Booklyn

by Alex Puntiel

(Source: Ganzeer.com)

Ganzeer rose to fame during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, but his art has undoubtedly resonated and expanded beyond it. Ganzeer is an artist that doesn’t limit himself to a certain medium or approach, prioritizing the messaging of his art first and foremost. From a blend of the personal and the sociopolitical, Ganzeer strives for emotive art that unravels as you peel back its layers. He does this by commenting on subject matter ranging from racial historical injustices to conveying nostalgia while subtly subverting the trope that men don’t cry. Below is my conversation with Ganzeer:

Immigrant Blues #1: Koshari / Ganzeer.com

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How did you learn about Booklyn, and how did you become a Booklyn artist?

Seth Tobocman introduced me to Marshall Weber a few weeks after having landed in New York City, sometime in the summer of 2014. I'd only met Seth the one time prior to that, but we'd been in touch prior as I'd contributed to a couple of issues of WW3 illustrated. I didn't have any readily available work at the time, and I wanted to have some new work to present to Booklyn right from the get-go, so I created a new screenprint at Bushwick Printlabs which Kevin Caplicki and Josh MacPhee from JustSeeds introduced me to, all of whom were already connected to Booklyn. Upon knowing a bit of my history and seeing the new print, Marshall signed me up right away.

What ideals in your practice align or resonate with Booklyn’s mission?

I like to draw attention to a lot of injustice, bullshit, and wrongdoings in this world through the art I make, and that very much aligns with Booklyn's commitment to environmental and social justice.

Is your art drawn out of you due to necessity? What is it about the political that inspires you to create?

I'm only really interested in making art that I feel needs to exist. The ideas that come to us are really a dime a dozen, but not all of them come with that burning urgency of "this hasto get made." And those are precisely the ones I'm generally driven to put my time and energy into, and more often than not that will inevitably have to involve some degree of addressing social justice. Social being the keyword here. Everything else--the politics, the environmentalism, the consumerism, the feminism, the racism--all of it stems from a need to address the social injustice in relation to those things.

There seems to be a blend of heritages in your work, from references to street art, historical events, and popular locations to Egyptian myths. Some pieces are more personal while others are more political. Do you approach pieces with these distinctions in mind?

When I work on something, I try to focus on the thing itself with little to no consideration for the remainder of my body of work. That way, the particular project at hand gets the treatment it really needs and everything that entails in regards to references, visual style, and so on. With that said, my references tend to come from a pretty diverse pool given my pretty diverse interests which range from comix to literature—Arabic and Anglophone—to punk-rock to Ancient Egypt to pop culture, Egyptian and American, to Science Fiction to olden mythologies to hiphop to art history, and a whole lot more.

Do you aim to change views and make people think? Your Coney Island mural, in particular, comes to mind. More broadly, do you intend to broaden people's horizons?

I suppose I have a knack for going against the grain and challenging social norms, even challenging myself sometimes. Challenging popularly accepted views definitely comes with that, but it doesn’t stem from a “you’re all idiots, my opinion is right” kind of position. It’s more of a “well, what if…” sort of attitude. As Paolo Freire pointed out: “The radical, committed to human liberation, does not become the prisoner of a ‘circle of certainty’ within which reality is also imprisoned.”

I very much agree with that, and I think a lot of what I do stems from a very similar basis.

Ganzeer's Mural at Coney Island

How do you regard the mobilization of movements?

I'm not sure I regard the mobilization of movements a whole lot. I just tend to express my own opinions and observations, especially when they constitute a viewpoint that is generally absent from the available narrative, and thus one feels compelled to include it. If I have feelings or opinions that are already part of an existent narrative (even if only constituting what one might regard as the oppositional or underground side of the narrative), I feel less inclined to add my voice for some reason. Probably because its already "being taken care of" in a sense. I prefer to operate where I see vacuums. So I'm not sure my output can easily, very squarely sit well with any particular movement, nor do I care for it to, to be honest. This shouldn't be confused with not caring about society, because I do, and more often than not my work deals with society. But it deals with my viewpoints in relation to society, regardless of whether or not these viewpoints align with the position taken by various movements and their mobilizations.

I think a handful of your work would be deemed provocative by people with more traditional leanings. As you said, you tend to go against the grain. Do you take this type of reaction into consideration? How do you maneuver about this?

Not Yours - collab with Art in Ad Places / Photo by Luna Park / Ganzeer.com

Well, personally I'm not a big fan of art that evokes no reaction from me. It doesn't necessarily have toprovoke me. It could also bring joy, make me laugh, make my blood boil, hit a nerve, bring me peace, something, anything. And maybe the very best types of art are the ones that bring about multiple emotions, not just one. And I suppose that's one of the things I aspire to achieve through my work.

Do you have anything you're currently working on that you can or want to share?

I'm wrapping up a short book for friend and writer Elliot Colla, doing the design and illustrations in a style that is somewhat reminiscent of The Apartment in Bab El-Louk (another book, written by Donia Maher).

Other than that, my two major projects, which I hope to bring to a close sometime next year, are my extra-ambitious sci-fi graphic novel THE SOLAR GRID and a collection of short stories titled TIMES NEW HUMAN.

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Check out Ganzeer’s website here: https://www.ganzeer.com

More info. on Ganzeer’s THE SOLAR GRID: https://thesolargrid.net

Link to TIMES NEW HUMAN here: https://timesnewhuman.com

SASS + ZINES 2019

Location: Brooklyn Army Terminal, North Lobby Atrium 140 58th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11220

Saturday, July 27, 2019, 12-6pmFree & open to the public

Booklyn is proud to present Sass + Zines, a one day zine fair on July 27th, 2019 at the Brooklyn Army Terminal. The event features 20 vendors presenting a variety of zines, prints, artist books, and independent comics. Sass + Zines is an annual Booklyn event that celebrates Women of color and queer persons of color (WOC/QPOC) in print. The event provides a space for emerging and historically marginalized artists and presses to exhibit, share, and sell their work.

Featuring:

Cindy Trinh Photography La Horchata Zine LAKAS Zine Lana C. Marilyn Little Big Time Press Liu Light Liv & Sabii Maamoul Press Mariame Kaba PGlitchii POMMO Press Secret Riso Club Seong Eun McFarlane Soumya Dhulekar Sunmi Victoria Priano Zineralia

It is important to recognize the unique communities that WOC/QPOC have created, Sass + Zines provides a platform for these individual artists and communities to come together and share their work with each other and with a larger audience. Vendors are local artists, as well as small presses and zine collectives from D.C. and Baltimore. The work presented at Sass + Zines  includes perzines, independent comics, artist books, and risograph prints.

Boundaries of Pain, Sociopolitical Legacies, and Confronting the Superhero Complex: A sit down with Beldan Sezen

Beldan Sezen

Beldan is a Booklyn artist of Turkish and German background who creates graphic novels, comics, artist books, and other works that often comment on the socio-political collective experience. She focuses on the broader implications of small interactions, placing more emphasis on overall circumstance than on stand-alone moments or characters themselves. She was courteous enough to drop by Booklyn for an interview. Below is a highly truncated transcript of my interview with Beldan:

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What makes you a Booklyn Artist?

When I first went there, they still had the word alliance in [Booklyn Artists Alliance], and I really liked the term alliance because it’s not like you’re taking a sit back; it’s more together. I appreciate very much that Booklyn has this objective that artists who are not the common mainstream—I have a leftist, whatever, immigra[nt], of color, lesbian background, the whole shebang—that they found it important enough to see that we are in the general canon of this country or any other countries. Simply [by being] accepted at Booklyn, I wouldn’t have made it [into] the Library of Congress or other institutions. I really value how they work in terms of doing the work, going out there, traveling, and showing and maintaining their appliance. I think it’s that mindset that makes me a Booklyn artist.

What makes Booklyn stand out to you as a center for community engagement with the arts and as a center for artists?

What I’ve learned through meeting Marshall is that there is this world of institutions who buy artist books and who use the artist books either as an exhibition piece or in their curriculums. I see my work through Booklyn reaching a broader audience which is not just a gallery place. I do believe artists can give a different perspective to the general sociopolitical issues that we have to live with. I was especially pleased to hear that my first book was bought by the biomedical department of the University of California. It never crossed my mind that medical students would use the work of an artist to gain a different approach on how to deal with certain issues in healthcare.

Can you talk about your relationship with the materials you choose to work with? Do you limit your practice to specific materials, or do materials develop depending on the project?

Different reasons. One is that the books or the stories or the art that wants to come out chooses their meanings… most of them. The other thing: I’m a woman artist, worker’s kid. My art often developed on a kitchen table. I don’t have the means, or I didn’t have the means often enough, to have a big studio or to have the expensive materials. [...] It’s not just because I can’t afford a bigger place or I can’t afford a bigger paper when I started making artist books. It was more like, hey, these are things I commonly use in my daily practice. [...] These are things that we use in society as a common practice; why just single it out? If I use something we all use, I can give it a different meaning. I as an artist can add to a journalistic approach in a different way. I can add stuff that other journalists can’t say or won’t say because of their profession or ethics, but I can. So why not take that sort of level and sustain my art practice in a way that I can do it without having to wait to be rich or to wait for certain things. I have to produce. There’s this urge in me to just throw it out there, and that’s how I approach my style.

What impact would you hope your work to have/do you see your work having? What do you hope the reader walks away with when they read your work?

For most, it’s not really the reader that I’m busy with when I do these books. It’s more my urge to tell something. But now I have enough experience with whatever I seem to tell, it resonates in different ways. It doesn’t matter if it’s a painting, or a book, or a comic. It’s more a means to me to express myself that I can’t do otherwise, and it seems to resonate.

Do you think it resonates because people have similar experiences or because they’ve never thought about these situations? Or is it just different facets: people from different walks of life having different reactions?

Well, people always take what they need to take in at that moment because we see things differently, so for you, it might be a butterfly, and for someone else, it might be a dragon. Both [are] fine, it’s just what you need and that’s how I look at art too. I will respond to what I am and who I am at that moment in time and what furthers me, not what limits me. If anything, when people read my art or see my art, that it furthers them to go beyond [whichever] way at that moment and not limit. I do believe, as far as I can tell, that I’m pretty honest in my work. And I’d also believe that I’m telling stories from perspectives that are not very much told without putting it in the forefront. That allows people to take what they need without feeling pushed to be this or that.

There’s a quote in Wetrocities where you say “To listen to you, to grant you my ear, to grant me your heart means to connect with my atrocities” while talking to someone you had prejudged. Do you think there is no way to connect with another without forgetting your own atrocities or racial biases? Do you think these "atrocities" will always linger?

(Sezen's Wetrocities)

It depends how deep you want this relationship with someone to be. And it’s not even so much about the other, it’s about how much you allow yourself to connect and be whole with that moment. We all are living in societies and come from societies who have done immense atrocities. We are part of that. I don’t think you should shy away from what you carry with you or address[ing] that. And again, it’s not so much about the other, it’s… You feel it. You feel when you connect with someone. What lingers in you and do you dare to go there or not? And if you don’t go there it will close you off, and you will harm yourself at the end by not looking at that. […] You have been raised in a culture that rules through the creation of binaries. What are the limitations for yourself? I mean, what works for you in any of your cultures? What are the good parts, what are the sources of pain? If it fits, it’s fine and if it doesn’t fit, what is it? What am I missing?

In To Separate the Body From the Machine, as a caretaker, you share multiple moments with a man that has physical conditions to the point where he can barely move on his own. You question his autonomous bodily functions with no malice in the same way a child would ask questions out of genuine curiosity. There's a sense here of wanting to help but not being able to. It seems to have left an impact. How do you deal with the boundary of pain in moments like these?

To Separate the Body From the Machine is actually the most honest way and the most straightforward way where I had the least problems with the boundary of pain. I had much more problems with to not go and say “oh my god, I have to save the whole world” because it’s kind of an escape mechanism to want to save the whole world because it takes you away from that moment to acknowledge what had just happened and to just acknowledge my pain or my limitations.

(Sezen's To Keep that Bit of Physical Distance)

So with To Separate the Body From the Machine, it just was a given. He needed more than I could give. Even if I wanted to give it, I couldn’t. Like you said, I had my questions that were childlike, it was that childlike honesty that allowed me to work with him. To not blame him or me for a situation that neither of us is guilty of. It wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t my fault that he ended up like this. It was very painful to see it and for him to live it. I wouldn’t have done him any favors to either feel guilty or shame about it and go “poor me, poor me” nor be the over-caretaker in his terms. It’s just, I’m not out in the world to save anyone, and I’ve seen it happening in that realm of work. Like caretakers say “oh, but I’m there for you” and give you everything. It just doesn’t work like that, it’s not honest. And just no one wants that. And it lays the foundation for abuse and power games.

It was great having you.

Yes, I enjoyed talking to you.

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Beldan often works between Amsterdam and New York and has currently been working on her solo exhibition for Bronx Community College set to debut November 2020. Beldan’s zine I Saw an Act of Kindness is currently available at Booklyn’s webstore. Visit Beldan’s Artist Page

Zoe Beloff: Between Worlds/ An Asylum Seeker in America

Published by Charles Nypels Lab, Van Eyck Maastricht, 2018 5 color Risograph book, 20 pages, 11 x 17 inches, A signed limited edition of 100. $50, purchase here.

After a brief hiatus we are starting up our Tumblr account again.

Is this thing on?

Do people still use Tumblr?

What would you like to see from us? Featured artists spotlights? Available artists books and zines on our webstore? Events / Workshops / Exhibitions Calendar? All of the above? Let us know by reaching out via direct message.

Need a reminder of who we are:

Founded in 1999, Booklyn is an artist-run, non-profit 501 (c) (3), consensus-governed, artists and bookmakers organization headquartered at the Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Booklyn supports artists and organizations committed to environmental and social justice. We work towards this by documenting, exhibiting, promoting, and distributing their work within educational institutions worldwide. We envision a world in which art and bookmaking are tools for education, personal agency, community engagement, and political activism.

Visit our website for more information and stay tuned...

#MeToo by Sofia Szamosi

8.5 x 5.5 inches Color, hand-sewn 36 pages 2018

Want to learn Japanese stab binding? Join Booklyn on Sunday, June 26th for this beginner’s course. This class will cover basic materials and techniques of Japanese Stab Binding.

Stab binding is one of the earliest binding techniques. It is also a great method for students and beginners, because artwork for the pages of the book can be created in advance as separate sheets. We will cover several variations and each student will leave with two completed books and one instruction sheet.

Berlin Winter is a series of collage notations printed in the form of a tourist postcard book by Abelardo Cruz-Santiago.

Learn more on our website!