Tot Zines #1

Elizabeth in the Woolds is the product of two superimposed compositional strategies; a thematic aggregate based on notes dating back to 2008 and an epic prose narrative. Elizabeth is the device through which this simultaneous register moves. Screen writing provides a model for multiple voices. In a film script, the narrator can be the camera; there’s a machine at the centre of the story structure which figures a demand for resolution of plot; a contrario, the thematic approach (S, U, N, as electric light) obliterates chronology, and enumerates an atemporal topological figure, or the way the world is built.

(730pp., self-published first edition of 50, Kortrijk, 2021) 

The Hortus  project is an open investigation into the nature of seemingly common objects through 'Floriography', urban gardens, and the history of female rights. Hortus was inspired by urban gardens in West Amsterdam and created with its plants by Lilia Luganskaia. 

Joanna Cresswell about the 'Hortus':

History teaches us that a language of flowers can communicate endless things about the culture in which it emerged, and herein lies Lilia Luganskaia's interest. Taking inspiration from the world of 19th Century sentimental flower books, Hortus presents itself as a set of notes towards a modern handbook for contemporary floriography, considering what the discipline might look like today. By collecting common flora across one year in the urban gardens around her home in Amsterdam and cross-referencing their meanings with publications from the past, Luganskaia reflects on their natures, their roles, and the symbolic familiarity they might hold for the communities living with them. A female artist and reader of the twenty-first century, she seeks out the essence of modern life through her lens, and through flowers, just like the women who came before her. 

Lilia Luganskaia (1990) Russian - Dutch multidisciplinary artist and author, based in Amsterdam. In her artistic practice, Lilia uses her background in documentary techniques to focus on what she calls ‘investigating reality’.  Her practice is research-based, Lilia decodes abstract notions such as love, tourism, bureaucracy, politics, and feminism through the use of constructed images, sculptures, videos, and installations. One of the key elements of her work is to understand multiple aspects of the photographic image.

Sharks Come Closer at Night explores the bond the photographer Lauranne Leunis formed with friends during a first experience far from home. It becomes an intimate reflection on the sacred space they created during their evening walks. In these moments, they found solace in one another while navigating the challenges of young adulthood and the complexities of femininity. The work aims to slow down time, capturing moments of vulnerability, freedom, and connection. Yet even in the stillness, the persistent sound of crashing waves and splashing water serves as a reminder that time is always moving.

All photographs are made on analogue black-and-white film, using various camera formats. This approach adds a raw, fleeting quality to the images, distinguishing them from more staged photographs.

Drama, careers, sabotage, compromises... The first issue of Suckcess Magazine begins with a selection of poems by the flamboyant Rene Ricard, edited with the help of Editions Lutanie, and continues with contributions from Miriam Laura Leonardi, Fabienne Audéoud, Camille Aleña, Gabi Losoncy, David Lieske, Sylvie Fanchon, Won Jin Choi, Estelle Hoy, and Bunny Rogers. Cartoons and tennis players are also on the program.

Ladies wear the blue is a collection of watercolour drawings by the hand of Melissa Mabesoone and Oshin Albrecht. The blue watercolours portray women from different moments in time. The adjacent texts describe these women's existence, roles, desires or ideosyncrasies deriving from the 'blue' in their lives. From the first female police officers and Alices all around, to Courtney Love's blue baby dolls and the girl with the blue tattoo Olive Oatman, this publication is an ode to women venturing into the world, and a way to continue telling their herstories.

This new body of work consists of paintings featuring heart-headed figures in various emotional states and situations that sometimes teeter between the ordinary and extraordinary. From tender amorous moments to unexpected skate scenes, the work is full of the next iteration of emotive "schmoo" characters.

Mark Gonzales ("The Gonz") is an American artist and professional skateboarder best known for his profound contribution to the development of street skateboarding from the mid-1980s onward. Gonzales' creative outlook is evident in his ability to perform inventive new tricks using the existing framework of urban architecture like handrails, stairs, and ledges. His artwork grew out of the same environment as his skateboarding and includes illustrating zines, which often have surreal and humorous characters, as well as producing and collaborating on projects with Harmony Korine and Spike Jonze. Born on June 1, 1968 in South Gate, CA, he began skateboarding by the age of 13 and formed the company Blind Skateboards in 1989. While pursuing his sporting career, the artist began drawing in his free time and created graphics for Krooked Skateboards. Since then, he has collaborated with the clothing brand Supreme and Adidas to name just a few. He lives and works in New York.

The new, adapted and expanded edition of Benjamin Sommerhalder's  children's book (the story of the little ghost Knigi, learning how to read).

On little Ghost Knigi's birthnight he receives a book from his Aunt Abel. When she hands it to him all she says is, ‘I hope you enjoy reading this!' Knigi is quite young, but still at an age when human children normally learn to read. And it's the same for ghost children. ‘But something is wrong', Knigi worries. The book is absolutely white – every page, from cover to cover. Knigi is forced to embark on a journey to find out how to read.

Ghost Knigi is the first book drawn and written by Benjamin Sommerhalder and published in a first edition by Nieves in Zurich.

Graphic designer and publisher based in Zurich, Benjamin Sommerhalder is the founder and editor-in-chief of Nieves.

One Big Bang brings together 78 charcoal and pastel drawings from Adel Abdessemed's recent series Nature Morte and Politics of Drawing, where everyday objects, animals, and flowers are subtly charged with tension. Through these works, Abdessemed explores the intersections of beauty, fragility, and unrest. With texts by Hélène Cixous and David Elliott, One Big Bang offers a thoughtful entry into an artist's visual language shaped by memory, myth, and political urgency.

Published following the eponymous exhibition at Projeckt Brussels in 2024.

Adel Abdessemed (born 1971 in Constantine, Algeria, lives and works in Paris and Berlin) deconstructs identity codes, tackling head-on the tensions that permeate our society. His works, with their typical simplicity—sculptural installations, drawings, photographs, videos and performances—echo precise facts and familiar situations, but go beyond narrative commentary and militant criticism. Adel Abdessemed questions, among other things, the social and economic status of the artist in a system where his foothold is slight, by shrewdly keeping a distance in a gesture of subversive and committed resignation.

Abdessemed refuses to be limited to a single ideology. In his early works he passionately tackled religious, sexual, and taboos subjects and his later exhibitions have often focused on the theme of global violence. In an interview with Elisabeth Lebovici he stated, "I do not live between two cultures. I am not a postcolonial artist. I am not working on the scar and am not mending anything. I am just a detector … In the public sphere, I use passion and rage. Nothing else. I don't do illusions."

Sometimes reduced to a simple word, as in "Mohammedkarlpolpot" (1999), a condensation of names evoking totalitarism and religion, and sometimes complex and monumental installations such as "Habibi" (2004), a suspended skeleton of 17 meters propelled by a jet engine, Abdessemed's practice belongs to a new generation of artists who appeared recently on the French art scene, looking to offer another perspective on culture and identity.