SHEI Magazine // Winter 2020

Psyche

Standford Lipsey Student Publications Building 420 Maynard St, Ann Arbor, MI 48109

ALANA VALKO CLAIRE DICKERSON Editor-in-Chief

Creative Director KENZIE KING

Publisher

Marketing Director MOLLY SHULAN

Accounts Director COLLEEN JONES

Design Editors MACKENZIE SCHWEDT MANDA VILLARREAL

Print Fashion Editors NICK FARRUGIA JENNY RUAN

Features Editor SOPHIE CLOHERTY

Print Photography Editors KATIE CORBETT EVAN PARNESS

Video Editor HAYLEY DANKE

Digital Fashion Editor ALEXA DEFORD

Managing Photo Editor NATALIE GUISINGER

Digital Photography Editor FRANCESCA ROMANO

Finance Coordinators KATE BURNS DRISHA GWALANI

Events Coordinators PAIGE DOBIES COURTNEY O’BEIRNE

Sales Coordinators JULIA BAROFSKY MAYA JERATH KIRA MINTZER JULIA NAPIEWOCKI

Street Style Editors LUCY CARPENTER RYAN LITTLE

Outreach Coordinator ELLERY BENSON

Social Media Coordinators ELIZABETH HALEY JACOB WARD Design Team

Sales Team

Fashion Team

Events Team

Dana Dean, Julia Dean, Maddie Fox, Helen Lee, Tung Tung Lin, Halley Luby, Carly Lucas, Gabi Mechaber, Yuki Obayashi

Sophie Alphonso, Josie Burck, Isabelle Fisher, Tavleen Gill, Anastasia Hernando, Anthony Huynh, Amreen Kanwal, Hannah Leonard, Karly Madey, Claire Manor, Lily Marks, Natalie Marshall, Juan Marquez, Natalia Nowika, Sarah Ory, Jessica Peterkins, Alexandra Plosch, Quinn Riley, Catherine Small, Katy Trame, Dhruv Verma, Jacob Ward, Caroline White, Megan Young, Abby Ziemkowski

Features Team

Lauren Champlin, Benjamin Decker, Katherine Feinstein, Brooke Lange, Sophia Layton, Deirdre Lee, Heba Malik, Lily Marks, William Neumaier, William Pederson, Rachel Pordy, Morgan Rubino, Melina Schaefer, Katherine Trame, Sean Tran, Hannah Triester, Patience Young

Photography Team

Alex Andersen, Monica Babits, Lauren Berman, Blake Borgeson, Gabby Ceritano, Rosalie Comte, Sophie Herdrich, Maggie Innis, Kendall Ka, Nayoun (Nicole) Kim, Mihir Kothari, Michelle Lin, Morgan Locke, Anders Lundin, Gabrielle Mack, Charde Madoula-Bey, Becca Mahon, Heba Malik, Juan Marquez, Gwen McCartney, Emma McKillip, Eva Russa, Oliver Segal, Vera Tikhonova, Rita Vega, Sirapa (Fern) Vichaikul, Alvin Yao

Videography Team

Noelle Broussard, Sara Cooper, Lauren Day, Miranda Felty, Sophie Herdrich, Kendall Ka, Francisca Lee, Vera Tikhonova

Digital Content Editors ALICE HUTH ALEX STERCHELE

Alex Chessare, Nadia Elnaggar, Sophia Gajdjis, Parnaz Hojjati, Alex McMullen, Makena Torrey

Nicole Beckett, Anya Eydelman, Mackenzie Fleming, Maya Jerath, Katie Kim, Alex McMullen, Lael Moore, Rachel Rock

Finance Team

Mia Scalia, Deesha Shah, Xiaolei Wang

Outreach Team

Mackenzie Fleming, Rachel Pordy, Alayna Simonds, Mya Steir, Kira Swindhwani, Gillian Yang

Social Media Team

Sophia Freidman, Sara Ganshaw, Daphne Patton, Caitlin Ramirez, Maya Tinoco, Makena Torrey, Hannah Triester, Rubani Walia

Digital Content Team

Nicole Belans, Lily Cho, Mallory Demeter, Calin Firlit, Sara Ganshaw, Harshita Jalluri, Ivy Li, Chloe Linkner, Tess Perry, Lucy Price

IN THIS ISSUE 04

letter from the editor

chapter 0

06 08

collective conscious

chapter 1

16 24

mask

chapter 2

26 32

body

chapter 3

34 42 44

self

chapter 4

48 56

devoid

chapter 5

58 64 68

rebirth

space, time, and graffiti

switching the i

body/machine

villainized self consciousness project

the void in menswear

minds in museums best of street style

Letter from the Editor

Letter from the Editor Imagine yourself moving through a crowded beach. With each step you take, you inch farther from the crowd. As you move, crowds disperse into groups, and groups disperse into individuals. Soon, it’s just you and the water. We imagine the same metaphor in this issue—when you read, imagine yourself getting closer and closer to the self. As we release this in the middle of government-sanctioned quarantines across the country due to COVID-19, you might already be feeling this a bit right now. In forced isolation, it’s hard not to get wrapped inside the mind. Read this as if you are reading a book you can’t put down: from front to back, no skipping pages. This narrative follows an order of five chapters: “Collective Conscious,” “Mask,” “Body,” “Self,” ‘Devoid,” and “Rebirth.”

We begin the issue with our chapter “Collective Conscious” (pg 6). This chapter places our mind in harmony with others. When we think of a cultural or social movement, such as the advent of graffiti art (pg 8), ideas from individuals coalesce into larger messages and goals, becoming the movement itself. We maneuver through delicate checks and balances when working towards a collective consciousness. We find ways to balance ideas, opinions and thoughts against, or with, our own.

Next, in our chapter “Mask” (pg 16), we move away from a collective group, and focus just outside our inner beings. Here, we ponder the identities we switch between. We think about how we manipulate our speech, our dress, and mannerisms to conform for certain audiences. Our shoot in this chapter acknowledges how dress is performative, existing as its own form of theatre. Sockhnaw Diaw and Eve Taylor, the models in this shoot, voice how they perform and shield their black identities depending on who’s in the room. Writer Heba Malik tackles code-switching head-on, examining how oppressed groups must maneuver verbally to belong in certain spaces (pg 24).

Our “Body” chapter asks the question: can the body exist simply on its own? Must the body always exist with assumptions and signifiers? In our photoshoot for this chapter, our team sought to strip the body from external meaning. In parallel, writer Brooke Lange examines the mind and the body (pg 32). While we are surrounded by technology’s ability to rapidly get us from one place to the next, we tend to forget that the body is a machine itself.

We reach the heart of this issue’s psyche with our chapter, “Self.” This chapter looks internally to the subconscious mind. We visualize the dream-state in which our fears, desires, and untapped thoughts lay.

In a collection of work, our team examines what fuels their self-conscious (pg 44). Writer Sophia Layton imagines herself becoming someone else—a rather familiar character from our childhood (pg 42).

Diving deeper, we turn the pages of the subconscious to the next chapter, “Devoid,” which launches us into the deep sea of the unconscious. We imagine the unconscious as a complicated black and white void; what is in this void may govern our behavior more than we can understand. Benjamin Decker ponders the void in menswear on the red carpet—why are men not held to the same expectations when they dress (pg 56)?

The end of our narrative is not quite an end, but perhaps you can consider it a “Rebirth” (pg 58). In our last chapter, imagine yourself swimming out of the deep sea back to shore. Is the shore destroyed, or intact? In the unprecedented times of the coronavirus, as we release this issue not on campus but in quarantine, we encourage you to end this issue thinking beyond yourself, and beyond the present moment. At the end of this, how will we imagine the shore?

Alana Valko Editor-in-Chief

Psyche

Sophie Cloherty Features Editor

Psyche

Periods of uncertainty often invite moments of creation. After a semester of radical ups, downs, and endings, those of us in Ann Arbor and elsewhere might find ourselves turning inward. In a moment of collective displacement, our magazine looks to uncover the self in a way that resists our current and future feelings of isolation.

For the first time ever, SHEI committed to a project in which our writing and our photoshoots explicitly informed each other. Each consecutive shoot and text is intentional in its pairing. In doing so, we indulge in a world where the mixing of media allows for the expansion of narrative.

This narrative explores the psyche as a network of relationships and patterns to be mapped. In her essay collection, Calamadies, poet and writer Renee Gladman considers the body and its conception as an array of moving parts. She writes, “My body was a container for the conversations occurring on the floors above and below me, the messages being left on my phone, and the letter I held in my hand. I was a shape but one where everything inside me was in motion and I was trying to hold it mathematically, trying to be a pattern in the world.�

Our writers similarly explore the overlapping motions of our external and internal realities.

We consider the history of graffiti art as Lauren Champlin looks at what is gained or lost in a contemporary world of collaborating artforms (pg 8). Benjamin Decker leads us down the red carpet as he laments the persistence of performative gender expectations in celebrity fashion cultures (pg 56). We are briefly allowed to step outside of the self and into a museum, where Hannah Treister curates a Van Gogh colored dimension (pg 64).

At the heart of this issue, the Self-Consciousness project prioritizes SHEI-wide collaboration and allows our writers to break constraints of form and genre (pg 44).

As we explore the levels of the self, we also consider how breaking a thing might also allow us to see the whole of it.

In this print edition of SHEI, we invite questions and chaos. We invite you to consider the psyche as an unmapped geography. We hope the unknown inspires you to create. Each page of writing is a point on a moving grid. Each shoot helps us envision a new pattern. To confront the mind is to first locate a vital narrative of intersections.

collective conscious h

All clothing Salvation Army, handpainted by Lauren Champlin, Evan Parness, Jacob Ward

Take a tour of New York City through the art that lives within it.

From the graffiti that decorates the exteriors of shops and restaurants, dilapidated apartment buildings, street signs, and lamp posts, the city lives as a uniquely painted canvas. Giving voice to issues such as housing segregation, homelessness, and economic disparity affecting the city’s most vulnerable communities, graffiti art has a long history rooted in youth movements and artist collectives. The artform has been made what it is today through graffiti artists’ commitment to creative ownership and artists’ refusal to be exploited by city elites.

Today, graffiti art serves as a platform for anarchic thought and creative expression.

To be a graffiti artist in the early days of street art meant joining a collective movement. Originally, graffiti art was used as a method for communication rather than for profit—a means of spreading messages, uniting and inspiring communities. Graffiti art is rooted in the desire to disrupt the lived experience of passive mass culture and consumption. As a result, it served as a sort of counterculture, a language spoken by the collective for the benefit of the collective. The messages of early graffiti artists in 1970s New York and Philadelphia were most always directed towards the working class. The elusive symbols and diagrams of Jean-Michel Basquiat and the playful characters designed by Kenny Scharf told stories of identity and heritage.

Graffiti art sought to remind passersby that they were not pawns for the ruling elite. Tags, or artist signatures, sprawled the urban underground, covering the walls of subway stations and subway cars.

While these works were often done at night to protect artists from the growing criminality of graffiti, the goals of graffiti artists were also ironically rooted in visibility. Under the veil of darkness and elusivity, the desire to have their names and messages heard and shared across the city still remained.

Graffiti art has since migrated from the street to the studio to the runway. Street art has found its way into our cultural fabric yet again—this time, it’s in high fashion.

08 SHEI Magazine

Over the past decade, the promise of quality and artisanship that used to come with high-end fashion purchases has seemingly disappeared. In a time where the prices of high-end pieces are increasing while their quality visibly decreases, the word ‘luxury’ has lost much of the meaning it once held. In an effort to sell clothes of lesser quality at higher prices, luxury brands have turned to advertising to save the names of their brands, relying on visibility rather than quality. Luxury brands’ allure often comes from their exclusive, highly sought-after value., In order to create hype and increase desirability, brands often have to grapple with limiting their accessibility while still maintaining profits.

To create an aura of exclusivity around their names, many luxury fashion brands have turned to contemporary art to boost their image and credibility to the masses, partnering with graffiti artists to create limited edition products. In June, Paris Fashion Week saw a capsule collection on Off-White’s runway, in collaboration with New York street artist Futura. For this collaboration, Off-White’s Virgil Abloh partnered with Futura, also known as Lenny McGurr, to incorporate vivid color and defiant paint strokes onto white suiting and eveningwear. In many pieces of the collection, Futura’s influence is more subtle. His touches of color are often only evident on T-shirts worn underneath Off-White’s signature oversized silhouettes. However, the star looks of the collection, including the opening look and final seven ensembles, feature highly-polished structured designs that are juxtaposed by Futura’s blend of sprawling text and hidden images.

The piece that stood out the most to me was a gown near the end of the show that clearly harkened back to Futura’s roots as a graffiti artist. The wraparound dress adorned with ties, ruffles, and bell sleeves, and blanketed by explosive color and texture defied the structure and clean lines characterized by the rest of the collection and walked as a living, moving reminder of graffiti’s rebellious history.

In response to collaborations such as this, questions arise about

who these partnerships truly benefit. Is luxury fashion being made more accessible, or are the original counterculture motives of graffiti art being overshadowed by consumerist agendas? Can there be a perfect, collective union between two separate cultures, or will something always be lost?

As Abloh stated in an interview with Vogue from 2019, he sees Futura’s work as representative of “the culture that we come from, which is a segment of hip-hop and graffiti... [Futura’s work] started out being seen as a form of vandalism, not art... but now, through time, we can see that the beauty of Basquiat is also the beauty of Lenny, Futura.” Off-White’s collection, and many other luxury brand and street artist collaborations, are meant to pay respect to graffiti art and its roots.

In the same way that street art is making a presence in runway fashion, the line between graffiti art and brand campaigns is slowly blurring in cities whose buildings have been dominated by the work of independent artists. From London to LA to Mexico City, brands that were previously put off by associations between graffiti and criminality have begun paying street artists to implement advertising campaigns into the artist’s public work. In May of 2019, for example, Louboutin hired street artists to adorn London’s Shoreditch neighborhood with the brand’s logo. Around the same time, Gucci began a mural campaign in Mexico City.

For some artists, luxury fashion’s newfound respect for graffiti has proved rewarding. In a recent interview for Bloomberg, Darren Cullen, founder of London-based artist collective Graffiti Kings, reminisced about what he considered to be the glory days of British street art in the 90s. However, he also said that his work has never been as in demand as it is today.

“The biggest brands in the world are using graffiti artists, who are basically vandals, and that’s amazing.”

For many artists, recent public acceptance and appreciation of graffiti has paved the way for career opportunities in what is being

called “graffiti advertising.”

Still, many artists are unhappy about graffiti’s shift from anarchic to mainstream commercialism. If one of the goals of graffiti is to disrupt a culture of materialism and consumption, won’t the style be fundamentally corrupted by the elitist origins of luxury fashion?

This paradox prompts additional questions: through these collaborations, are brands reaching out to lovers of graffiti, consumers of luxury fashion, or a new crowd completely? Who is the collective audience? Is it anyone’s responsibility to keep so-called “underground” art forms underground?

On one hand, there is something seemingly amazing about these two cultures coming together—the creation of better opportunities for local independent artists and perhaps the cultivation of a widespread greater respect for graffiti as an art form. However, many are skeptical about whether this is what luxury brands are truly looking to achieve with “graffiti advertising.” Is it possible for high and public art, two sectors with potentially opposing goals and audiences, to come together without one being exploited or fractured completely?

In these collaborations, these exercises in collective thought and artistic expression, what could be gained? What could be lost?

We might find answers in Futura, the early pioneer of the now popular abstract style of street art. In his work, he looks to exceed the known world. He moves away from the exclusive use of lettering and incorporates abstract camouflage consisting of nebulae, atoms, fine striping, stars, drops and dots resembling solar systems in the universe. His art demonstrates his desire to aid technological advancement and to create his own evolving and expanding universe.

An artist like Futura, once a street artist and now a graphic designer who has seen his own style shift over the years through genres and mediums, suggests the presence of a growing and evolving element in all art forms. His career may provide an answer to how we are to view these collaborations, how we are to understand the scope that they can reach and the weight that they carry.

By Lauren Champlin Layout by Yuki Obayashi

Psyche 09

Collectivism enables transmission. Across cultures, ideas are not independent thoughts, but are born from the acts that precede them. When a movement formed by one group is adopted by another, what messages are gained, lost or transformed?

Individuals occupy spaces that bring thoughts and meaning toward collective movement.

Concept & Styling Anthony Huynh, Karly Madey, Juan Marquez, Natalie Marshall, Sarah Ory, Jacob Ward Photographers Maggie Innis, Emma McKillip, Alvin Yao Videographer Kendall Ka Graphic Designer Yuki Obayashi Writer Lauren Champlin Models Olivia Johnson, Isabella Payne, Liliana Pfeifer, Jenna Segal, Arianna Stadler

THE MA

CHAPTER 1

THE MASK The thespian: a person rooted in theatrics and performance. Thespians perform for an audience rather than for the self, allowing external perceptions to dictate individual expression. In some ways, we exist as the thespian when we equip ourselves with fashion trends. The items we wear can act as a material mask to hide behind. We adorn ourselves, curating the facade we desire.

Concept & Styling Nick Farrugia, Jenny Ruan Photographers Morgan Locke, Evan Parness, Francesca Romano, Fern Vichaikul Photography Editing Katie Corbett, Evan Parness Videographer Hayley Danke Graphic Designer Manda Villarreal Models Sockhna Diaw, Eve Taylor

SK

THE MASK

THE MASK

THE MASK

THE MASK

I grew up with the mindset that in order to strive and survive you must adapt to your surroundings. If not, society will judge you for the abilities you never learned how to control. Throughout my life, I was always familiar with code-switching. I grew up in a family of immigrants and lived in a predominantly black area. Everything about me was black-based. At home, I was able to live the culture of my family’s native country and outside I was living an American life. Although having these two identities meant a rollercoaster of discrimination and injustice, I loved my two cultures. I loved who I was.

I loved being black. My cultures were so powerful. I never wanted to change the way I spoke or acted because that’s who I was. However, when you are put in different circumstances, you are forced to code-switch. For me, code switching is like self-protection. If you want to get what you want or be viewed a certain way you must adapt to certain behaviors.

— Sockhna Diaw, left.

Scarf Parade Leopard Shirt Thrifted Green Striped Shirt Thrifted Green Skirt Thrifted Brown Shirt Thrifted Green Pants Urban Outfitters Yellow Earrings ASOS

Orange Turtle Neck Stylenanda Blue Shirt Thrifted Orange Scarf Modcloth Pinstripe Shirt Urban Outfitters

I was in eighth grade when I was first introduced to the term “codeswitching.” A friend of mine who was black mentioned it casually when he saw I interacted with him versus interacting with some of our non-black classmates. I had never given much thought to this seamless sway I was doing in my everyday life. I started to look at the different relationships that I had in my life, and I soon realized that I used code-switching in each one. How I interacted with my black friends differed from how I interacted with friends from other races.

It wasn’t just about racial differences though. I would code-switch depending on the age, social status, and relationship toward me.

I would communicate differently with my parents, friends, bosses, professional colleagues, teachers, and pastors. I believe that having the ability to reach people in the most effective and appropriate way is an important skill that people must have; code-switching is a way that people of color took to more naturally. Even with the different skins that I use in various areas of life, they are all still me.

— Eve Taylor, left.

SWITCHING Who am I? A chameleon can stalk its prey on the wet, dark branches of the rainforest; it can dart between bushes in the desert; it can lie flush, belly to the ground in the lowlands. It can change color and adapt to its habitat: a forest green, a sandy tan, a tree-bark brown. But no matter its color, no matter its environment, a chameleon is a chameleon. Its identity remains unchanged regardless of location, regardless of color.

Like chameleons, humans move through the world blending into their surroundings. However, our identities are not fixed. Just as chameleons blend in to create harmony, we code-switch to find comfort in ambiguity, to build stability in periods of change, to survive.

The definition of code-switching is two-fold. Linguistic codeswitching refers to the act of alternating or combining two or more languages. The term is mostly used within bilingual and multilingual communities. For example, “Spanglish” and “Arablish” exist as combinations of two distinct languages.

The second definition of this phenomenon focuses on the use of different dialects, accents, language combinations, and mannerisms within social groups to project a specific identity. Anyone can codeswitch when they change their body and verbal language to cater to who they are talking to, what they are talking about, and their location.

In an article for Ethnography, sociologists Tamara Brown and Erynn Casanova write about the importance of language in identity.

“Language,” they write, “is important because the subjects of ethnographic research are categorized in society according to how and what they speak. In the U.S. and the world system, linguistic difference is a basis for evaluating people as superior and inferior.”

We live in a world where there is difference, and there is power, and those in power most always dictate the meaning of that difference.

Code-switching is a fight against power, against those who wish to differentiate us through our identities and put us in boxes. Rather than existing in a box, we choose to survive in the self-defined walls of our own existence.

Identities are ever-changing and dynamic. We use code-switching as a means to not exclude particular identities. As author Rebecca Walker writes in the introduction to her collection of essays to be real: “for us the lines between Us and Them are often blurred, and as a result, we find ourselves seeking to create identities that accommodate ambiguity and our multiple positionalities: including more than excluding, exploring more than defining, searching more than arriving.”

A child of two worlds, I grew up trading one identity for another:

24 SHEI Magazine

12 June. 2012 — Over the wails of a shrieking baby, I heard the pilot’s scratchy voice tell us that there were thirty minutes left in my flight – my last thirty minutes of freedom before I landed in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

My sock-clad feet padded down the aisle to the bathroom. I begrudgingly pulled my jet-black abaya from my carry-on and covered myself with its full-length modesty. I loosely wrapped a matching headscarf around my head, making sure that almost half my hair remained proudly on display. Marching back to my seat, I held my head high as my American passport rested safely in my hands.

Hot air whipped my face as I descended from the plane. I was no longer in the United States; no, I had just set foot in a country that was as strange to me as it was familiar. My black abaya flew open, and so did my headscarf. I didn’t bother re-wrapping either.

Who am I? —— Code-switching is, at its essence, a response to distinct and historically familiar interactions that target our identities. It is how people embrace their contradictions and their complexities: a resistance to their own polarity. We are desperate to construct a unified authenticity when no one identity seems to encompass our whole being.

Moreover, code-switching is a means of survival. The chameleon changes color to avoid predators, and like them, certain groups of people must act in specific ways to avoid their predators. In a country where black people can be killed for merely being black, code-switching prevails as a form of self-protection. In a country where saying “Allahu akbar” in public incites chaos, code-switching can help keep identities under wraps. In a country where I feel as though parts of my being–the foreign upbringing, the mosque-visiting, the Arabic speaking–do not belong in some spaces, code-switching enables me to fit in.

Beyond existing as a survival mechanism, code-switching, especially for the black community, has been used as a tool for social mobility. A 1999 study conducted by Stanford University reasearch John Baugh sought to explore the severity of this discrimination. Baugh called landlords across California to discuss housing opportunities while alternating between “African American vernacular English” (AAVE) and “standard American English.” He found that in predominantly white areas of California, standard English resulted in more “confirmed appointments to view apartments advertised” by up to 50%. The study suggests that by code-switching, black people–and people of other minority groups–can be afforded access traditionally denied to them.

But is code-switching a phenomenon worth celebrating?

the Perhaps not, but code-switching was never an active decision, nor a choice. Rooted in the histories of the colonizers and the colonized, this ability to blend in is a by-product of extensive trauma—a trauma inflicted due to a difference in identity.

We still exist within the colonizer-colonized dynamic, albeit under the guise of other names. Code-switching is a nod to the suffering of our ancestors. Perhaps, it is also a gift bestowed upon us, a way to fight to ensure that suffering does not befall us again.

For some, re-claiming code-switching as power is radical. It is radical to fit in when the entire world works to push you out.

Historically, code-switching associated itself with inauthenticity, but in reality, it is the epitome of authenticity. It is essential in this ever-changing and multicultural world. Swiftly moving from one social situation to the next, whilst changing aspects of our speech or mannerisms, allows us to move through the world and find common ground with others through language.

Who am I? 19 June. 2012 —— It took about a week for my broken Arabic to morph into a stage of virtual fluency, for me to start subconsciously fixing my hijab in public, for me to embrace a blazing sun as though I had grown up under its warm gaze.

26 July. 2012 —— There were thirty minutes left until I landed in D.C. Running a hand through my hair, I picked my headscarf off the floor, and stood up to reach the overhead compartment. It opened with a click, and I pulled down my floral patterned carryon. I shoved my wrinkled abaya and headscarf inside and quickly closed it.

The pilot’s voice sounded over the speaker, telling us the weather in D.C. was 85 degrees Fahrenheitp–pretty normal. Dressed in an abaya, the woman across the

aisle from me asked a question in rapid-fire Arabic. I responded, words tumbling out of my mouth.

“Oh, are you American?” she asked.

“Yes.” Who am I? —— We are young when we learn how to code-switch, how to carry conversations with a clear recognition of our audience. However, it took me years to learn how to code-switch and not completely suppress parts of my identity. It took me years to stop performing.

Growing up, I moved through these worlds assimilating with ease into cultures far different from my own. I would blend in so well, so swiftly, that at times, I would cease to recognize myself.

I was neither entirely Arab-Pakistani nor fully American. I did not find a home in either identity, so I strove for a real ethnicity–something other than the half-caste limbo where I wandered, dark cloth tightly wound across swollen eyes. I would inhabit a different persona with different ethnic sects of my family, altering myself to fit what I imagined to be a fully American or a fully Arab-Pakistani young woman.

Who am I? —— I am the child of immigration, of assimilation, of the losses and hardships my parents endured to fight for a better life. I am the child of a Pakistani and a Saudi Arabian–a child born in America.

By Heba Malik Layout by Tung Tung Lin

Psyche 25

body c h a p t e r

2

Our bodies operate as moving vessels. We adorn them with objects, fill them with ideas and longings, and move them in directions that pleasure us. What would become of the self if the body existed simply as a physical form?

Can bones, tendons and flesh be free from objectification, assumption, or meaning? Stripped of speech and clothing we are bare, naked beings spinning about the world.

Concept & Styling Nick Farrugia, Jenny Ruan Photographers Evan Parness, Ryan Little Photography Editing Evan Parness Videographer Hayley Danke Graphic Designer Evan Parness, Mackenzie Schwedt Models William Neumaier

body/machine As toddlers we learn how to move. Gripping onto table corners and parents’ legs with sticky fingers, we fight our own imbalance and confusion to achieve the ability to walk, the first of many physical hurdles we will have to overcome. Walking the mile from my dorm to an 8:30 am economics discussion, my autonomic nerves cause the muscles around my hair follicles to tighten, the capillaries in my fingers are forcing blood to the outermost layers of my skin, and under my eyes the small veins glow, swollen and angry. In other words, my legs are cold, my fingers burnt by the coffee cup I’m holding, and my puffy eyelids are close to shutting as I’m practically sprinting my sleep-deprived self across the law quad. My mind on the other hand, is awake and functioning, full of resentment towards my corporeal form’s slow awakening, and wondering why we need a body anyway.

Upon first glance the mind of the average human seems to have come a long way since the first known existence of the homosapien roughly 200,000 years ago. The development of the human mind and the fruits of human thought have led to a constantly advancing and globalizing world. We are currently experiencing what American economic and social theorist Jeremy Rifkin calls the Third Industrial Revolution, an instance of fast-paced futuristic enterprise amid a collective grappling with the environmental impacts of our species. To better understand the tension between forward thinking and this creeping accumulation of the past we might look to the purposes assigned to the human body.

The human body can mean different things in different cultures and at every socioeconomic level. For some, the body does little more than act as a skin sack carrying around the human psyche, requiring constant servicing of primitive needs.

For others, the body is an integral tool of transportation and labor. Without wealth and access to technology, the human body is as vital to survival as it has always been. As the world mechanizes at an accelerated pace, how will those with access

32 SHEI Magazine

to wealth and technology change how they use the machine of the human body? If the physical body becomes completely customizable, how will accessibility for people with disabilities change? Will we have some sort of Wall-E like future in which humans spend their entire lives on the digital plane as their vestigial organ suits are left to grow obese and unused? Or will we look like William Higham’s Emma, the hunched, varicoseveined, eczema-afflicted, life-sized doll representing the results of his report “The Work Colleague of the Future.” Will our work colleagues even have real bodies? Will we stop interacting in person at all?

Nineteenth century poet William Wordsworth described his experience of walking as one of contemplation and acute sensitivity to the beauty in the passing world. He explores this most famously in his poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.”

He writes: “I wandered lonely as a cloud/That floats on high o’er vales and hills/When all at once I saw a crowd/A host, of golden daffodils/Beside the lake, beneath the trees/Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”

As I have discovered after rushing from class to club to library, the common commute no longer affords such luxury of contemplation. We all need to get places faster, safer and more comfortably. Those of us afforded the luxury of walking often do anything we can to avoid the task. This is not to suggest that walking is no longer used as a means of transportation, but that if it becomes faster, safer, more comfortable, and affordable to jetpack to class, it is unlikely that many people will continue to walk.

Clearly the way people use their bodies has and continues to change dramatically with the introduction of technology.

Whether we go by electric skateboard, car, or train, humans travel differently and with greater speed than ever before.

Walking is not the only function of the body that may drastically change with improved technology. Everything from

childbirth to cardiac arrest to prosthetic limbs demonstrate the relative speed and possibility for technology to master the functions of the human body. The question becomes: how will average bodily functions be changed by technology?

If you think about your average day and all of the different roles you take on, how many of them are physical? I pick up my phone off of the ground, I fold laundry, I carry my backpack to class. Our physical senses are vital receptors of information, and we rely on our limbs, hands and feet to position the rest of our body and belongings. Nonetheless if a robot could do all of these things for us, would we continue to do them?

One way of discovering to what extent we would like to shrug off the inefficiencies of the human body is to examine those rituals we have clung to despite their lack of necessity.

As children, much of our time was spent focused on physical needs. Our day was a constant volleying between learning and rest, recess and nap time. Challenges were presented to us just as frequently in gym class as they were in social studies, and our bodies grew up as our minds grew out.

Now as adults, whose bodies are finally done growing, physical activity can be more of a burden than a central component of daily life. Some of us sneak and shove workouts into otherwise packed schedules, viewing exercise more as a chore than a release. On the other hand, sports are still a revered and heavily funded enterprise. Although many people stop playing when they reach adulthood, sports remain a focal point of culture. But why? Why do we care? Why when we have phones and literature and art do we continue to be enthralled by the human machine?

Walking back from class, finally awake from caffeine and happy after devouring a bagel, I wonder if technology could ever truly improve upon what it feels like to inhabit a human body. I lose my train of thought. I am distracted by the rhythm of my feet hitting the pavement in a cathartic melody, and I do not feel

nearly as horrible as I did minutes ago, trapped in my lecture hall. My mind agrees, feeling suddenly reborn into its skin case. I glance at my surroundings, once again inspired by the magic of the sunlight hitting an untouched sheet of snow, wondering idly as Wordsworth might have about daffodils growing in the spring.

I wonder if it is possible that, despite all of the cantankerous grumbling it ignites, there is something singularly grounding about my cold legs and my goosebumps, something about what the mind could never do, something about walking.

By Brooke Lange Layout by Dana Dean

Psyche 33

SELF CHAPTER 3

Shirt BCBGMAXAZRIA

Earrings Swarovski Earrings Kina and Tam

Beneath the protective barriers of the body lies the most precious organ of them all: the brain. Complex webs of axons and dendrites mediate the millions of neurons firing across a neural network dictates both the seen and unseen. We are controlled by the invisible. Our subconscious mind fuels our dreams, manipulates our movements, and automates our reactions.

Concept & Styling Nick Farrugia, Jenny Ruan Photographers Katie Corbett, Natalie Guisinger, Ryan Little, Rebecca Mahon, Juan Marquez, Evan Parness, Francesca Romano, Rita Vega Photography Editing Katie Corbett, Evan Parness Videographer Hayley Danke Graphic Designer Mackenzie Schwedt Models Gavi Kamens, Olivia Smyth

VILLAINIZED When I woke up from my bed this morning and looked into the mirror, my reflection was too familiar. Maybe it was the night before taking its revenge on my decision making. A tired face with dull blonde hair and this morning the dullness was finally too much. So now I’m sitting in a sticky salon chair with an apron one button too tight around my neck watching an unfamiliar hand pour purple goop all over the right side of my head. The other side of my head is already saturated in black. I’m hoping that changing my hair will make me more me. But anxiety builds up in my chest and uncoils like a slinky every time I look up at my reflection. The tingle of the product on my scalp isn’t reassuring. After the wash, toner, and blow-dry, dizziness overwhelms me. With sweaty apprehension, my hands are clasped in my lap as the salon chair turns and I confront my new reflection. But the person I see in the mirror isn’t me. Dullness is gone, but wickedness has surfaced.

My heart races with regret and my grip tightens. The hand of my reflection raises in the mirror and my heart stops as my reflection runs her fingers through her hair, my hair.

I swipe my card and run away from the salon before anyone can ask if I want a receipt. My fingertips are numb and I can’t quite unlock my car door. I manage to get in after a few tries and snap open the mirror to take another look. Remembering the salon mirror, I quickly shut it.

I’m alone with myself but I don’t feel myself. I only changed my hair but it’s like something has changed inside. The numbness seeps over me as if the dye courses through my bloodstream like a wicked disease. I can’t grasp the seat belt, but instantly I see the keys in the ignition. Numbness overwhelms my body as the car accelerates like it’s getting on the highway. I begin to scream but my head cracks back as a howling cackle hurtles from my throat. I’m helpless to this apparent possession and I wish to be back in my room with my familiar reflection. Instead, I sit paralyzed stuck inside the jerking car and my new identity. Then reality snaps to blackness.

A tapping sound from the car window wakes me up. My roommate is standing outside of the car and she shouts “...what did you do to your hair?!” Her words sting like canned laughter. I ignore her. With a pounding headache and sore throat, I sit up and glance at the mirror. The bright blonde is striking against the black. I love it. But when I look closer I notice a slight emaciation in my face.

42 SHEI Magazine

I look up at her with a wide smile.

“Do you like it?” I ask.

She nods. “You look like Cruella De Vil!” And that name is like a clap in the dark. The name, Cruella, echoes in my head. Is that who was driving earlier? Was that not a dream? Did I take it too far? I look back at my roommate, “I gotta go.”

In a hurry, the engine starts again and I’m on my way to the salon desperate for a solution.

Maybe another change could distract from my wicked hair. But when I step out of the car the numbness shoots back and I’m incapacitated once again. I’m jerked toward the glass doors of the salon and my possessor almost rips the door off its hinges. After an hour of screaming and spitting and three close calls with the sharp nail tools, I walk out with razor-sharp, long red acrylics and I’m back in control.

On my way home I pass my favorite antique store and pull in. Some retail therapy might calm my nerves. There’s a beautiful white coat inside and the luminous red lining catches my eye. I rush to it at the end of the rack and I know I need to have it. I put it on and it flows about me in effortless volumes. The silk and the fur make me invincible. But as I step into the mirror numbness falls on me again like a scorching hot towel. My eyes jerk upward and I frantically gaze upon my reflection. The red nails are ablaze against the white fur. I meet my own gaze but I see someone else. Her cheekbones jut out as two spikes and a thick draw of a black cigarette hollows her face.

In the horrible paralysis, I wish again to be back in the morning light and dull familiarity. A green smoke fills the frame of the mirror and her head rips around in a frenzied cackle. Her arms wave in the air and she swanks and scurries her way out the back door. I’m trapped inside a decision to try to be someone else. Cruella saw an opening and stole that self.

By Sophia Layton Layout by Helen Lee

Psyche 43

SELF CONSCIOUSNESS PROJECT SHEI asked our Features Team and our Editorial Board to respond to the term: Self-Conscious.

These self-titled works are personal truths, hopes, exclamations, and lamentations. This project also considers the self-conscious as essential to the creative impulse. What effects might genre and form have on our own truth telling?

Graphic Designer Mackenzie Schwedt

44 SHEI Magazine

UGLY MAKEUP REVOLUTION I remember standing in line at Claire’s, my Dad waiting outside the entrance as he couldn’t bear the explosion of neon rainbows and cheetah print in every line of sight. I had a $20 in one hand and a small eye shadow palette—rainbow, of course. I had to be around 9, already plotting the rainbow look that would jumpstart my YouTube career as a creative makeup genius. At this moment, eye shadow was not there to softly contour huge doe-eyes, but it was there to serve as an expression. I wish I could find the video that is still floating in the abyss of YouTube. I used the small double-sided brush that came with the palette and created a rainbow on my eye starting with red on the inner corner, leading to violet on the opposite end. This was my first creation. I knew inside that this was not acceptable to wear to school, or even to reveal that I would do such a thing to myself. I hid the video in hopes my future fandom would just stumble upon it and revel in my talent. I remember finding my first makeup routine. I finally figured out the ways I could morph my face into femininity, and diminish my newfound flaws. My eyebrows were not plucked and waxed, they were wild and invasive. My teeth were yellow and crooked. Nothing about me was soft, or feminine. But I could hide that from my peers. I found out what concealer was, started using BB cream, even began dabbling in a soft eyeshadow look. It was witchcraft to me—manipulating the way I appeared to others so that they would see me as feminine and beautiful. I began to realize I felt strange when I didn’t wear makeup. I couldn’t send pictures of myself bare-faced. I hated the way I looked without corrections made. These corrections only escalated as I got older. Primer, foundation, concealer, contour, eye-brow waxing, lining my lips a little too much, and then wiping it off because my lips were bigger than everyone else’s already. There was not a day in my entire high school career when I did not wear makeup. Not because I really enjoyed putting it on, but because I could not imagine my peers seeing me without it. I’m not sure exactly when the shift happened. Perhaps it is gradual, ongoing. There is still tension for me in regards to makeup. Now, I am finding my way back to the childlike playfulness of Claire’s rainbow palette through my drawers full of glitter, eyeliner, liquid eyeshadow, jelly eye shadow, face-paint, and every hue of the rainbow. I don’t have to be beautiful. Can’t I just play? I demand more casual face-paint.

More ugly makeup. More.

By Katherine Trame

MARROW i’m trying to scrape out all the old marrow inside my bones to get rid of all the growth rings from the past five years where habits grew sicker and my skin grew thicker making me numb and lonely my nerve endings have made rivers canyons landscapes of alarm and loathing fear and foaming, at the heart I do not want my soul to be a jealous one I do not want hesitation or holding my breath I do not want to be who I was after I wasn’t who I was before I want to scrape out all the old like ice cream scoops of cold-blooded compost forgiving myself for not growing and only decomposing I want to grow relentlessly and fearlessly and hopelessly as one does when remembering the feeling of learning how to swim or falling in love.

I want to be skeletally and soulfully new again

By Kenzie King

Psyche 45

FEATURES

PULLING TEETH

In a bun or on my shoulders Shiny and soft or dull and rough Frizzy or flat I identify with my hair

I’m not afraid of you you’ve never given me a reason to be.

I’m not afraid of my queerness so fundamental yet still confounding in nature in all of the spaces it can and cannot fit in all of the questions it can and cannot answer.

Grip.

Others know me by it Something that stands out about me I do not mind this I have other features as well The scar on my forehead The piercings in my ears and nose The way that my right ear folds All part of me Everyone has their features Important to picture them not as flaws

By Will Neumaier

I am afraid of this red rental truck towering above every other passing vehicle eating every pothole instead of sinking in of the silence that hangs between us and the hum of the air conditioning.

What exactly does that mean?

Grip. Twist.

I am afraid of exactness of the hairs that need splitting of the tightly bound words and phrases my loose lips can’t seem to wrap themselves around of the decimals between gay and straight that feel minute at times and indefinite at others a fine line versus worlds apart.

I guess it means both. Or maybe, all.

All of the shame I was taught not to feel all of the secrets I was asked not to keep all of the itches I was told not to scratch all of the wounds I was not meant to touch but I did anyway.

It means all.

Grip. Twist. Yank.

By Lauren Champlin

46 SHEI Magazine

HOW I LOST MY VOICE My voice bugged others, said it was too high-pitched for a male to have.

It gave away almost too much about me, everyone would tell me it’s “gay” and that I should just stop talking. So I did for a bit, little by little. I lost my voice, not just physically- mentally. I lost who I was, forgot the person I wanted to be, morphed into who I was told to be. It took years for the person I am now to shove their way out, but I’m glad I did. Now my friends say I talk too fast, too much, and am always changing the subject too quickand I just laugh.

By Anonymous

NATURAL AWAKENING Wind ruffles the growing wisps of hair atop my head into perfect little knots, and in this moment, the thought of my hairbrush ripping through the wind’s crafty handiwork doesn’t faze me. In fact, it feels good to be touched so intimately by nature. Feeling the hard texture of jagged rock underneath my bottom tells me I am indeed alive, and the soft murmuring of nearby birds reminds me I’m not alone.

At the top of a mountain, my eyes feast on the dots of countless tree tops, each one a shade slightly different from its neighbors. The beauty of being on a mountaintop is this — I’m aware of myself and everything around me. Perhaps, it’s the fresh air my lungs aren’t used to breathing, or it’s the lack of noise pollution, but regardless, my mind centers itself into a state of tranquility.

The quietness of nature allows me to hear and listen to my thoughts without external distractions.

Taking a hiatus from society to immerse myself into nature acts as my reality check in the sense that on a mountain, there’s only myself and nature; the mountain demands me to be exposed and stripped to my core self. All of my material items are left behind, save for a backpack with bare life essentials. Whatever emotions I carried with me from home are shed during the hike up to the top, as the physical effort requires all my attention, shifting my focus to the immediate task at hand: ascension.

In this process, I realize my humanity and sense of awareness. One wrong step while trekking can have dire consequences, and at the same time, my senses heighten as they’re all I have in the moment, prompting me to experience my life and surroundings in a new, unadulterated way.

At the top, what I see around me appears tiny from this vantage point, yet I know the trees below are much bigger than myself. I recognize my placement and relationship with the world, as well as my relationship to myself. Just as myself, by myself, I can understand myself better and feel awake and connected to myself and the exterior world.

By Deirdre Lee

Psyche 47

Our unconscious thoughts exist in a theoretical domain. A boundless field of idea and memory, the unconscious realm is inaccessible in moments of intentional introspection. On occasion, when we transcend the black and white world—when we create, when we write, when we near the edge of sleep, or when we float out of our physical bodies—particular imaginings bubble to the surface. These buried thoughts may govern our behavior more than we can yet understand.

White Dress Marigold Shadows White Boots Fenty Puma Necklace Versace Men’s Shirt Alexis

chapter 4

devoid

Concept & Styling Nick Farrugia, Jenny Ruan Photographers Blake Borgeson, Gabrielle Mack, Gwen McCartney, Evan Parness Photography Editing Evan Parness Videographer Hayley Danke Graphic Designer Manda Villarreal Models Christian Blakely, Emily Dentler

Glasses Jenny Ruan Jackets Thrifted White Shirt Osman Black Pants ohheygirl

Jackets Thrifted Black Pants ohheygirl Beige Pants Burberry Sneakers Nike

Turtleneck Solace London Cuffed Pants Habitual Black Shirt Marigold Shadows Black Pants Berksha Collection Black Skirt Fame & Partners

THE VOID IN MENSWEAR

Imagine Lady Gaga at the top of the pink staircase at the 2019 Met Gala, dripping from head to toe in Brandon Maxwell. The hot pink train of her dress trails behind her, so long it reaches the base of the stairs. Fans scream her name and paparazzi flash from every direction.

The dress opens up like a parachute and her styling team rips it off to reveal yet another layer, a black dress with an umbrella. She begins to perform a tribute to the chimney sweepers in Mary Poppins.

As if two layers weren’t enough, the black dress is taken off to reveal another dress underneath. This dress is tight and hot pink again. With each outfit reveal, a new persona takes over Gaga. In this dress, Gaga holds a box phone from the eighties and pretends to have a conversation with a best friend. She does not stop there. She strips down to a studded pair of undergarments paired with her staple: six inch heels. After sixteen minutes, her grand entrance is complete.

Shawn Mendes steps on the carpet and tries to hold a candle to Gaga’s performance; however, she remains unmatched. Like most other men at the event, Mendes wears an all black suit. He stands in front of the camera, hand in his pocket, and looks at the lens with a straight face. He takes no risks and is most certainly not following the event’s Camp theme. He slides down the carpet, keeping the same pose with each photograph taken. You can feel the energy in the room deplete with each additional minute that Gaga has been gone.

Why is the bar so low for men’s fashion at high profile events like this, yet so high for its female counterpart? It is although these men are not even trying to stand out on the red carpets. Are male celebrities accepting defeat so easily because they know someone like Gaga will come up on the carpet and steal the spotlight away? Or is it because men are not held to the same expectations?

Celebrities often double as high profile models. We look forward to the Met Gala and red carpets at the Oscars and Grammys every year. The red carpet is the biggest runway and many designers look to see what they are wearing for inspiration for new collections. Creatives who design clothes for general consumer stores such as H&M, Zara, and Urban Outfitters, look to celebrities to dictate trends. How are they supposed to get any new ideas when all the men on the carpet are just wearing different versions of the same tuxedo?

This problem extends far past the red carpet. When I walk into the men’s section of H&M, there are only dark colored clothes and most items look like they can be paired with a suit. Even the photos on the walls are uninspiring. Though the number of men’s fashion magazines has risen in the past several years, their formats remain conservative. GQ’s cover might be interchangeable with that of Esquire or Vogue’s Hommes International.

Instead of a space for experimentation, these magazines seem to simply exist as a counterpart to the sea of women specific publications.

56 SHEI Magazine

One issue between female and male fashion might be versatility.

Whether it is a wedding, funeral, or even a formal birthday party, Men can wear the same suit without question. In contrast, women are expected to wear a different dress to each function.

In 2020, there are a few celebrities who are trying to push against societal boundaries. Billy Porter from HBO’s series Pose and American actor Ezra Miller take risks by wearing standout clothing. Their visibility, however, can trick us into thinking that mens fashion is moving somewhere.

It will take a few more than just these two to inspire other celebrities to break the cycle of suits. Another question is can more designers offer ways to circumvent norms of masculinity in their clothing?

Celebrities are not the only ones to blame for the industry’s lack of innovation. It is the consumer’s fear of public rejection when stepping outside of masculine norms that prevents designers from creating such garments. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Givenchy creative director Ricardo Tisci revealed that he no longer does couture in regards to menswear because of how hard it is to persuade clients. He now mainly focuses on couture in womenswear since there are many more subjects willing to wear higher fashion. Designers might be willing to take risks if male consumers were open to pushing boundaries.

However, in an increasingly nonbinary sector, how can playing with the fact and history of the gender binary be productive? Why does gender persist at all in the face of a widespread push for androngony? In an interview with Vogue, Ezra Miller articulates that the goal is not to rid the world of gender but to re-evaluate our need for it and our relationship with it.

“Gender itself is not our enemy” Miller says, “ and it will never really be over because it’s a vital aspect of existence... but if you want it, we can see a world in which we are liberated from the bonds of it and nourished by the joys and beauty of it.”

The solution, therefore, may not be to reject gender, but rather to push it to do more. Gaga does not just own the red carpet, but kills the game when she is out on the go. She takes every public moment to use her outfits to inspire fans and designers. Her take on fashion might be considered a version of performance art. Conversely, many famous men revert to basketball shorts and t-shirts when they are out in public. Why is it the expectation of women in our society to carry fashion on their backs?

Why do we consciously and unconsciously let men slide by with the same tuxedo, yet criticize women if they do not dress to the occasion?

These questions do not just lament a neglected sector of the high fashion industry, but also highlight glaring societal issues surrounding gender performance. In the contemporary and cosmopolitan world, men’s style could have a significant role to play in shaping inclusive narratives.

Men’s fashion should not just meet the current expectations of women’s wear, but should seek to challenge expectations of fashion regardless of gender. Both celebrities and designers have the responsibility to enter these conversations and shift what it means to dress, regardless of a binary.

By Benjamin Decker Layout by Maddie Fox

Psyche 57

chapter 5

REBIRTH Shoes Eytys

Concept & Styling Nick Farrugia, Jenny Ruan Photographers Gabby Ceritano, Evan Parness, Francesca Romano, Alvin Yao Photography Editing Katie Corbett, Evan Parness Videographer Hayley Danke Graphic Designer Mackenzie Schwedt Models Cydney Gardner Brown

To become self aware is to confront the psyche. If we can face our character, feelings, and motives without perturbation, perhaps we can think beyond ourselves. To know the self is to know one’s scale in the larger picture. While we may never be able to see beyond the frame of our own mind, to acknowledge a universe greater than ourselves allows us to ask better questions about the worlds we inhabit.

Orange Turtleneck ASOS Shoes Urban Outfitters

Jacket Missguided Shoes ASOS

Minds in

MUSEUMS

Before I pull open the thick glass door that marks the entrance to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, my mind is busy. I first pass by a gaggle of wide-eyed tourists admiring the Rocky Statue, a reminder of a cinematic feat which impressed millions. I then find myself gleefully climbing the seventy-two steps which have become a hallmark of the film. When I reach the topmost landing, I feel minimized by the nearly fifty-foot Christmas tree which illuminates the scene in a flickering spectrum of red, blue, and green. It challenges the sky-scraping architecture in the distance, almost daring the cityscape to stand down.

The 3D artistry of Metropolitan architecture leaves me in awe. . My eyes are the beholder of this visual information, and my mind is the keeper of the feelings invoked. If perception is an internal process, then physical artistry must be its external companion. But does this form of communication occur at one’s own discretion? Can we deliberately decide which pieces of our consciousness will cross this invisible, yet vitally permeable margin?

There must be some method to the madness that is sharing one’s innermost desires, one’s suppressed fears, or one’s most sacred memories via the public display of artwork. What occurs during the metamorphose of delicate thoughts into physical acts of self ? How does the unique position held by the viewer interact with the broader museum setting to develop a personal, yet multi-faceted perception of someone else’s work?

Philadelphia is my home, but the significance of its past is a legacy beyond the individual. My reverence of the history it holds is purposeful, it’s learned. The city’s image in the distance beckons me inside one of its most valued structures. I consider how far we’ve come as I step into the museum’s representation of the great distance we still must go. How can a collection of art challenge and adjust the mental state of a solitary mind?

What if you were told to construct a physical representation of the anticipatory emotions with which you envision the future? Would it be hesitation that shows through? Fear? Elation? Trepidation? Which mediums would you gravitate toward in your symbolic endeavor? How does emerging technology fit into your vision? Would you change your mind if you knew that your work was to be grouped with that of several other individuals of unknown backgrounds, for anyone in the world to see?

64 SHEI Magazine

The white walls and looming structures inside the ‘Designs for Different Futures’ exhibit invite me beneath a looming archway. I begin an expedition that blurs boundaries between that which is and isn’t within humankind’s potential. Education grounds society in the delineation of the arts and sciences. But the unique power of the museum space is to reflect the public sentiment associated with the intellectual novelty of a moment.

White walls and black sans-serif text are exemplative of the open-ended narrative that is our species’ trajectory. There’s a specific simplicity to a (not so) imminent doomsday, a truth suspended in the open air of rooms filled strategically, not abundantly. What is not here is equally as important as what is. In this way, the exhibit achieves its purpose: to remind me of the invisible toll man-made impositions take on the Earth. Will our future be as barren and colorless as the walls which enclose its artistic representation?

2-D pieces and technological constructions fill the space, acting as a personal invitation to first define and then observe their existence. Some works appear more obvious than others. In the corner stands a mannequin draped in a burgundy costume, a politically inflammatory symbol extracted from Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale. The dressed body serves as a warning, a reminder of the misplaced capacity of man in unprecedented circumstances. On another wall, black stickers spell out ‘M A T E R I A L S’ and draw my eyes toward 3D printed dresses modeled by more blankfaced mannequins that sit atop a series of shelves. Accordion-like jumpsuits are preserved in a floating glass box, which according to the posted placard, are meant to grow with the wearer—thus eliminating fast fashion. Robotic devices intermittently featured help develop a continuity between rooms. They are intended to help facilitate basic human tasks, such as bottle-feeding an infant, and thereby serve as subtle reminders of that which makes us, us: not much.

Each room is spotless but eerily empty. Each work is intricately refined but ominously feasible.

The organization of objects within the exhibit space lends to a sort of passage not through days, months or years, but through eras. Does the preservation of humanity call for empty spaces instead of the buildings that pollute our horizons? Can objects in a white-walled room truly be indicative of the exciting—but also frightening—future that awaits?

Psyche 65

The natural world is an intricate puzzle with which we can only interact in pieces. When we are young, we are taught that bees pollinate the flowers which bloom. When these same flowers die, they become part of the soil from which new sprouts grow. When we gain our own years, however, we forget the delicacy of such processes and disrupt entire ecosystems with reckless egoism. How can mankind instead work within the confines of nature, and avoid trampling over it to achieve material ends? Can we approach the cliff without diving beyond its edge?

My whirring brain spins a bit faster as I commence the second chapter of my expedition inside the museum. My movements are contrastingly slow in an unconscious attempt to manage the visual information I’m absorbing. At this moment I’m the side of the sponge that hasn’t yet been used to scrub the plate, the B side of the cassette tape. I’m worn, yet also refreshed. But when I see it across the room, I’m something else entirely: a little kid again.

Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers hangs on the opposite wall, and I pause as a memory floats to the surface of the mess of thoughts which reside in my head. I’m crouched on a stool so as to be tall enough to reach the paint color I want across the massive wooden table. I’m a second grader recreating Van Gogh’s work in art class, a work I’ve only ever seen on a projector screen. All I like about this painting is the pretty colors. Is this cognizance enough? The memory drifts away. Back in the museum, I rush across the room to get up close to the work, admiring the visibility of the brush strokes on the canvas. I’m focused on the way the petals meet, on the complimentary turquoise and orange tones which radiate artificial sunlight back on my face. The composition is wonderfully simplistic, a snippet of the natural world inserted into a man-made setting. But that’s not the only story.

There’s something else, beyond which Van Gogh could have predicted. And it’s told by another: the curator.

The matching of frames to paintings may not be deeply considered by the streams of viewers that will observe such pairings. But in this instance, I pay attention. While no artist paints with a frame in mind, the addition can contribute to the communication of something greater than the original intent.

I take a step back, and I see the synergy before me. The six-inch golden border molded with detail to such a degree it could stand on its own, Sunflowers’ frame formulates a combination of craftsmanship with an entirely new implication. Something small is housed within something big.

The frame allows my engagement to be understood within a broad history of art viewing.

The central flowers resist being overshadowed by the frame, a juxtaposition emblematic of nature encroached upon by a dominating human species. Just as the frame is obnoxious in its protection of such a delicately composed painting, mankind has intruded upon intertwined environmental structures for economic gain. We are functioning in an ecosystem that has existed long before the arrival of humankind and one that shall remain long after it. Does disregard for the contents inside a frame distort the entire work? Can we frame our future differently from the tale we currently narrate? Maybe I didn’t leave the first exhibit behind, after all.

66 SHEI Magazine

Cubism distorts the simplicity of clarity in favor of interwoven geometric shapes that form the core of a composition. When Picasso and Ruiz depict their Three Musicians with this tactic, to the size of about seven feet by six feet, it communicates a message that is simultaneously self-evident and hidden between the layers of their collage.

This 20th-century style challenged existing conceptions of the two dimensions, tying cubist works with sculpture and architecture. How did this twist on the traditional challenge the mind’s eye?

The mental toll of the experience is growing. Contradictory ideas swirling through my head.

My thoughts pause their overlapping movement at the sight of Picasso’s Three Musicians. I have no idea where I am in proximity to the museum’s entrance, nor its exit. All I know is that I’ve been traveling through a maze of white walls on a journey that I anticipate repeating on another day, in another headspace.. Does abstraction negate the reality of the time and place represented in the work? We look at objects in a room and know what they are, where they came from, what purpose they serve. Alternatively, we see the horizon where the ocean meets the sky and comprehend the two components, but we do not acknowledge the distance which tricks us into thinking the two planes are actually touching. Is the horizon real? Are the three men and the instruments they hold only that which I can roughly make them out to be, or more? Is something else conveyed by abstraction that cannot be communicated via the distinction of foreground, background, and the subjects which fill them?

Man implanted visual chaos onto the land, sometimes with justified reasoning and sometimes without. Regardless, no one gets to see the why of this visual pollution. ‘Invisibilism’ is the term which identifies the process of art production as determinant of that which the viewer witnesses, even though there’s a one-way mirror through which the viewer cannot see, to the other side which is the artist’s personal development of the work. I don’t know why Picasso chose to divide up his three men into the geometric shapes that he did, nor why he chose to use those specific hues of green, orange, and blue to convey the mood. Does this mean I’ll never understand the painting?

Or does it merely open it up to infinite interpretations? Does the distortion of a picture negate its legitimacy, or convince the viewer that nothing is really as it seems?

I finally find myself opening a door at the street-level, cars rushing by me as I’m confronted with a new winter nighttime chill. I’m experiencing the remnants of distinct feelings: gratitude for the city which afforded me such an experience, empathy towards the complexity of human experience, respect for the courage required to communicate such a notion. These are feelings of certitude. But there are also so many questions. I start to realize that to leave questions left unanswered doesn’t lessen the value of asking the question in the first place. The museum space invites us to wonder, to dream, to inquisite. Humanity built a structure in which it can question itself. And this is the manner by which it has grown, and will continue to beyond the capacity of imagination.

By Hannah Triester Layout by Carly Lucas

Psyche 67

BEST OF

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BRIDGET KENNEDY @bridgek “I work at the library. I’m on my break right now actually.

What’s the magazine?

I actually used to work at SEE, the eyeglass store.

I feel like we worked with SHEI maybe eight years ago. I think it was a fashion show? I’m glad you’re still around.”

LE

SUNDUS AL AMEEN @sundust__ “That’s my friend.

She looks iconic.” (in reference to Kristy Nikolajuk)

KRISTY NIKOLAJUK “I just came from the hospital, I’m in nursing school. Clinicals are starting this semester so I had to start some of that stuff today.”

FRANKIE TORRES “Most of the things in my closet are statement pieces.

I really love mixing colors, fabrics and styles. I’m always looking for clothes I can wear on stage that compliments my music, so I would say I draw a lot of inspiration from rock in the 70s, 80s, and 90s.”

LYNN HAYES @lynnhayess “I get my inspiration from Bella Hadid and Pinterest.”

ANONYMOUS

MONET MADOULA-BEY “For me, fashion and style is being able to say who you are without speaking.”

MARION EACKER @marioneacker “I like to pair the clothes I get from thrift stores with things I’ve had since middle school.

I do my best not to buy new clothes and challenge myself to find old pieces that reflect my personality. I find my inspiration in anyone I see on the street being themselves.”

KAILANA DEJOI @floradejoie “I only shop at th because I am a fir the soul of clothe that linger on them choose to give th you find the most for the best price

IE

hrift stores irm believer in es and the stories m when people hem up... plus t unique material e!”

SYDNEY SIMONCINI “I’ve done some art and costuming for student films. I love when I find a great character piece and get to incorporate it in my wardrobe after production wraps.”

NA’KIA CHANNEY @kaleido_kia “I try to make my wardrobe as bright as possible. I have a lot of yellow. There have been love poems written about the color yellow, and I connect with them because it’s the color that brings me so much happiness. It’s an attempt to counteract the monotony of daily life.”

etwet

BEHIND THE SCENES It’s no secret that dedicated, talented, and passionate human beings make up SHEI Magazine. But what makes us? Is it our subconscious seeking? Our constant growing? The learning and the failing? Our discoveries and rebirths?

For the past four years at the University of Michigan I have been surrounded by individuals who embody perseverance, creativity, and excellence: the creators of SHEI Magazine. I have been in the presence of individuals who have taken photos that move me to tears. Behind the scenes, these artists were doing more than helping make a magazine.They were making me. We all need hands to hold, people to lean on, voices to challenge us, ears to accept us, and laughter to cure us. I have found all those things here. I have seen this team bind broken intentions and grow new ingenuity.

Part of growing up is leaning into yourself. It is about becoming and allowing yourself to see yourself. SHEI’s creators have held a mirror when I was afraid to look, and pushed me towards the unknown—further towards myself.

I look back at the things that we have made and I remember that the people who have helped me make this magazine have also made me into the person that I am. Saying that I’m eternally grateful doesn’t seem like enough. I am endlessly proud and astonished by this terrific team and the depths of what they create. I hope you are too. Thanks for reading our magazine and for letting us bleed out onto the canvas.

Keep making great things.

Kenzie King Creative Director Photographs by Rita Vega

www.sheimagazine.com