Art

 

What is it like to be suspended in time, motionless, uncertain of what to do next, of how to carry forward? When the world seems to go against our preconceptions and we are lost, either dwelling over the guilt and regret of the past or the fear of the future, we default to a state of psychological and even physical abeyance. But the world does not wait for us to catch up – time continues to move forward, for that is its nature, and you can choose to either wither away with it or navigate alongside it. 

 

Aileen Xie is an artist and creative writer in high school, based in the California Bay Area. Much of her work explores the intricacies of human nature, including guilt, ambivalence, and contradiction. When she’s not drawing or writing, she’s reading some classic literature with music playing in the background and a cup of coffee in her hand.

 

This piece is part of an art portfolio highlighting the intersections of femininity and STEM. It is titled “Ops” after the wife of Saturn in Roman mythology. (Why Saturn? In tribute to the color scheme and the ring of stars around her helmet. Why Ops? To highlight the lesser-known women of space and of mythology; and because her name can be read as a pun on “operations.”)

 

 

 

C.T. Dinh is a DMV-based artist and writer. She edits Backslash Lit and has speculative work featured in Flash Point SF, Strange Horizons, and Ample Remains. She will attend UMD in the fall to study immersive media.

This picture was taken in a moving car, during the pandemic somewhere in Abuja, Nigeria. The photo holds the theme of survival; survival from the pandemic, and survival from hunger.

From where I came face masks were not well known before the pandemic, but due to the Corornavirus outbreak, everyone knew the importance and use of face masks. 

The woman in the picture appears to be stressed and at the same time focused on searching her luggage, making sure that face masks weren’t omitted. I tried my best to capture the emotion of the woman shifting from worry to satisfaction as she searches her bags—survival from the pandemic. On the other side is an orange trader that was mostly affected by the lockdown because of low income—survival from hunger.

Zainab is a Nigerian writer, poet, spoken word artist, and an aspiring street photographer.
Her poems have been published and forthcoming in magazines and journals like Kalahari Review, the shallow tales review, Praxis Magazine online, Spillwords and more.

 

 Mind, is a capture of what exists in my mind, expressed in a tilted box. In it, there is my puppy Scott, fruits to start the morning, and books I like to immerse myself in. But beyond that, this piece is a spin to what people always say, “think outside the box.” I feel that there needs to be more effort to be introspective, to look inside what goes on in the mind to make rational and right decisions. To express my message, I placed a human making his move inside a brain. 

The Future, depicts what I envision our future to be. Don’t be fooled by the smiling faces of the astronauts – it is a disguise for something more serious. With so much pollution created every day, it seems inevitable that we will look beyond life on Earth and find alternative life habitats in space. I depicted the technology that will embark on the search, and placed buds to show that we will eventually find or build habitat we will be able to transition to. So the image depicts at once a dreaded future and a hint of hope. 

 

 

Junseob Yoon is a junior in an international school based in Seoul. Junseob’s interests are painting, mixed media, drawing, fashion design, and illustration. He loves using art as a way to bring communities together. His work has been exhibited in both school and professional venues. He intends to major in the fine arts in college and dreams that he will be a creative director and industrial designer one day. During his free time, he runs his auction platform in school, studies contemporary artists, paints in studio, and makes clothes.