Voices of ISSAY! Mag
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Alexandra Obochi
Alexandra Obochi is a self-taught photographer and multidisciplinary creative from Enugu state, Nigeria, living and working in Abuja. Inspired by her environment and life experiences, her work focuses on celebrating diversity and resilience, particularly within Nigeria's LGBTQ+ community. Through digital photography, she challenges societal norms, amplifies marginalized voices, and advocates for inclusivity within Nigerian society.
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Alexia Bréard-Anderson
Alexia Bréard-Anderson is a writer and cultural producer from Buenos Aires, based in Toronto. She is incredibly passionate about music and has a deep love for supporting independent artists through storytelling and collaborative space-making. Alexia contributes to publications such as RANGE Magazine, Femme Art Review and The Ex Puritan, writes about music, spirit and in-betweenness in her newsletter MANZANA and has just released her debut indie electronica EP 'Entre Mundos' as Golondrina.
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Annum Shah
Annum Shah is a writer and multimedia artist whose work explores personal narratives, with an emphasis on the ways in which race, gender, and landscape form identity. Using film, photography, and writing as her main mediums, she sifts through family archives and individual testimony to examine notions of place and belonging.
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Anushka Nair
Anushka Nair (formally human) is a performance artist from India, based in The Netherlands. She dialogues with more-than-human bodies in her performances and research. Her work questions the prescribed duality of 'human' and 'non-human', to discover the affective, agential, porous and entangled nature of bodies of matter through performance art. Website
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Alexandra Bischoff
Alexandra Bischoff is an Amiskwacîwâskahikan/Edmonton born performance artist and writer of settler descent. Alexandra’s practice is based in durational performance and installation. Labour, precarious living, and underrepresented archives are some of her primary concerns. Website
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Ananna Rafa
Ananna Rafa is a photographer and painter born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and based in Toronto, Canada, whose work oscillates between places, memories, and identity. She completed her BFA in Photography Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University. She spent her childhood living in between places, namely her birthplace of Bangladesh, and Melbourne, Australia. Her work explores themes of gender and sexuality, negotiating collective and complex identities arising out of the effects of migration and colonialism on the South-Asian diaspora.
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Bogdan Cheta
Bogdan Cheța’s (he/they, b.1983 Ploiești, România) research contemplates possible points of tension between images and experience. Responding to the site-specificity of their contexts, his installations extend physically — as immersive atmospheres where fictional scenes from queer domestic settings become entangled with themes and presences from works that initially circulate in the published form. Website
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Celes Gonzalez
Celes is a NY boricua born and raised. A singer and musician, her work spans a range of sound from r&b with a latin influence to angst filled pop tracks. She centers dance and raw emotion in both her written / vocal work and is forever trapped within that world. Her past release “Interlude: Reckless,” out on all platforms, is a snapshot into her larger body of work soon to be released titled: “or-kid tapes.”
Issue 02 • Borrowed Sounds: Re-use, Reinvention, and the Legacy of Sampling
Issue 03 • Keepsakes -
Chelsea Dwarika
Chelsea Dwarika is a Trini-Canadian writer currently based in Montreal, QC, Canada. She has creative roots in theatre and performance creation, but is currently experimenting with cultural storytelling through food. Chelsea wields her writing as a medium for healing collective emotional trauma and discovering cross-cultural connections.
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Chloë Lalonde
Chloë Lalonde is a multidisciplinary artist, researcher and teacher born in Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyang / Montreal. Chloë’s work is rooted in her interest in mediums and matter, the material culture of paint, and experiences of inclusion and exclusion that emerge within the field of art, as well as the hidden labour and accessibility of materials and resources engaged in artistic production, education and cultural work. Website
Issue 01 • Slow Painting As Resistance Issue 02 • The Manner of Time
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Cristiano Elias
Cristiano Elias is a Lisbon based musician, writer, artist, and arts organizer. Cristiano’s work is interested in experimental forms and investigates themes of class rupture and resilience.
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Diamond Yao
Diamond Yao is an independent journalist who focuses on contemporary social and environmental issues. Based in Montreal/Tio’tia:ke, Diamond brings underreported stories and perspectives into the open, focusing on marginalized voices, intersectionality, diaspora, sustainability and social justice.
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Fabio Heredia-Casalins
Fabio HC is a Latinx visual artist, writer, poet, and Torontonian, currently hiding in Calgary, AB. Fabio’s work is experimental, multidisciplinary, and ever-evolving.
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Hannah Polinski
Hannah Polinski is a writer and filmmaker currently based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. Using the lens of Asian identity, her work explores familial memory, shifting landscapes, and feminine sexuality . Website
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Isaak Fong
Isaak Fong is an artist interested in familial relationships and instances of the imprecise, through painting, video, and performance practices. Originally from the foothills of Alberta, Isaak currently lives and works in Tkaronto/Toronto Ontario.
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Jard Lerebours
Jard Lerebours is a First generation Jamaican-Haitian antidisciplinary storyteller from Long Island, New York. He approaches artmaking as a conversation between friends and family in communion. His work has been showcased internationally by Film Diary NYC, Indie Memphis Film Festival and Uppsala International Short Film Festival. Website
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Jo Rempel
Jo Rempel is a trans essayist, art enthusiast, and purveyor. They work as a staff writer for MovieJawn, and have published with Film Cred and Bright Wall/Dark Room. Jo’s main focus is historically-minded critical essays, often dealing with the politics of uniformity in art, an urge leading towards self destruction.
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Jordan Anthony
Jordan Anthony is an emerging writer and creative based in Chicago, IL. Founder/editor of Y’ALL’D’VE Literary Zine (RIP), their poetry appears in Press Pause Press Vol. 3. You can find their visual art at Pilsen Arts and Community House. Website
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JJ Pinckney
JJ Pinckney is a self-taught Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist and director of Found Wonder Studio. His artwork is rooted in narratives of Neo-ancestral connections through abstract-figurative expressionism. Website
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Karen Pheasant-Neganigwane
Karen Pheasant-Neganigwane is an Anishinaabe scholar. Karen’s path to activism and scholarly work started during the height of the civil rights era of the ’70s. She has spent the past forty years being mentored by iconic Indigenous scholars from the Great Lakes of her people to Treaty three, Treaty six and currently in Treaty seven. Her Western education includes a B.A. in Political Science and English Literature, graduate studies in Educational Policy Studies from the University of Alberta.
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Karla Bautista
Karla Bautista (aka Art of Bodybending) is a multidisciplinary artist who aims to stretch the limits of the body and mind through bold performances and social commentary. She embodies flexibility by combining her various art forms simultaneously in her performances that showcase her multitude of personas. Website
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Lodoe Laura
Lodoe Laura is an artist and writer currently based in Tkaronto / Toronto. Influenced by her hybrid Tibetan-Canadian ancestry and upbringing, she is interested in human-centric experiences as disruptions of what we think we know in Western-dominant spaces.
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Lotus L. Kang
Lotus L. Kang works with sculpture, photography and site-responsive installation, exploring the body as an ongoing process. Combining theory, poetics and biography, her work takes a regurgitative approach rather than a prescriptive or reiterative one.
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Louise Campion
Louise Campion is a French artist currently based in Glasgow, UK. Campion's practice focuses on the exploration of awareness and emotional survival within a context of global violence. Website
Issue 01 • Slow Painting As Resistance Issue 02 • The Manner of Time
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Mahlet Traore
Mahlet Traore is a self-taught anti-disciplinary artist whose practice of experimentation and play pushes boundaries and bridges the gap between reality and dreams, 2D vs 3D vs 4D and ultimately creates a dimension of their own. Blackness, queerness, community, and total liberation, the stories Mahlet tells become the foundation for rejuvenation and transformation which conjure deep wisdom and guidance from ancestor spirits.
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Marissa Ruggles
Marissa Ruggles is a Calgary based photographer who immerses herself into the world of her subjects. Marissa’s work is intimate, striking, and driven by community-conscious storytelling. Website
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Matilde Velloso
Lisbon based Portuguese photographer Matilde Velloso is uncovering her path through the art of photography. Matilde works exclusively in film to capture moments lived and moments imagined. Website
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McKenzie Grant-Gordon
McKenzie is a Jamaican-American artist based in Brooklyn, NY. McKenzie's practice is rooted in liberation and love. Her work explores a sense of nostalgia infused with fantasies of the future by speaking to notions of heritage, community, and transformation. McKenzie’s art practice embraces a soulful vibrancy and beauty in the multiplicity of black thought, identities, and experiences. She hopes her imagery cultivates space for herself and others to be reflected, respected, and empowered.
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Meliana Julien
Meliana Julien is a Haitian photographer currently residing in the United States. Her work is primarily a reflection of her childhood, informed by images cultivated through family. When creating her work, Meliana’s goal is ensure that black people feel seen in her photographs. Website
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Nikki Celis
Nikki Celis is a Filipino/Bicolano writer based in Montreal, Canada. Nikki writes about the intersections of culture, creativity, and food. You can find Nikki’s work featured in publications like Complex, The Georgia Straight, VICE, and the Calgary Herald.
Issue 01 • Are We Asian Enough
Issue 01 • The MarketIssue 02 • Born to be White
Issue 03 • On Romaticizing home -
Olamide Adedipe
Olamide Adedipe is a trained fine artist, an environmentalist, and self-taught furniture maker. He is fascinated by the physics behind how things work, which in turn largely reflects on his practice. As a young child in western Nigeria, he grew a deep affection for the outdoors and Following his education at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile Ife, he embarked on a journey that led to the establishment of a gallery named it Fireflies African art gallery. Now, his artistry process of repurposing and upcycling of waste items back into objects of intrigue, beauty, and great value.
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Paree Rohera
Paree Rohera is a painter from Mumbai, India, currently pursuing a BFA in painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. Paree immerses herself in the chaos of Mumbai, finding its beauty unparalleled. She explores the concept of beauty in the negative, delving into insecurities prevalent in the South Asian community, both physical and mental. Through vibrant hues and intricate patterns, Paree transform these themes into visually captivating narratives on canvas.
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Shahd Alshamali
Shahd Alshamali is a Palestinian artist who participated in a number of art exhibitions in the Gaza Strip. She is known for her contemporary style, which ranges between realism and expressionism. Shahd held the position of general coordinator in the Palestinian Cultural Magazine (28 Magazine) and worked as a translator and interpreter with foreign press delegations inside Gaza. She has also worked with a number of international human rights institutions such as Save Youth Future Society and Youth Vision.
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Soledad Fátima Muñoz
Soledad Fátima Muñoz is an interdisciplinary artist born in Canada and raised in Rancagua, Chile. Currently based in Toronto, her work seeks to explore the analogy between the ever-changing social spaces we inhabit, and an embodied experience of sound. She is the co-founder of CURRENT “Feminist Electronic Art Symposium” and founder of Genero, an audio project/label that focuses on the distribution and representation of women and non-binary artists in the sound realm.
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Tariq Luthun
Tariq Luthun is a Detroit-born, Dearborn-raised community organizer, data consultant, and Emmy Award-winning poet. The son of Palestinian Muslim immigrants from Gaza, he is a Kresge Arts in Detroit fellow that earned his MFA in Poetry from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
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Wendy-Alexina Vancol
Haitian-Canadian artist, illustrator, and painter Wendy-Alexina Vancol delves into profound explorations of heritage, diaspora, memory, and identity through her work. Defying stereotypical depictions of black bodies in predominantly white spaces, she highlights themes of marginalization, social pressure and prejudice allowing these bodies to claim space in unconventional and empowering ways.
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Winie Coulanges
Winie Coulanges (she/her) is a Haitian emerging writer and artist living in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. Her art is informed by her identity and her desire to dissect the environment she lives in with care,consideration and humour.
Issue 02 • Montreal Slang and the Haitian-Canadian Experience
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Yanaminah Thullah
Yanaminah Thullah is an multidisciplinary storyteller of Sierra-Leone and Liberian descent. Her approach to curating and storytelling is informed by deconstructing systemic barriers, demystifying migrant relations and exploring Afro-Indigenous histories.