A self trained artist, Seema Kohli’s exhaustive practice that spans over three decades embraces a variety of mediums including paintings, sculpture, installation and performance.
The most significant one to emerge out of liner forms and paintings is ‘Performance Art’. Decay, hybridization & transformation: Creating new identity; reshaping belongings; intimacy; a dialogue of matter and memory all constitute a visual language of her work.
“Time” as a factor, is central to her practice, whether it’s a wrapped object or a performance. She uses time as medium, which is extended, assembled and captured in all her media, be it painting, sculptures or installations. The aspects of continuity, repetition, vulnerability, duration, temporality, awareness, situation and public involvement are also inherent qualities that inform her art practice. The process before and after the performance is important and challenging
Her work is primarily a celebration of the female form and energy the source of the twin forces of creation and destruction. Shakti, the divine cosmic energy manifest through female embodiment has been extensively explored, engaged with, re-narratives and retold through Seema Kohli’s works.
A contemporary chronicler of the ancient myths and mythological figures of India, Kohli explores the themes of beauty, sensuality and spirituality through her work. Kohli’s harmonious compositions and intricate detailing with an exceptional use of gold leaf and blue render a fantastical world of stories, myths and legends. Deeply meditative and calm, Kohli’s semi-anthropomorphic divinities surround themselves with trees, birds and animals in the lap of nature.
For Kohli, her art is an engagement with the philosophical inquiry of life.It is through the visual language of art that she tries to grasp the metaphysical truth of existence and the cosmic energy that is responsible for all creation.Employing the fundamental tenets of Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism and Greek mythology,she emphasizes the cyclicality of existence and the rejuvenation of life forms through the unending processes of birth,death and re-birth. Kohli’s works then become a tool of meditation conceptually akin to the Buddhist mandala exploring cosmic truths and laws of the universe.A visual storyteller, she weaves stories that are not autobiographical but deeply personal. Yet, they are universal at the same time.
http://www.seemakohli.com
Read More »
Yardenne Greenspan has an MFA in Fiction and Translation from Columbia University.In 2011 she received the American Literary Translators’ Association Fellowship, and in2014 she was a resident writer and translator at Ledig House’s Writers Omi program. Her translation of Some Day, by Shemi Zarhin (New Vessel Press), was chosen for WorldLiterature Today’s 2013 list of notable translations. Her full-length translations also include Tel Aviv Noir, Edited by Etgar Keret and Assaf Gavron (Akashic Books), Alexandrian Summer by Yitzhak Gormezano Goren (New Vessel Press), and The Secret Book of Kings by Yochi Brandes (forthcoming from St. Martin’s Press). Yardenne is Asymptote Journals’ editor-at- large of Israeli literature, and a blogger at Ploughshares. Her writing and translations can be found in The New Yorker, Haaretz, Guernica, Asymptote, The Massachusetts Review, and Words Without Borders, among other publications.
Ebele Mogo is a scientist, writer and entrepreneur. She is the president of the Engage Africa Foundation and blogs at www.streetsideconvos.com and and is on Instagram and Twitter as @ebyral
Julian Randall is a Living Black poet from Chicago. He is a 2016 Callaloo fellow, Lois Morrell Poetry Prize winner and the 2015 National College Slam (CUPSI) Best Poet. He currently works as a teaching artist with the Philly Youth Poetry Movement. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Offing, Winter Tangerine Review, The Killens Review, and Pluck! A Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture. He is a candidate for his MFA in Poetry at Ole Miss.
Mehrnoosh Torbatnejad was born and raised in New York. Her poetry has appeared in The Commonline Journal, The Coe Review, Kudzu House Quarterly, The Chiron Review, and is forthcoming in Passages North, Stillwater Review, Orange Coast Review, apt, and Riprap Journal. She currently lives in New York and practices matrimonial law. 
Paul Genega is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently All I Can Recall (Salmon Poetry, Ireland, 2013). Over a forty year career, his work has appeared in journals such as Poetry, North American Review, New York Quarterly and Free Inquiry, and has garnered numerous awards, including the “Discovery”/The Nation Award and an individual fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He founded and directed the creative writing program at Bloomfield College, New Jersey, where his legacy continues through the Genega Endowed Scholarships. He is also the editor of Three Mile Harbor Press. Please visit www.3mileharborpress.com to learn about the current poetry book prize.
Aja Monet’s has two books of poetry. Inner-City Chants & Cyborg Cyphers (June 2015) is a music and EBOOK collection in which Monet “explores the double consciousness, or two realms, that those who are oppressed, especially women of color, manage everyday: confronting the everyday physical realities of their situations and the mental travel needed to cope, survive, and transform bleak situations” (Modern Griot). It is a testimony to family and self, memory, loss and remembrance, home and the journey away from home to find one’s self—and to build a stronger community. The Black Unicorn Sings was independently published in 2010. Of this collection, the Dodge Poetry Festival wrote, “Throughout Monet’s poems in The Black Unicorn Sings, she returns to strong female characters, and sometimes to broken female characters that need some uplifting. In both of these cases, Monet is celebrating the spirit of women and what they are capable of, with herself often as a primary example of this.” In 2012, she collaborated with poet/musician Saul Williams on a book entitled, Chorus: A Literary Mixtape: “the anthem of a new generation of poets unified by the desire to transcend the identity politics of the day and begin to be seen as one,” published by MTV Books/Simon & Schuster.
Safia Elhillo is Sudanese by way of Washington, DC. A Cave Canem fellow and poetry editor at Kinfolks Quarterly: a journal of black expression, she received an MFA in poetry at the New School. Safia has been nominated for a 2015 Pushcart Prize, and is co-winner of the 2015 Brunel University African Poetry Prize. Her work appears in several journals and in the anthologies “The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop” and “Again I Wait for This to Pull Apart.”
Chris Campanioni is a first-generation Cuban and Polish-American. He has worked as a journalist, model, and actor, and he teaches literature and creative writing at Baruch College and new form journalism at John Jay. He was awarded the Academy of American Poets Prize in 2013 for his collection, In Conversation, and his novel, Going Down, was selected as Best First Book for the 2014 International Latino Book Awards. He is also the author of Once in a Lifetime, a book of poems from Berkeley Press. Find him in space at www.chriscampanioni.com or in person, somewhere between Brooklyn Bridge Park and Barclays Center.
Laurette Folk’s debut novel, A Portal to Vibrancy (Big Table Publishing, 2014) is available online and at local bookstores. Ms. Folk has been published in Upstreet, Literary Mama, The Boston Globe Magazine, elephant journal and Talking Writing among others. She writes the blog “Meditations and Reflections at www.meditationblog.blogspot.com and is the editor and founder of The Compassion Project: An Anthology. For more information, please see her website at www.laurettefolk.com.
