🎊📣 TOP ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY 📣🥳
In honor of our periodical running for one year (11 editions so far meow!) we’ve decided to launch a new comic version of our periodical: BOTTOM! Bring On the Trans Opinions. Meow! Look out for copies at your local bar, coffee shop, or book store.
okay, April Fools. But enjoy BOTTOM Edition 1
transformed vessel
2026
oil on canvas
forgot the size
thinking about how warped my sense of home is. thinking about my body as a vessel for something. some all important cultural heritage or memories or whatnot. thinking about my body as a vessel for fun, for whimsy, for pleasure. thinking about painting what i love. thinking about horses, and fish with wings
The deadly opioid crisis that has blighted the United States since the mid-2010s was highlighted by photographer Nan Goldin’s (@nangoldinstudio ) much-publicised war on the billionaire Sackler dynasty, whose company, Purdue Pharma, was responsible for the highly addictive drugs being circulated to patients. Goldin herself suffered from opioid addiction after being prescribed OxyContin in 2014 following a wrist injury.
2024 marked a turning point: the first significant decrease in opioid overdose deaths in New York in nearly a decade. But why? The change could be attributed to three organisations: Odyssey House (@odysseyhouseny ), Phoenix House (@phoenixhousesny ) and Fountain House (@fountainhouse ). Scattered throughout the city, they combine clinical and holistic care to treat substance use.
XY Zhou (@xinyigami ) is a New York City-based visual artist who works at Odyssey House as an expressive arts coordinator. Read their spotlight in full on Ocula Magazine.
Images:
1. Photographer Jesse Winter working with participants in a self-portraiture workshop, hosted by Socrates Sculpture Park. Courtesy Phoenix House. Photo: Rajvi Desai
2. Alyson Vega, Meditations on Medication: The Pill Bottle Project (2024), staged during Fountain House Gallery and Studio’s three-month residency on Governors Island, New York. Photo: Fountain House Gallery
3. Chad Porter, Odyssey House’s expressive arts director. Photo: XY Zhou
‘I don’t believe that being an artist necessarily means you have a higher propensity for substance-use disorders, but there is undoubtedly a correlation between substance use and the creative lifestyle. Or maybe it’s the other way around: perhaps people who are disposed to alcohol or drugs are also drawn towards art. Art is obsessive, and offers an alternative to intoxicating substances in the search for answers. Art offers a way of coping with the world, a way of building community, and a way of healing.
And if you take the life of an artist (or really anyone creative and sensitive) and situate them in New York, with its endless supply of addictive substances, it can be dangerously—even life-threateningly—overpowering.
2024 marked a turning point: the first significant decrease in opioid overdose deaths in New York in nearly a decade. But why? The change could be attributed to three organisations: Odyssey House (@odysseyhouseny ), Phoenix House (@phoenixhousesny ) and Fountain House (@fountainhouse ). Scattered throughout the city, they combine clinical and holistic care to treat substance use.’
XY Zhou (@xinyigami ) is a New York City-based visual artist who works at Odyssey House as an expressive arts coordinator. For Ocula Magazine, they are shining a light on the life-saving work of three New York‑based organisations that are harnessing the power of art to provide hope and recovery opportunities to people dealing with substance use and mental health issues.
Read this spotlight in full via the link in our bio.
Images:
1. Byron C. makes a painting for an upcoming show at the Odyssey House Manor Art Studio. Photo: Chad Porter
2. Odyssey Bodega is a collaborative painting effort featured in the Odyssey House 5Boros art exhibit in East Harlem, New York. Courtesy @odysseyhouseny
3. Artist Roger Jones at Fountain House Studio in Long Island City, where he is currently an artist-in-residence. Photo: @fountainhousegallery
4. Issa Ibrahim, The Nine Muses (2023). Photo: @fountainhousegallery
Peeking through your window, rotting in a bedroom teeming with clutter, rubbing each other by the pier, undressing onstage, watching mukbangs under the covers, hanging out your back pocket—perverts are all around us. Perverts are among us. Perverts are us. We are obsessive, maladjusted, hungry.
But who gets called a pervert? How has this term been used to other and criminalize people? How can we reclaim it? Or should we reclaim it? What are the ethics of perversion?
In our second journal, Edition 1: Perverts, we bring together a collection of essays, poems, short fiction, drama, and visual art that grapple with what perversion is, and through the lens of two characters, Libertine and Receiver, explore what it means to be a pervert.
We are so eternally grateful for the support in the making of this journal. We thank our contributors, our friends, and supporters (many we saw last night). Find the journal on our website.
