Perigee

Apogee Issue 06 Preview: Lizzie Gill

Lizzie Gill is a mixed media artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Her work explores themes of retro Americana in a contemporary context. Through a variety of mediums she illustrates a time warp, composed of everyday life, human agency and the disingenuous.  The disingenuous nature of her work pertains to one’s ability to mislead through dress, speech or manner.  Growing up in the digital age, this deception is often conducted behind a series of computer screens. This manipulation is also evident in her process. Her canvases are comprised of mixed media and oil, a process first approached through digital collage and then translated onto canvas. The imagery elicits notions of science fiction, with figures suspended in other dimensions, where natural laws, such as gravity, do not apply. Her work is a nostalgic look at both the American past and innocence with a twist, prompting one to question their sense of time and culture. Not everything is ever quite as it seems. Lizzie is the Associate Curator at Sugarlift Gallery in Brooklyn and the co-founder of the Brooklyn Collage Collective. The Collective’s goal is to bring attention to the medium of collage through an ever growing and dynamic group...
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APOGEE ISSUE 06 PREVIEW: Kapwani Kiwanga

    Today’s preview features artist Kapwani Kiwanga. “Flowers for Africa: Nigeria” speaks for itself.     Flowers for Africa: Nigeria, 2014 Pièce unique Cut flowers, Ribbon Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Jérôme Poggi © Aurélien Mole   KAPWANI KIWANGA was born in Hamilton, Canada in 1978, and currently resides in Paris. Kiwanga studied Anthropology and Comparative Religions at McGill University, Canada. Her work intentionally confuses truth and fiction in order to unsettle hegemonic narratives and create spaces in which marginal and fantastical discourse can flourish. Kiwanga’s fondness for oral traditions drives a continual exploration of the formal possibilities of orality in her performance, sound, and video work. She has been artist-in-residence at L’Ecole National Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris (France); Le Fresnoy: National Contemporary Art Studio (France); MU Foundation, Eindhoven (Netherlands); Le Manège, Dakar, Senegal. Her film and video works have been nominated for two BAFTAs and have received awards at international film festivals. She has exhibited internationally including at Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Foundation Ricard, Paris, France; Glasgow Centre of Contemporary Art; Paris Photo; Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo, Almería, Spain; and the Art Catalyst, London. Recent and Upcoming exhibitions include solo exhibitions at FIAC, 1:54, Galerie Jérôme Poggi, Galerie...
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APOGEE ISSUE 06 PREVIEW: Kaitlin Pomerantz

      Today we’d like to share Kaitlin Pomerantz’s “Content Aware.” Stay tuned for more exclusive visual art featured in Apogee Issue 06, available for purchase this Thursday, December 11.         Content Aware (Street Morphology series), 2015 Digital photo-collage Permission of artist   KAITLIN POMERANTZ is a visual artist in Philadelphia.

APOGEE ISSUE 06 PREVIEW: Imran Perretta

    One week until the launch of Apogee Issue 06, which we will celebrate at the Bureau of General Services Queer Division on December 10th @ 7PM. Join us! Until then, we are honored to feature Imran Perretta’s “Devotion.”       Devotion, 2014 Prayer mat (facing Makkah), tape recording, tape player, newspaper clipping, Nag Champa scent. Dimensions variable. Photo credit: Andy Keate   IMRAN PERRETTA’s work occupies a shifting, liminal territory between time/s and place/s. He deploys the authentic trace alongside the theatrical and the constructed to meditate on the inheritance of identity, the marginal body and the passing of individual and cultural histories. Current exhibitions include a solo presentation of 5 percent for Kunsten.nu alongside the group show Just Frustration at SixtyEight, Copenhagen, Denmark. Recent shows include Devotions at MOT International Project Space (2015), New Contemporaries at the Liverpool Biennial and the ICA, London (2014). In 2014, Perretta was the recipient of the Boise Travel Scholarship. He lives and works in London, UK.

APOGEE ISSUE 06 PREVIEW: Stina Puotinen

    Today we’re featuring artist Stina Puotinen’s “Spoopy Sandwich.”         Spoopy Sandwich, 2014 As part of “Spoopy”, a photo series collaboration with Alison Kuo, Nathan Miller & Erik Puotinen. Digital image. Dimensions variable.     STINA PUOTINEN received her BA in Art History and Studio Art at Vassar College, and has been working as an artist, museum educator, and occasional curator in New York City for over 10 years. She has taught at several leading arts institutions, including the MoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, among others. Borne out of her work in Museums—both literally and ideologically—is her previous work as co-founder of the video and performance collective CHERYL, and the curatorial production team Limited Time Only. As of Fall 2015, Puotinen has left Brooklyn to attend the MFA program at Manchester School of Art in the U.K. 

APOGEE ISSUE 06 PREVIEW: Xaviera Simmons

    Leading up to Apogee Issue 06’s release, we want to treat you to a sneak preview of visual art we feature in our latest issue. Today, we’re starting at the beginning: Issue 06’s cover, “On Sculpture,” by Xaviera Simmons. Stay tuned for more.       On Sculpture, 2011 Color Photograph 40×50 inches Courtesy of The Artist and David Castillo Gallery   XAVIERA SIMMONS’S body of work spans photography, performance, video, sound, sculpture, and installation. She defines her studio practice as rooted in ongoing investigation of experience, memory, abstraction, present and future histories, specifically concentrating on shifting notions surrounding landscape, character development, and formal processes. Simmons is committed equally to the examination of different artistic modes and processes, dedicating part of a year to photography, another part to performance, and other parts to installation, video, and sound works, thereby keeping her practice in constant and consistent rotation, shift, and engagement. 

Pushcart Nominations

The staff of Apogee Journal is so thankful for all of our contributors. We are excited to have the opportunity to nominate the following writers for the Pushcart Prize. Zubair Ahmed “Edges of Insomnia” Soyini Ayana Forde “Soon mus come” Rowan Hisayo Buchanan “Rebuke the Wind” Jerald Walker “The Heritage Room” Tiphanie Yanique “Experimental Studies” Mina Zohal “Baaraan-e Digar”  

Apogee Issue 06

    We are pleased to announce the release of Apogee Issue 06! This gorgeous cover features artist Xaviera Simmons. Check out all the exciting artists and writers below. Join us in celebrating the launch of Issue 06 on Thursday, December 10, 2015, at 7:00pm, at the Bureau of General Services Queer Division (208 W 13th St #210, New York, NY 10011). The evening will feature readings from Issue 06 contributors Victoria Brown, Nina Puro, Chase Berggrun, Soyini Ayanna Forde, Leila Ortiz, Derrick Austin, and Rowan Hisayo Buchanan. $5 Suggested donation. Looking forward to seeing you! xoxo Apogee   Poetry Walter Ancarrow Derrick Austin Chase Berggrun Cathy Linh Che Soyini Ayanna Forde Tyler Kline Karen An-Hwei Lee Michelle Lin Leila Ortiz Nina Puro Jennifer Tamayo   Nonfiction Victoria Brown Chido Muchemwa Jerald Walker Tinghui Zhang   Fiction Kiik A. K. Rowan Hisayo Buchanan Gemini Wahhaj Norman Zelaya   Visual Artists Lizzie Gill Kapwani Kiwanga Christian Newby Imran Perretta Kaitlin Pomerantz Stina Puotinen Xaviera Simmons Stacey Tyrell Clemence Vazard

BOOK REVIEW: Margo Jefferson's 'Negroland: A Memoir,' by Elisabeth Sherman

  Margo Jefferson’s Negroland: A Memoir  Elisabeth Sherman   Literature is experiencing a renaissance in the memoir genre. Women especially dominate this field. But critic Margo Jefferson has created a staggering hybrid work in Negroland, combining historical research with autobiography with lyric essay to elevate memoir beyond the confines of internal thought processes and solipsistic reflections on an individual experience. Jefferson opens Negroland with a history of America’s post-slavery landscape in brief profiles and letters of this country’s first black elite: James Forten, “abolitionist and entrepreneur,” Cyprian Clamorgan, author of The Colored Aristocracy of St. Louis, and Charlotte Forten, teacher and activist. This opening serves as the first hint that Jefferson’s book will be an act of preservation, a new historical record of “colored society.” Historical context becomes crucial when the narrative turns to Jefferson’s life. Her memoir transcends the current popular modes of first person writing. It’s not a diary, chronicling the minutiae of an author’s life, nor is it personal essay pegged on a current event. Playing with a sly academic tone, Negroland is reminiscent of a brilliant college lecture, during which the professor occasionally interrupts herself with personal anecdotes. Jefferson interweaves her personal story with that of her cultural...
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NONFICTION: Losing My Father by Ola Osaze

  Losing my father Ola Osaze   I crossed the threshold of the American border on a sunny Fall day in 1991, not too long after yet another military-backed coup rocked Nigeria. The riots and subsequent government-sanctioned reprisals meant more school closures, curfews, harassment, and abuse at the hands of police for indeterminate lengths of time. It also meant more killings. As we walked through the tarmac of the Greensboro, North Carolina airport, my mother clutched my 15-year-old sweaty hand in her cold dry one. Approaching the queue for customs where we would declare our possessions for inspection, a prominent sign on display caught our attention. The bright green and white colors of my country’s flag read, “Beware of Nigerian Drug Smugglers.” And just like that, we were placed crudely into the reality of racism in America. Many of us leave our African homes with our hearts brimming with optimism and our heads filled with delusions about what these American places will make possible. What we find instead, as Africans in America, are deep struggles for economic survival in the midst of an ever-evolving and complicated sense of racial and ethnic identity. For queer and transgender Africans living in the...
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