Bending | The Spring 2024 Issue

We are thrilled to share our Spring 2024 issue, Bending, curated by Angie Cruz with drawings by Laylah Ali and writing by Victoria Chang, Caro De Robertis, Julian Delgado Lopera, Jaquira Díaz, Patricia Engel, Courtney Faye Taylor, Nimmi Gowrinathan, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Chinelo Okparanta, Shana L. Redmond, Lilliam Rivera, and Alejandro Varela.

Please read on to read the letter from the editor, the writing, and the drawings.

available to purchase in-print, wherever books are sold, including at
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all of the pieces are available to read online for free below

Introduction

Reader,

I first came to know Laylah Ali and her work in 2018. We met, and soon after began an exchange where she would text me details of drawings, and I would respond with recordings of unrevised scenes that eventually became a novel. The year 2018 was an incredibly difficult year for me – personally, professionally – but what kept me writing in moments of deep despair was receiving these texts with Laylah’s drawings that eventually inspired me to continue writing.

In October 2023, our community felt both despair and rage over global events. Witnessing the unrelentless violence had me asking, What is the role of art and the artist in all of this? If “care is the antidote to violence”as Saidiya Hartman says, then how do we take care of ourselves, of each other and our communities? I was reminded how the creative exchange Idid with Laylah felt like a praxis of care.

So, I invited twelve writers into this long conversation I have had with Laylah’s work and asked them to respond to twelve drawings from a Studies series that she worked on from 2010 to 2013. Some writers chose to respond to specific drawings and others to the entire series.

In the spirit of play and experimentation we curated the issue so the images don’t always correspond to the text inviting new connections and considerations. It has been a delight to see how each and every one of the literary contributions have activated the drawings in wild and revelatory ways.

May we all be safe, well and inspired!

With gratitude,
Angie

Bending Table of Contents

For whom do we become malleable? When do we break, instead of bend? This issue of Aster(ix) explores these questions. Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder Angie Cruz solicited 12 writers to respond to a series of artwork by Laylah Ali. They wrote back in micro-fictions, creative nonfiction, poems, and pieces that ignore boundaries of genre. Drawings by Ali are interspersed throughout.

“Call My Mother” by Alejandro Varela
“CAFETERIA TRAVESTI” by Julián Delgado Lopera
“#3” by Victoria Chang
“Bending Over Backwards” by Chinelo Okparanta
“still here” by Nimmi Gowrinathan
“Green” by Caro De Robertis
“Lookback Window” by Patricia Engel
“A Soul In Descarga” by Lilliam Rivera
“soloist” by Courtney Faye Taylor
“For years before my tío Junior died, I wondered if he knew” by Jaquira Díaz
“Import-Export” by Diana Khoi Nguyen
“For Something Real” by Shana L. Redmond

Study Series Drawing by Laylah Ali

Laylah Ali (b. 1968, Buffalo, New York) is an artist based in western Massachusetts. Her latest solo exhibit Is anything the matter? Drawings by Laylah Ali opened in January 2024 at the SUNY Fredonia Cathy and Jesse Marion Art Gallery and will travel in 2025 to the University Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Colby College Museum in Maine. Ali has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis; and MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts, among others, and her work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale and Whitney Biennial. Ali’s works are included in the permanent collections of numerous public institutions, including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Seattle Art Museum. Ali has been the recipient of multiple honors including the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, United States Artists Fellowship, William H. Johnson Prize, and the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston Artist Prize. Her work and process were highlighted in season 3 of the acclaimed PBS Art21 series. She is currently the Francis Christopher Oakley Third Century Professor of Art at Williams College, Williamstown, MA.