#dianachu

Recap from a weekend ago:

🎉A kadak table at our first St Louis Small Press Expo!🎉 .

Thank you Shreyas & Diana for putting this together and to all our chapter creators. If you are interested in any of the titles please write to us at

 💌kadakcollective{at}gmail{dot}com or connect with any of the creators:

Aindri C

Akhila Krishnan

Diana Chu

Mira Malhotra | Studio Kohl

Nausheen Javed | Gojagaaji

Rosemary Ikpeme | Mynd Map

Shreyas R Krishnan

Check out this little catalog Shreyas put together for the fest!! 😍📕 Shreyas & Diana will be tabling at the St Louis Public Library, 

✨TOMORROW ✨ 10am-5pm, 

Diana H. Chu is an illustrator, designer, and zinester in Milwaukee. She explores the duality of chaos/order by experimenting with color and poetry on the printed page. Diana’s cut + paste aesthetic leverages analog media and a highly intuitive process. Her illustrations have been recognized by the Society of Illustrators and American Illustration. Diana was interviewed by Business of Fashion during her past-life as an art director and prop stylist.

🔖 cargocollective.com/dianadraws

No Mames Guey

Deluxe poetry & art zine featuring vignettes from the artist’s 9-state road trip from Baltimore to Salt Lake City (and back!) during the summer of 2017. Collage, film-photography and passages typewritten on a 1940’s Corona.

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‘Cloud House’

Deluxe poetry & art zine, detailing a psychedelic experience in the woods of Wisconsin.

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Woolies

Did you know that woollybears morph into Isabella tiger moths? And as adults, they live for only a few days, spending their final hours questing for romance? This deluxe art zine is about the bittersweet romance of nature. It asks questions about how to live mindfully and live in the now.

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Sudden Death

Deluxe poetry & art zine. Cut & paste aesthetic + tiger rugs and all things mystical.

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Where Everything is Music

Deluxe poetry & art zine about the Dionysian energy of music. Inspired by the farewell concert of Baltimore’s own Sun Club band, this is a wordless experimental comic that comes replete with a code & cipher that reveals poetry by Rumi. Ancient words + contemporary music + universal feeling.

Le Extraño

Alternative comic about the phenomenon of forgetting what you look like after watching a movie.

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Rodin du Jour

A fun lil’ art zine that makes visual-pun mash-ups of pop culture (The Weeknd, The Big Lebowski, Queen Bey) with Rodin’s drippy, strange & gestural sculptures. For all Rodin fans out there, this one’s for you.

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 📖⭐ EXPO DAY ⭐ 📖

Kadak will be tabling at the 5th Annual StLSPExpo 2018! 

13th October, St Louis Public Library from 10am to 5pm with:

Aindri C

Akhila Krishnan

Diana Chu

Mira Malhotra | Studio Kohl 

Nausheen Javed | Gojagaaji 

Rosemary Ikpeme | Mynd Map 

Shreyas Krishnan

Valentino Vecchietti

A collection of printed works on trips, daily commutes, memories of travels, and being itinerant.

1. ATTACHMENTS Nausheen Javed Moving has been the only constant in most of my life. As a result, to keep my memories intact, I attach myself to the stuff inside those walls. Although now I can never imagine myself to be in the same place for long enough.

2. 100 DAYS OF TRAVELLERS IN RED Akhila Krishnan These everyday portraits are an impressionistic record of a hundred travelers on a specific London Overground line (with occasional tube portraits tucked in). Collected together and sequenced, the result is a moving volume of collective human experience.

3. NO MAMES GUEY Diana Chu Stories from a 9-state, 30-day road trip over the summer of 2017.Collage, film-photography, and passages typewritten on a 1940’s Corona.

4. PAIRS OF SHOES Akhila Krishnan Combining 3 color screen printing and digital printing; this set of 4 unique postcards attempts to capture and convey the materials, colors, textures, and shoes of India.

Through sequential narratives, two zines respond to the visceral effect of music on mind and body.

1. MAQSOOD-I-KAINAAT Shreyas R. Krishnan Through the music of Sufi singer Abida Parveen, this comic ruminates on what belief means to an atheist, and the connections between drawing, movement, and prayer.

2. WHERE EVERYTHING MUSIC Diana H. Chu Inspired by a Rumi poem and the now-defunct Baltimorean band “Sun Club”, these spreads are part of a wordless experimental comic that describes a concert experience. To lose yourself to a group of strangers in a dark room and channel the same moment-to-moment energy is not only exhilarating but life-affirming. Egos fall away. Posturing and identity are sidelined. Everything is music and community.

Shreyas R. Krishnan is an illustrator-designer with an eye for the everyday and an affinity for the drawn image. She is curious about the ways art, design and gender intersect. Through drawing and writing, she tries to understand the construction and endurance of memory – how, why and what we remember.

What is real? What is unreal? This series of experimental sequential zines ask questions about reality in our daily lives.

1. SUDDEN DEATH Diana H. Chu Deluxe poetry & art zine. Cut & paste aesthetic + tiger rugs and all things mystical.

2. LOST AND Nausheen Javed Ever lost a key/ a pen drive/ a valuable small little something? Felt stupid about yourself after? Pressurized your brains to track back each second of the memory? Is it worth mentioning and that too in a Zine? Why not and where else??? Why is the title incomplete? I’ll write about it when it’s found.

3. WOOLIES Diana H. Chu Did you know that woollybears morph into Isabella tiger moths? And as adults, they live for only a few days, spending their final hours questing for romance? This deluxe art zine is about the bittersweet romance of nature. It asks questions about how to live mindfully and live in the now.

4. SLEEP ANXIETY Nausheen Javed A zine about the simple act of sleeping and how I might need to learn it again.

5. CLOUD HOUSE Diana H. Chu Poetry & imagery collide to describe a psychedelic experience in the woods of Wisconsin.

Nausheen Javed Is an Animation Filmmaker and Illustrator. Her first film was nominated in several film festivals in Europe and Asia. She works under the childhood name ‘Gojagaaji’, which meant rough scribbles, emphasises on the childlike qualities of expression and the ‘word-picture’ association. She feels it’s important to never leave behind the ability to express like a child. Thus she writes for adults. Be it film, her zines or illustrations are all derived from her works of poetry and writings of the diary.

Using zines as a tool for critical inquiry and re-imagination, the printed works here deep-dive into art history, visual culture, and mythology.

1. QUEER FEMINIST MYTHOLOGIES Nandini Moitra An ongoing series which re-imagines mythology through a queer feminist lens.

2. RODIN DU JOUR Diana H. Chu A fun lil’ art zine that makes visual-pun mash-ups of pop culture (The Weeknd, The Big Lebowski, Queen Bey) with Rodin’s drippy, strange & gestural sculptures.

3. UNFOLDING THE SAREE Mira Malhotra A self-published zine exploring the Madonna/Whore phenomenon that is unique to the saree-wearing women of India. As we unfold the zine, we reveal the true nature of this versatile garment, by questioning the notion that the saree is attire for the ‘modest’ woman, tracking its appearances in pop culture, politics and even religion, as a ‘sexy’ garment, as we touch upon various other implications in cultural traditions.

4. STANDARDS Shreyas R. Krishnan A person walks into a museum to view ‘Women in Art’, a misleadingly titled exhibit that focuses on woman as object and subject, rather than as creator. Artworks from across geographies and time are placed next to each other, turning this silent comic’s pages into ‘galleries’ within this fictional museum. The careful adjacencies of these artworks raise questions of power and agency – who made these images of women’s bodies and why? Who consumes them?

5. BECOMING ROSIE Shreyas R. Krishnan Why did a wartime factory poster of an unnamed woman grow into a global symbol of empowerment? This comic explores how social lines were redrawn after World War II, by examining Rosie the Riveter alongside Judith Butler’s ideas on performative gender.

Nandini Moitra is a non-binary artist and illustrator based out of Kolkata, India. They co-organize a queer space in the city. They are the staff artist for Kajalmag.

Diana H. Chu is an illustrator, designer, and zinester in Milwaukee. She explores the duality of chaos/order by experimenting with color and poetry on the printed page. Diana’s cut + paste aesthetic leverages analog media and a highly intuitive process. Her illustrations have been recognized by the Society of Illustrators and American Illustration.