniques of the desperate and determined. California became a spectacle, and the myth of the Golden Land was born. The California dream has always been a narrative of outsiders. It’s a myth built around the idea of a journey, where the driving motivation is to pursue fame and wealth in a land where both can be obtained quickly. In this notion of success, so superficial and grandiose in its mentality, the dreamer is set up for failure even at the dream’s conception. At a certain point, the outsider 42 • issue 24 • baremagazine.org
will no longer be outside, the discrepancy revealed, the initial perception obscured. Even California’s physical beauty cannot subdue the complicated nature of what it means to exist in a place that has been compared to paradise. The arc of legend, journey, and dissipation is a prevalent theme in the California narrative. In 1939, John Steinbeck captured the journey West in The Grapes of Wrath, using the Joad family to portray the plight of the Midwestern farmer during the Great Depression. To the Joads, and every person whose hardship they personify, California is the land filled with opportunities that elsewhere cannot provide. But with the brutal realization that their financial problems have merely been relocated, they are left to navigate California and the pain of their unfulfilled dream. The novel ends with the Joads in California, their suffering unresolved and their future uncertain. The dissipation of the dream is cruel, and continuously inflamed by the appeal of false promises. The intricate fabric of the true California narrative is ignored and
replaced. It is not the history of the land that the individual wants to take part in. Rather, the California dream is about individuals themselves and the imagined future successes California, and only California, will provide them. The preservation of this myth rests upon California’s crossgenerational magnetism. In 1950, an eighteen-year-old Ed Ruscha made the journey from Oklahoma to California, his trip geographically the same as the one taken by the Joads that Steinbeck fictionalized thirty years prior. While Steinbeck dramatized the journey with hope and optimistic longing, Ruscha made his journey with more objective awareness,
“I love California; everything is so artificial” – David Hockney
documented by paintings and images that were careful to avoid the trap of romanticization. His pursuit of the same, more modernized California dream minimized any false notions of its glamour. When he took pictures of every building on Sunset Strip, his topographical presentation was impersonal. This choice captured the LA landscape with honesty. His work depicts how buildings and gas stations can be found anywhere—any attempt to assign iconic status to the ordinary proves misguided. David Hockney’s painting, Pool with Two Figures, depicts pool inhabited by a lone swimmer, and a man looking down at the swimmer submerged in water, both the figures and the pool foregrounding a lush landscape. It presents a visual representation of California’s material culture. Hockney’s colors are rich and romantic, but the lack of emotion behind the figures, and the contrast between the natural and unnatural, suggests a lack of depth and connection. Hockney observes the California contradiction: his painting rings with cynicism, but equally celebrates California culture. In regards to his personal feelings toward the Golden State he stated, “I love California; everything is so artificial.” This simultaneous admiration and critique speaks to the way the dream of the Great American West is separated from its reality. He acknowledges that the idealized pool and big house exist, but they are nothing more than what they appear to be. Thus, Hockney depicts the true banality of California.
○○○
When my Dad made his journey out to Los Angeles from New York in the early 80s, he stopped at a gas station in the middle of Nebraska. Twenty-five with his life packed into his car, he told the older man working there where he was from and where he was headed. The man, undoubtedly familiar with this kind of kid, unsure but optimistic and too prideful to turn back, looked at my dad and said, “Out of the frying pan and into the fire, huh?” To my dad, and to other travelers bold enough to believe California will accommodate them, there is a fascination with the promise. They grow up with the subconscious belief that everything they could ever want exists out West. Regardless of what works against them, this intangible idea remains too tempting to ignore. It’s a mixture between the desire to overcome obstacles and the naiveté of underestimating the obstacles themselves. After he arrived, he took about two years to figure out his role in the city. He lived with his dalmatian on the beach, working on music videos and living the California lifestyle devoid of glamour, but somehow still charming in its struggle. One Christmas, he couldn’t afford to make it back to New Jersey, so he spent it buying a Charlie Brown style Christmas tree and celebrating with the other California transplants in his apartment complex. It wasn’t a dream, but it wasn’t entirely bad either. It was the day in and day out nature of life, but with a beach to walk to and no snow to shovel. Besides its technicalities, he realized, as every outsider does, living in Califrnia involves the same sense of survival that’s needed to live outside of it. While moving may eventually produce for them everything they wanted, the dream they anticipated will inevitably be left behind on the road that brought them there. Alluring and all-consuming, with the potential to inflict both warmth and pain, California is not a dream, it’s a fire. ■
MICAELA STANLEY
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