In 2021, Aster(ix) began welcoming featured artists and projects for residency projects. As a journal, we love to feature the intimate, the honest, and the beautiful, and our Residency is an opportunity to explore all of that.
We hope you enjoy exploring some of our In-Residence projects to-date:
Fall 2020: “Chancletazo for Your Soul” with Marlène Ramírez-Cancio
During tarot readings, Marlène found herself frequently referencing Latinx cultural icons and concepts when sharing the Major Arcana. So, for fun, she began to experiment with visual art by adding collage to the widely used 1909 Smith-Rider-Waite deck. What began as an art project became an in-depth writing and soul-searching project, ultimately going from In-Residence on Instagram to a full-print issue.
Winter 2020-2021: “Everything is Temporary” with Nicole Callihan
On September 29, 2020, Nicole Callihan was diagnosed with breast cancer. A double mastectomy, a lymph node dissection, radiation, and hormone therapy followed. All the while, she committed to her everyday practice of making art. “Everything is Temporary” are poems, notes, and photos she took in the months that followed her diagnosis.
Fall2021: “Blooming Fiascoes: Poetry Postcards” with Ellen Hagan
Ellen celebrated her third collection of poetry by asking people to write her postcards of poems in response, “What is blooming? What is coming apart? What do we hold onto and what can be let go of?” She selected six poems which we featured in our In-Residence. Ellen writes, “Hungry for connection, these poems speak to one another. They work in tandem – one engaging the next. All of them a kind of thread linking us together.”
Winter 2021-2022: “The Amaranta Project” curated by Angie Cruz
Cecilia Vicuña’s painting 1972 “Amaranta” was “lost and reborn” when found in 2021. The Chilean artist-poet-activist writes simply as an introduction to her work, “My work dwells in the not yet, the future potential of the unformed, where sound, weaving, and language interact to create new meanings.”
We asked writers to create flash responses the painting, generating six micro-fictions (all translated into Spanish, with our gratitude, by Kianny N. Antigua), four poems, and one nonfiction.
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