Asena’s practice is based in photography, sculpture, and textile, and invested in establishing cross-disciplinary connections. Through the translation of similar ideas across mediums, they are interested in the nuances that emerge through the materiality of each artistic form. Their work explores the abstraction that occurs in these moments of translation as generative opportunities to complicate notions of identity, social-cultural experiences and ways of being more broadly. Abstraction allows for a meditative orientation to the interior landscapes of emotions, desires, vulnerabilities and contradictions we each possess. Asena engages a visual language that attends to the concept of secretive eroticism, which they use as a reflection on tactics often engaged by queer people as a mode of survival amidst social and cultural violence.  Asena claims illegibility as a critical stance in their work, affirming the refusal to be read and categorized.

Rosed Serrano (she/her) is a poet—born and raised in the Bronx—currently living, working, and creating in New York. Serrano is a PhD candidate in English and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and she holds a BA in African American Studies and Creative Writing from Princeton University.