Spring 2016, Barbed's first issue in Detroit.

Editor’s notes

Barbed magazine proudly presents its first issue in Detroit, thanks to the artists whose work is published in this new issue: without them, it would not be possible! In the premiere issue of Barbed, you’ll see collections of work that fall into many categories, but which essentially speak to elements in a culture which has been given a second chance in one way or another.

Through their own eyes, you see the artists ideas, images, captions,
in-betweens, collaborations, processes, intimacy, beauty, voice, trespass, and freedom all at the same time.

After being absent from Detroit for over ten years, I have returned to an entirely different city. Living here is still about the compromise and sometimes responsibility, but now with a renewed sense of fun, urgency, promise of moving ahead, and feeling proud of the past simultaneously.

Artists featured on this issue:

INTO THE WOODS
By Isolde Kille

The Model and The Photographer
By Robert Siegelman

Le Petit mort 0005
By Silvino Gonzáles Morales

Figures
By Salvador Campos

One – Many Reduction (Capilla 1)
By Rafael Domenech

Thank you
By Jeffrey Evergreen

We All Live Downwind
By Shanna Merola

Untitled 1, Untitled 2
By Ara Levon Thorose

It’s Exercise Time!
By Jessica Frelinghuysen

IN/TERMINUS interviews Folke Köbberling and
Nils-Arne Kssens

CRISSCROSS DETROIT, DETROIT FIZZ
By John Gayer

Just listen to me (or I’ll be your mirror)
By Meliti Kontogiorgi

sibyl of cumae: i can no longer make you smile
By Angeli

Flowy To The Side, Updo, and Messy Bun
By Anysa Saleh

Pulse | Motion Pictures
By Ronald Bal

Sincerely, Judy
By Joe Sobel

To me it’s all very confusing
By Schuyler Hazard

Our Lady of Perpetual Light
By Laurie Langford

Absent Figure
By Samantha Russell

Boutique Sexuality
By R W Miller

NODES:
Susan Gold Smith

The Pond
By Rachel Jennings

Beachcomber #1
By Nate Nettleton

Selfie
By Alexander Elson

Intimacy
By Irina Dora Magurean

Apples and Jazz
By Betino Assa

Codfish Buljol (Trinidad)
By Louise-Chance Baxter

Lady Draftsman
Should I wear my hair up or down today?
Last day at the office (2016), digital photograph
By Sarah van Sloten

This issue is supported in part thanks to:
The Windsor Arts Council and Region

^Preview

It’s Exercise Time!

By Jessica Frelinghuysen, Article by Rosie Sharp

Jessica turned the gallery into an aerobic gym with props, posters, a gallery ArtFit exercise circuit she made with ubiquitous Hamtramck items such as 20 pound basmati rice bags and photographs of her performing interventions around town. During the course of the show Jessica held participatory Jessercise workouts every week during open gallery hours. After the last Jessercise class, the artist sat down for a stretch and talk session with Detroit arts writer Sarah Rose Sharp in front of an audience, chewing post-workout snacks and sitting on foam mats.

Jess: Pass the chips around if you want. Ah, this is Rosie Sharp, she’s an arts writer and critic in Detroit. Thanks for working out!

Rosie: Oh Sure! So you said that you’ve been exercising for seven years?

Jess: Oh yeah. Like seriously exercising. Three times a week if not more.

Rosie: So has it always been an art practice as well as a workout?

Jess: No. I genuinely want to get fit and loose weight and get stronger, but at some point I was thinking about how my art life and my gym life would match up. I would go to the gym and see this white space with all these bodies exercising in it and following instructions. I would observe all these people striking poses like scuptures. It’s a weird life in the gym and it’s a weird life being an artist. Especially living in Hamtramck cause I don’t have a gym in town. I walk around the city, but I never before this project, pumped iron in the city. So, the premise for this show is to bring those two worlds together.

Activate the environment around where I live.

Rosie: One thing I noticed is that I had a lot more fun than I do normally when I work out.

Jess: Oh good!

Exercise Positions, 2015, 24 x 36 inches, digital print
Photo credit: Melanie Manos.

i. Jeffrey Evergreen

Since moving into Detroit a year & a half ago from elsewhere in the state, I’ve had 10 part-time jobs, all temporary, contingent, or at-will; usually juggling two or three at a time. Good jobs here are still hard to find, but I feel fortunate because, in addition to whatever hustle I may put forth, I have a good education that provides opportunities I might not have otherwise. I have managed to find work, after all. It must also be noted that I have chosen this place, one of the largest and busiest borders in North America, for all the peculiarities of place, history, and people, and a very real sense of possibility I haven’t felt elsewhere, and I’m not second-guessing that decision here. Rather I’m taking a moment to acknowledge and reflect on the fact that in spite of whatever struggle I’ve felt, there are many who didn’t/don’t have access to the same advantages, whether in Detroit or elsewhere.

One of the perks of life in Detroit is the Eastern Market, a historic market district that opens to the public on Saturdays. It is with a mix of pride, guilt, and thanks that I shop for wholesale bargains, bound by a tight budget on one side, and on the other, an awareness that plentiful, inexpensive vegetables are frequently made possible by many people who have less opportunity than I do. In this series of ‘Thank You’ images, inspired by plastic bags at the market, I express sincere gratitude while confronting my privileged role in a much larger economic system.

All works are titled Thank You
Risograph prints, 8.5 x 11 inches, 2016

ii. Shanna Merola

The images in We All Live Downwind are culled from daily headlines – inspired by both global and grassroots struggles against the forces of privatization in the face of disaster capitalism. In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein writes about the free market driven exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries. Saying “the original disaster—the coup, the terrorist attack, the market meltdown, the war, the tsunami, the hurricane — puts the entire population into a state of collective shock”. And that “shocked societies often give up things they would otherwise fiercely protect”. The scenes in We All Live Downwind, have been carved out of
dystopian landscapes in the aftermath of that shock.

On the surface, rubble hints at layers of oil and shale, cracked and bubbling from the earth below. Rising from another mound, rows of empty mobile homes bake beneath the summer sun. The bust of small towns left dry in the aftermath of supply and demand. In this place,only fragments of people remain, their mechanical gestures left tending to the chaos on auto. Reduced to survival, their struggle against an increasingly hostile environment goes unnoticed. Beyond the upheaval of production a bending highway promises never ending expansion - and that low rumble you hear to the west is getting louder.