No W here: Alice Hope, Bastienne Schmidt, Toni Ross

By Amanda Gluibizzi

JUL-AUG 2021 | ArtSeen

As they were planning their joint exhibition at Ricco/Maresca, Alice Hope, Bastienne Schmidt, and Toni Ross agreed to choose an evocative object from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art that would serve as an organizing principle for each artist’s portion of the show. To their surprise, all of them chose the same piece.

Abby Chen and Lam Tung Pang

JUL-AUG 2022 | Critics Page

The world has changed because we are all living in a more dangerous state. There is no place to hide and no place to escape. Where you stand is where you fight. Hope and despair are intertwined endlessly, they dissolve and complete each other. If hope is presented as "once upon a time", this past time can be put into the present as disappointment and desperation, at the same time it can also stimulate new imagination.

Judah Schept’s Coal, Cages, Crisis

By Jarrod Shanahan and Abby Cunniff

SEPT 2022 | Field Notes

A crumbling strip of asphalt winds through the craggy countryside of eastern Kentucky, striated with power lines sagging in every direction. Wobbly pavement markings and errant skidmarks vanish at a hairpin bend buffered by low guard rails framing a rolling, sparsely tree-spotted expanse of hills. On one side of this road stands a roughly chiseled open coal seam, marking the remnants of a former mine. On the other, a bowed chain link fence capped in razor-wire announces the outer periphery of Otter Creek Correctional Facility. This remarkable image by photographer Jill Frank adorns the jacket of prison scholar Judah Schept’s Coal, Cages, Crisis (New York: NYU Press, 2022), confronting the reader with the book’s central preoccupations.

Christopher Soto with Jan-Henry Gray

JUL-AUG 2022 | Poetry

I’ve been looking forward to this debut poetry book, Diaries of a Terrorist, for quite some time. Christopher Soto is someone I think of as a poet and activist in the same breath. His taut debut poetry collection is a testament to queer defiance of policing in the United States and abroad. His activism off the page (with UCLA Cops Off Campus, Writers for Migrant Justice, and Undocupoets) has pushed back against policing, human caging, and the mistreatment of migrants. Through language, his poetry and activism share some of the same concerns: an urgency for action, a clarity of vision, and yes, a new sense of hope.