WEAR Journal, published and produced by HomeShop Beijing, is now out! I have a four-page graphic essay which I developed with the amazing art historian Orianna Cacchione, who’s posing above. Here’s more about the journal’s theme this year:
WEAR journal finally arrives to its third issue in spartan outfit: double-pleated, DIY and pretty much naked. Following the first two issues’ design of a coverless magazine about urban dress, this issue thinks about the fashionable phrase “你有种 nǐ yŏu zhŏng” in a few of the other realms where HomeShop likes to dwell: critical theory, micropolitics and artistic production. “有种 yŏu zhŏng“—literally meaning “to have seed” and metaphorically insinuating that one is ballsy or daring—becomes here more than a launchpad for a series of rolling activities (like seed bombing or urban exploring); it is also the point of potential from which the likes of a film critic, organic market organizers and artist-activists engage in a context-specific dialogue on the global realities at play in China.
In the spirit of “ballsy”, we took an art pilgrimage to Marfa, Texas, where we (gently) tossed a (soft) baseball at the reinforced windows of the famous Prada Marfa. Hilarity, naturally, ensues, as I tell the story in my first published comic (and a bilingual one at that!).
If you’re in China, be sure to pick up a copy of WEAR for only 68 RMB at Home Shop. Outside the mainland, you can order it via Paypal. There are a lot of other artists and writers who’ve participated, and as HomeShop is one of my favorite Chinese-expat artist spaces in Beijing, I’m thrilled to be a part of their journal.
