Oh, close your eyes and you wake up / Face stuck to a vinyl settee / Oh, the line was starting to break up / What was that you were going to say? / 

About

issue 05: good night

dinner 2021



The act of sleep is universal to each living human, but the ways in which we fulfill or break that contract with our body—and in which our body fulfills or breaks that contract with us—differ not only from individual to individual, but from one night to another. In Plates Issue 05: Good Night, each contributor offers a window on their distinct journey in sleep and sleeplessness.

Plates Issue 05 is available via our stockists. Though we also offer online editions of each contribution (available below), purchase the print edition for the full Plates experience. All sales go directly towards printing costs and contributor fees.


Contents:

  1. Letter from the Editor
  2. Spiritco by Martha Ormiston
  3. Make a pillow of one’s spear waiting for daybreak by Biyun Feng
  4. I walk with her, and I hear the gentle beating of mighty wings… by Evan Fusco
  5. shema (after k) by Jason Lipeles
  6. Nightwatch as Moon by Jen Torwudzo-Stroh
  7. Undemonised: Representation and Intersectionality in Sleeping Aswang by Fabiola Tosi
  8. Sleeping while awake by Joan Roach


Contributors:

Gericault De La Rose is a queer Filipinx multidisciplinary artist and educator. She primarily works in video installation and sculpture, as well as performance art. During her time in college, she had the opportunity to work as a co-curator of Philippine objects at the Field Museum, Chicago, where she organised a series of monthly events called Pamanang Pinoy, using the objects within the collection as conduits for community discussion. After graduating with a BFA with an emphasis in Art History from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she formed an artist collective, Export Quality, together with other Queer Filipinx alumni. As an emerging artist, Gericault has had the opportunity to showcase her work in group shows in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Johnson City, New York, and Toronto. In collaboration with The Alliance of Filipinos for Immigrant Rights and Empowerment (AFIRE) Chicago, Export Quality was awarded the Crossroads Youth Fund for Social Change to support their documentary series Nakikita. Gericault attended the ACRE Residency in Steuben, Wisconsin, having received the Brenda Green Gender Inclusivity Scholarship in 2018, and was a HATCH artist resident at the Chicago Artists Coalition in 2019–2020. Gericault is currently an MFA candidate at University of California, Berkeley.

Biyun Feng is a writer, critic, and multidisciplinary designer whose work responds to the growing field of interior architecture. Based on a curiosity for form and fiction, her practice draws attention to the connections between rendered reality and the built environment. Mining personal emotions situated in the complexities of identity, gendered space, and indecisive cultural myths, her work observes, documents, disassembles, and reconstructs to inquire into collective living conditions. Biyun co-founded exstudio.co, an alternative architectural research collaborative, with her friend Zhaoxu Tong.

Evan Fusco is a producer of texts. Currently, their work is concerned with the epistemological variations that come with sustained re-evaluation of pathologies. They have a BFA in Sculpture + Expanded Media from the Cleveland Institute of Art and a MFA in Fiber & Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They teach at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the Printmedia and Contemporary Practices department. They recently published Pathologies of the Margin; a study in dissipation as well as an essay in Other Forms’ Counter-Signals #4: Identity is the Crisis, Can’t You See?. Their small press GENERAL ANTAGONISM will be releasing books in 2022.

Jason Lipeles is a writer, video artist, and human being-with-feelings. In 2020, he co-founded the ee!, a space for loving responses to zines and artbooks, with Marcella Green. He is an alumnus of the Image Text Ithaca MFA programme; Reciprocity Artist Retreat; and Institute for Jewish Creativity. His chapbook, Letters to M., a finalist for the Chautauqua Janus Prize, was published by Pilot Press in 2021. Currently, he is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Denver.

Martha Ormiston is an interdisciplinary artist who has exhibited in New York City, Chicago, and Berlin. She received an MFA from the Image Text Ithaca programme, and her thesis, DING DING DING, was co-published by Ithaca Press and Gato Negro Ediciones in 2019. Martha also works as a graphic designer in New York City, and has won two AIGA book design awards.

Joan Roach is an arts writer and curator, originally from Metro Detroit, who focuses on sculptural, textual, and performance-based work concerned with how social space is conceptualised, created, and restricted. Writing from a phenomenological perspective, they highlight work that encourages readers to give critical attention to their relationship with the material world. At present, they are the publication editor for LVL3, an artist-run exhibition space and publication, and a curatorial resident at Chicago Artists Coalition.

Jen Torwudzo-Stroh is an arts and culture professional, critic, historian, essayist, and editor living and working in Chicago. Her writing focuses on contemporary art, pop culture, and the works of artists of colour, specifically those across the African diaspora. She uses personal essays and art criticism to contextualise current events. Her writing practice is driven by a desire to contribute a traditionally marginalised voice to the centuries-long discourse about art.

Fabiola Tosi is a Chicago-based curator and arts administrator. Originally from Italy, Fabiola is an experienced project manager promoting international cultural exchanges. Her curatorial work aims at unveiling cross-cultural practices as a platform for discussion around politically and socially engaged issues. Fabiola is a former exhibits project manager at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago, and assistant director of exhibition and programs for the US Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. She also worked as program assistant for the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial and curatorial assistant for the Roger Brown Study Collection. She was a 2019–2020 HATCH curatorial resident at the Chicago Artists Coalition. In 2017, she received her MA in Arts Administration & Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

︎ ︎ ©Plates 2021
︎ ︎ ©Plates 2021