Art Is + Symin Adive
SP Blog presents a new series, "Art Is +": an attempt to view art through the eyes of artists and writers themselves. In wide-ranging interviews with vital new artists and writers from both Asia and the USA, Jade Onn ushers these voices to the forefront, contextualizing their art with the experiences, processes, and motivations that are unique to each individual artist. "Art Is +" encourages viewers and readers to appreciate art as the multitude of ways in which artists and writers continually engage with our world and the variety of spaces they occupy in it.
Symin Adive is a New York-based graphic artist and designer who received a grant from Queens Arts Fund in 2019 and recently concluded her solo exhibition, “Bari: Know Your Place,” shown in the Flushing Town Hall last October. In this interview, she takes us behind her modern reinvention of the traditional Mughal miniature. Boldly Adive lays claim to a centuries-old storytelling device used to speak of the powerful, and re-imagines it as a medium for her own voice, born of cultural disconnection but also of empowerment. @syminadive
“There’s only one interpretation:
this is how things happened”
Jade Onn: Before we jump into your artwork, would you like to first introduce yourself a little?
Symin Adive: Sure! So my name is Symin Adive and I’ve been working in graphic design and illustration for the past 8 years. Before that, I was very briefly a fashion designer—
JO: w o w
SA: Haha yeah, one of the last things I worked on was Calvin Klein accessories, and then before that I did the Kenneth Cole Men’s socks for Spring 2013. Very random, but after that I was like “I’m done with that” and switched to graphic design and so, really on the tail-end of last year, I decided to do something about my fine arts pursuits. You know, I’ve done some things with illustration but that’s for clients and I wanted to do something that was strictly for myself, and so I learned about the Queens Arts Fund by the Queens Council of the Arts, and that kind of inspired me to apply for the grant and I thought, well, after I get the grant, I would do a show and see what happens from there. That’s basically how I came up with this project.
JO: That’s amazing! I had no idea about your work in fashion design.
SA: Yeah, it’s very random. And I’ve been in New York for almost ten years, so I feel like I’ve lived a few lives here.
JO: Where were you before New York?
SA: I was in the South. So I was in Bangladesh until I was 8-years-old and then I was in Arkansas—Arkadelphia, Arkansas, a very small town—for 5 years, and then I was in Texas for 3 years, then I went to Virginia and UVA. Then, in 2010, I came here to do the 1-year program at FIT and… yeah.
JO: Ok, so obviously this collection is very personal to you and I thought we could start off by talking about what inspired this idea of re-imagining miniatures for “Bari: Know Your Place.”
SA: Oh, yeah, so what inspired me was that I wanted to tell a straightforward, very clear to understand, story. All of my previous art projects were all abstract. They’re all surreal and sometimes the meaning would grow out of it after I had made them, and sometimes, with a lot of my paintings, I go in with no plan whatsoever. So I would just kind of freeform everything. I would just take some oil sticks and just draw whatever I wanted, and maybe I’ll notice a theme emerging and then I’ll think about that and meaning would come from there. But, truly, if there was meaning at all, I hid it, and so I had never done anything that was explicit and I felt like with something like miniatures, they’re very much telling a specific story, they’re trying to make what they’re talking about as clear as possible.
JO: Right! And, to back-track a little bit, miniatures aren’t something that a majority of people, especially in America, are familiar with unless they know specifically about South Asian or Southeast Asian art. So how would you describe this traditional art form to people who are just now being introduced to it?
Painting by Bhavanidas, The Emperor Aurangzeb Carried on a Palanquin, ca. 1705-20. Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 22 7/8 x 15 1/8 (58.1 x 38.4cm). Courtesy of The Met Museum.
SA: Sure, I studied art history in college, so that’s how I learnt about it but miniature paintings run about 6-inches tall—I feel like there’s no real good measurement, at least that I’ve found—and they were commissioned by people like the head of the Mughal Empire or really whatever empire they came out of. It started with the Persians, I believe, and there’s a tradition of miniatures in China as well, and then it kind of went to Southeast Asia with the Mughals and the Rajput and all of that.
So basically they’re all high-horizon-style paintings, where everything is 2D, there’s no real depth of vision and everything’s kind of stacked on top of each other. What I liked about it is that, whenever you look at miniatures, it’s always clear who the person in power is—they usually have the halo, they’re usually bigger in stature, they usually have certain outfits, certain medallions, certain gold, just something about them that makes them stand out as the most powerful within that piece. And because I knew my piece, or my collection, was going to be about power at its core, that’s why I liked miniatures: because there are so many signifiers and markers of that within these miniatures and I wanted that to carry over to what I was doing.
JO: I think that reflects really clearly. I mean, you start off this entire collection with that halo and then you end the collection with it as well, so that was really fascinating to me—the way you interpreted the halos in every piece. Like what you said, it represents power and that’s generally really obvious but, with some of the pieces, you also have incomplete halos or a different kind of halo altogether. What were your thoughts behind those?
SA: So I have one piece that kind of charts my way from being a child to where I am now, and so the halo [in that piece] begins to emerge over time. My position as a child was obviously a powerless one and, you know, powerless because I had no real control over my life and, also, I didn’t have any power within because I just haven’t developed that yet. So that [incomplete halo] was basically the easiest signifier of that: the power growing through these little instances in my life.
JO: Speaking of powerlessness, this piece, “Strength in Vulnerability”, really stood out to me just because of the style and how stripped down it is. Could you talk us through it a little bit? Especially paired with the poetry, right? I mean, you have these 2 titles that are so different in tone, and not just for this piece but for every poem in this entire collection as well. I’m curious to know why you decided to do that.
SA: So there’s a title, and then the “OR” is kind of like a sub-header. I wanted to put a sub-header under everything, just to really hammer the point of the poem home and, again, I wanted to make something that was so wholly transparent that it’s not even up for interpretation. There’s only one interpretation: this is how things happened, and I wanted to make that clear. It’s also a good way to throw in some jokes, I don’t know (laughter).
Symin Adive, Strength in Vulnerability, 2019. Digital. Courtesy of Symin Adive. © Symin Adive
SA: This one is called “Strength in Vulnerability: OR sometimes treacly cliches are true and you only need an autoimmune disease that takes away your emotional stability to learn that.” So, a mouthful, but that’s part of that because I think it’s funny to have very long titles, and the halo here is more of an inner halo. Halos sometimes function as what society places a status on or the halo is [referring to] who has the power within the family or within the community, as determined by outside forces. But this halo in this particular piece is determined by myself so there’s an adult me and a little me, and the focus here is on tears and crying and how, when I was younger, I had a few traumatic experiences with crying and I viewed it as something to be tucked away; as some bad, bad, thing to be hid away, as shameful, as something horrible, as a sign of weakness (something that a lot of people believe). And then what happened to me here was that I did get an autoimmune disease called “Grave’s disease” and what that does is it really elevates your thyroid gland so everything is sped up. Like your heart rate is sped up, my hands would shake all the time, and I had it for three to four years. It mimics a lot of the same symptoms as that of anxiety disorder or depression, just through these physical changes. So I didn’t have insurance at the time because I worked freelance (and I’m also cheap so I don’t buy insurance), so I didn’t know what was going on with me but, suddenly, I had spent so many years building up this steely resolve and keeping all my emotions in check—this was in my mid-twenties—and suddenly I was like crying at bars, I was crying everywhere, I just had no control. And this time also coincided with the very first time I ever told anybody about the abuse I suffered as a child, I never told anyone up until I was like 25, so I thought maybe I just opened the dam and I was just falling apart… it probably was a little bit of that but it truly was this autoimmune disease just ripping me open, taking away everything that I had in place to really maintain control over myself and I became a mess for the first time in my life.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t like myself because I was like, “what is happening? What is this?” and, despite suffering a lot of emotional abuse and—are we allowed to curse? Ok—despite getting shit on constantly by my father and also my mother though to a lesser extent, even with all that, I still had a healthy self-esteem and I still loved myself, so this was my very first time being like “what is happening? What is this?”, and it took me going through that to, first, be honest with myself and my emotions. I mean, I’m known for being honest in general but I feel like there’s a lot of things that I used to not own up to because I saw it as “weak” or too human, too messy. But after all of this happened, after processing all of this, I felt like I was able to really embrace myself as I am and all the soft parts of me that I would pretend wasn’t really there.
This image is me comforting my younger self because I feel like my younger self was a very sweet child who had to change and morph into somebody else over time because of everything that she was going through. So this is me kind of just giving myself the comfort that I never really got from anybody.
JO: So when this exhibition was publicized on the Flushing Town Hall website, there was one line in the description that really stood out to me and it said, “For many immigrant artists, their work is a tribute extolling their cultural and familial roots. This instead explores what it is to be untethered to the standard ties of family and community as well as the cultural attitudes that led to this break.” You mentioned that you were in Bangladesh until you were 8, and then you moved to Arkansas—which is a huge cultural jump—and then you moved again to New York, and I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about how you processed the cultural aspects of these changes because, even in your work with these miniatures—
SA: Yeah, taking something from the culture in a way.
JO: Exactly. And the idea of culture and cultural attitude is such a huge concept, so I would love to hear your take on what that means. Not necessarily an all-encompassing definition, but what it means specifically to you and your work.
SA: Yeah. What I was kind of referring to with that [the statement in the exhibition description] was that I’ve seen a lot of immigrant artwork praising their parents’ sacrifice and I think that’s great, that’s so important, and that is quite a few people’s experiences—they love their parents and their parents have done a lot for them and now they have an opportunity to kind of show that in their work in this very white society. I think that’s great. But I always felt very left out of that because that wasn’t my experience. I don’t feel like my parents moved here for me. They (my parents) had a great life in Bangladesh and, I’m not even totally clear on my family’s history but either my grandfather or great grandfather accumulated a lot of wealth there. Then, with every generation, it kind of went lower and lower, but still my father had a cushy job set up there and my mother was arranged to marry him—she was 15, he was 30—and then she joined him in that life.
My experience with my parents is basically a very negative one, especially with my father, and I have quite a few pieces here… Like one of my only two vivid memories of Bangladesh is the second piece [in this exhibition], but it was the very first one I made. So it’s the one called “Warm, Fuzzy Memory,” and I don’t know how old I was but I had walked into the living room and I was crying, and my father wanted me to stop crying but I guess I couldn’t and he took a switch and beat the living crap out of me. And I have this piece about it, about the after-effects. This kind of makes it look a lot prettier than it was but it is of my mother putting ointment on all the little holes on my back from the switch, so, again, this is also why I don’t really have a good relationship with crying—because this is what happened when you (I) cry.
Symin Adive, Warm, Fuzzy Memory, 2019. Digital. Courtesy of Symin Adive. © Symin Adive
When we went to America, there was no more of that physical abuse apart from maybe a shove, but most days he would have me sit down and he would tell me I was worthless, I’m this, I’m that, on and on and on, and I learnt not to say anything. I learnt not to make a facial expression because if I did, it would just get worse and it would just prolong these little “sessions.” Whether it was because he was dissatisfied with the move to America or whatever it was, I was the most vulnerable one there because I’m the youngest of 4. They are all much older than me, like my oldest 2 [siblings] are men, they’re my brothers and they had more freedom in this kind of culture where men get more freedom, and then my sister is 7 years older, so I was 8 [at the time] and was just a more vulnerable target and this continued until I graduated high school and went to college.
My mother was also, you know, not great, but she was “not great” on a level that I think more people are familiar with and he (my father) was “not great” on the next level. So because I truly had nobody looking out for me in any kind of sense—they would obviously provide a home to live in and food, but nothing else—I hated existence and because I didn’t have those ties at home, I didn’t feel tied to the rest of my family and I didn’t feel tied to the South Asian community. I just felt very alone. Singularly alone. We would go visit family members and I would hear aunties gossip about me, a child, so there was no warmth coming in my direction and there was nobody… kind. My parents have a lot of sexist, racist, homophobic… all these bigoted beliefs that they tried to pass down to me and I never took them at their word because I knew they weren’t good people, I knew to not trust them, I never trusted them, I never felt safe around them, so in a way that was good because I could form my own beliefs and I could not take in these kinds of (negative) messages. I never felt a lot of those pressure that a lot of people feel, like to have to live your life in a very strict way, so it freed me up in that sense. Those are kind of the cultural attitudes that I’m referring to, that if you love and respect your parents, you take their word in. Like if they tell you, “God exists. Santa exists,” why would you ever doubt them?
There are some people too, who were in abusive homes, but they still love their parents, still look up to their parents, and I just never had that experience. I’ve truly never loved, never respected them. And that’s kind of where the detachment came from, and where this feeling of just being very isolated which, if you’re talking about the immigrant experience, becomes even more isolating because of the whole diaspora; the two halves, the two worlds, and that exacerbated the problem. But even then I feel like most of it really started at home, with my home life and how I processed it, and that’s kind of where that break came from.
When I think about my culture, the only things I really valued about my culture were superficial. Like I love the food, I love the clothing, I love all the visuals and all of that stuff. I’ve always looked at all of that fondly but, beyond that, I always felt that a lot of the attitudes were antiquated and I could never get behind any of it. I remember, even as young as nine, my parents would say, “you can’t wear this” or “you can’t do that,” which a lot of South Asians hear, and with my mother (I was scared shitless of my father) I would be like “that doesn’t make any sense.” Like when she would say, “you’re going to tempt men” when I was only 9 years old, I would always push back on all of that stuff and I just feel like, I guess I’m grateful for that because it helped me become an independent mind but I feel like it’s also an extremely isolating thing and I grew up having such a hard time connecting with other people. One, because I just turned inwards so much because of the abuse, which I think a lot of people who experience abuse do, they just kind of shut down, and I really had to teach myself all these things like morals and values and how to talk to people. And now, as an adult, I just want to find more people from my culture who had similar experiences as me, so one of the reasons I made this is that I wanted to make something for people who don’t always feel at ease in their cultural community. Looking for people who have the same kind of story was kind of the point of making this.
“For many immigrant artists, their work is a tribute extolling
their cultural and familial roots. This instead explores what it is
to be untethered to the standard ties of family and community
as well as the cultural attitudes that led to this break.”
JO: I think the way you talk about your reactions to the cultural beliefs, or I guess the beliefs that were very prevalent in your culture at the time, is so interesting because these are reactions that you’ve always had. When you talk about how you were always against these beliefs, you aren’t talking about it as some kind of realization that came with coming to America, and I think that’s so important to highlight because this kind of cultural criticism can be validated without pitting the two worlds [South Asian and Western/America] against each other or having to choose one side over the other, which is a very easy trap to fall into.
SA: (laughter) Oh, yeah.
JO: But ok—and I suppose I should have asked this earlier—what was the physical process of creating all of these miniatures like for you? Because I know that, traditionally, it’s a very labor intensive, extremely detailed, process that involves a lot of people.
SA: So I would draw it in pencil, then I would scan it and some of it I would do in photoshop, some of it I would digitally paint on my iPad. Some of it is collage work and for any detail, I did it on my iPad just because it’s easier and felt like simply drawing. But yeah, never for a second did I think I would do it in the same tradition as those originally done because the way it was originally done was a painstaking process—it’s almost like a factory with so many people working on these pieces. It was (traditionally) almost like creating a comic book. Like with comic books, you typically have somebody who outlines, somebody who colors, so it’s beautiful work but, traditionally, it was commissioned work for very powerful people with a lot of money. So for this modern version, I wanted to make something that’s down to earth, and that’s also feasible for somebody who is living this life, where going digital is the easiest way. And I wanted to take it anywhere so, with digitalization, I could just print them out and have them in a book, which is what I did for Flushing Town Hall, but there are also other things I want to do with this.
I want to take it abroad, I want to take it to different places and I want to project the art, which is why all these pieces all have their backgrounds removed. I did that for a sense of displacement, but also to take the focus away from any backdrop. So there are little indications with furniture, occasionally, but the backgrounds themselves support more of the story and are packed with its symbolisms.
JO: Yeah and, by doing that, it definitely feels like you heightened the story-telling aspect of miniatures even more. Because miniatures are beautiful and they are kind of, as you’ve said, like comic books except with these extremely intricate details in the scenes that they paint. But by removing the typically scenic backdrops, you really pulled all the focus onto that individual story itself and that’s so cool to see.
SA: Yeah.
JO: Ok, so let’s talk about one last piece because your interpretation of the halo really takes center-stage here. Why the rings and why that double halo?
SA: So this piece is “Forget” and, visually, it’s supposed to mimic a phone. So you see the text and I am essentially in an orb [in this piece] that blocks out the texts. That kind of signifies the day I blocked my mother and also it’s kind of like a protection field, and that’s what these rings are. It starts out with the halo around my head, and the rings grow further and further to protect me and to also allude to an expansion of power.
Symin Adive, Forget, 2019. Digital. Courtesy of Symin Adive. © Symin Adive
JO: Right…
SA: With my parents, pretty much as soon as I was financially independent, they couldn’t hold that over me anymore—like they couldn’t kick me out or stop me from doing this or that, basically all the power they held over me as a child. Now that I went to UVA, and I went on a full ride [scholarship]—I knew I had to go on a full ride because my parents at the time wouldn’t have been able to afford it anyways, but also because I knew that just meant more freedom for me to really leave and really get far away and not owe them anything—pretty much all the abuse stopped right away.
And this made me feel like it [the abuse] was very much a choice, especially for my father. He did it because he knew he could and that he could get away with it. It was then that I noticed a dramatic shift in power, in how they treated me and my power relation to them, and that really changed things. I was able to tolerate kind of seeing them once in a while but, after a while, I knew that I wanted to cut off all connection and I really didn’t want to go to Virginia, where they lived, to do it and I didn’t really feel like calling them either. I had a fantasy that I would tell them in person and I would get to say all the things that I didn’t get to say as a child and I felt like it would be cathartic to tell them to “fuck off” or whatever but, you know, that really wasn’t going to do anything. I wasn’t going to get the kind of reaction I wanted and it’s kind of pointless, kind of immature. So what I did was that I explained, very calmly, in text, why I didn’t want to continue our relationship which was barely a relationship and we barely even spoke, but I said a bunch of these things to my mother, whom I’ve always known as somebody who just goes deeper and deeper into denial. And I’m sure life was very difficult for her, being married off at 15 and being part of that family, and she almost admitted, a little bit, to how difficult it was to be around this family… but I feel like she wanted to say the right things to keep me from leaving because, in their mind, I’m sure they think they love me even though they know nothing about me, because I am their child. And also, it looks bad to have a child who doesn’t want to speak to you, and it looks bad to other families.
For as long as I could remember, all they (my parents) ever did was talk about other peoples’ families and just gossip and, they would never brag about us, but they would brag about other peoples’ children, which was interesting. So I knew this would make them look bad and she (my mother) did try to talk me into giving another chance, and she sounded sincere, so I continued talking to her. Then my father messaged me saying “your mother and your sister explained to me why you’re upset and just know that I’m sorry,” but he didn’t seem to understand what he was apologizing for. At one point, he said, “just know that it will never happen again,” and, at this point, my response to them was that I know it wasn’t going to happen again, [because] it stopped immediately once I was free of them and out of that household so he wouldn’t have that chance again. After that, he didn’t really respond but both of them really insisted on using one word, and that’s what inspired this poem, which is “forget.”
My father said something to me, I believe it was last Christmas, on a little card or something and it said, “you’re my most adored child. Forget it happened,” and my mother would use the exact same word: “forget” and just “be normal,” just “come back into the fold” and “what’s wrong with you that you can’t just be normal” and just kind of go with it. Just do what she does, which is pretend things never happened and just kind of keep on cracking, business as usual, and just participate in this kind of family dynamic that you’re supposed to participate in. So that’s what inspired this poem. I just think it’s kind of funny that that was the word they both used, and I knew I needed to take this break because they don’t want to live in reality, they don’t want to grow as human beings. And I know part of that is [because of] how they grew up, and their age, and they’re never going to go to therapy because that’s not part of the culture. So they’re never going to be introspective, never going to be like “well, what did I do wrong?”.
What my mother knows is religion, and she knows denial, and she knows forgetting. That’s what she knows and so she’s confused as to why I won’t just fall in line. The first time I texted her all these things, she admitted to the wrongdoing, but then she just kind of backtracked and what she said was that her real mistake was just not going harder in terms of shoving God down my throat, and that’s where she went wrong (in her mind). It wasn’t the abuse, or any of the horrible things they said to me, or anything about their parenting, or lack of—I’m just even going to say “love”, just a lack of—regular kindness. It wasn’t any of that, it was just “we should have forced this stuff on you even harder, and that’s where we went wrong.” So these are people who are never going to learn, they’re never going to change, and I’m always going be this weird thing—like they’re all robots and I’m just the malfunctioning robot in their mind. That’s what it is to them, so we’re never going to have that bond.
“… she knows denial, and she knows forgetting.
That’s what she knows and so she’s confused
as to why I won’t just fall in line.”
JO: This is so interesting—when you were talking about that participating in families talking about families, all that talking about other peoples’ families, I suppose I haven’t really thought about it but it is interesting to think of talking about families as this huge form of social participation and as a cultural element that really crosses borders in the sense that it doesn’t matter which country you’re from.
SA: Yeah, and family is specifically very important to South Asian culture, and I feel like Asian culture in general. So you’re a huge weirdo if you don’t talk to your family and, again, that’s why I made this because I feel like there are all these brown men and women who are estranged from their families, who want to be estranged from their families, and it’s just not looked upon favorably because you’re encouraged to stay with them no matter what. I feel like it’s such a ridiculous thing, especially because to be around that kind of toxicity is not good for anyone.
JO: Right, and I think that really shone through in the way you rounded off this collection.
SA: (laughter) So, this piece is “Colder, Warmer, Hot, Hot, Hot” and it is kind of a joke, like “I have everything figured out now” even though I obviously haven’t—no one has—but what I have is me, now, being held up by my selves from the past. Every one who I’ve been in the past is what’s built up to who I am now, and I feel like I’ve had to prop myself up my entire life. Later on, obviously, I’ve met nicer people but, still, I’ve never had any other real cheerleader beside myself, so I’ve been my own source of encouragement this entire time and this is what this piece is about, but it’s also optimistic. It’s an optimistic take because literally every year that I’ve been away from my home has been better, so I don’t feel too bad about anything because I know it’s only going to get better.
Symin Adive, Colder, Warmer, Hot, Hot, Hot, 2019. Digital. Courtesy of Symin Adive. © Symin Adive
JO: I love that this piece celebrates just you! More people should feel like they’re allowed to do that without also feeling like they always have to speak for their community first.
SA: Right?! I feel like, as a culture right now, we talk a lot about self-love. And maybe it’s because I’m also a woman, I’m also a brown woman, I think being a confident brown woman who loves herself is puzzling or threatening for a certain kind of person because I feel like that it's almost looked at like “what? What’s your deal?”. I feel like there should be a freedom to own all the good parts of yourself, and I would not be as resilient as I am if not for all these good things in myself, like my strength, my independence, my integrity—all of these things. And even if the ways in which I propped myself up, when I was younger, weren’t the best ways, I was doing my best. That’s really all this is: doing your best, growing, trying to figure things out, trying to make things easier for yourself… because sometimes all you do have is yourself.
JO: And that really is self-love. Not just not competing with other people, but not comparing yourself to them too and tying everything back to just being that confident person.
SA: Right.
JO: Well, thank you so much for talking to me today! I just have one last question, which is: are you working on anything now? Besides, you know, the amazing graphic design work you’re already doing.
(laughter)
SA: I’ve done a lot this year. My 2 goals for this year were to do more comedy work and work on this project. So what ended up happening was, from January to October, I worked on my comedy, and then I worked on this from June to October—
JO: Oh my gosh, that must have been so much work!
SA: It was a lot of work! And, you know, I also have to make money so it was a lot of stuff to deal with. I’ve always been kind of apprehensive about putting my business out there, so my first step was this project [Bari], which is very much my business and very much out there now. (laughter) I was afraid of someone in my family seeing it, but now I’m just like—whatever. I shouldn’t let that stifle me. So, with this project, I want to show it in other places and have it in front of more people, and then, again, I want to take it abroad as well. Diaspora is everywhere, so I just want to move this to other places and talk about it more, and meet more people that I feel like I can relate to. Because I feel like I’ve always struggled to meet people whom I truly feel like I can relate to and connect to, so I just want to meet those odd weirdos.
And with the comedy stuff, I’ve been building a comedy site that you can access off of syminadive.com that will have videos and eventually humor pieces and cartoons. So, right now, my website is my illustrations, my paintings, my graphic design, my coding work… literally everything but my comedy work because I didn’t know if I wanted it out there. But I’m going to do it anyways and so there’s going to be a lot of silly nonsense on my website now. Soon after I decided to do this, I got on to a house team (called BedRock) at Upright Citizens Brigade. I'll have my writing performed on stage every month there at the main theater in Hell's Kitchen. I also very much miss the hermit life but don't feel like I will have a taste of that for a while considering everything that I want to do in 2020 but you know wish me luck.
Symin Adive, I Dream of Power, 2019. Digital. Courtesy of Symin Adive. © Symin Adive
Jade Onn is a recent graduate of Columbia University, where she studied English and Political Science. She currently works at the Poetry Society of America and is always happy to exchange notes with anyone on the culture of identities, new books, and houseplant care.