Liberate your emotions. This online exhibition gives you a peek into the creative, emotional explorations of the February 2024 issue of ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal.

Wang-Yiwei—ArtAscent Gold Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Yiwei Leo Wang

Wang-Yiwei—ArtAscent Gold Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

How exciting and, at the same time, wistful can a party be? The disco ball is still spinning. However, the lights are on, and the party is over. Yiwei Leo Wang investigates these dizzy peaks of emotions through visual arts.

Imagine a long night of partying in a club. What mixed emotions flow as we dance? The loud music, the flashing strobe lights, the feeling of being in another dimension…but suddenly, the euphoria vanishes. Lights come on, and only the leftovers remain all around: bottle shards and remnants of a night that has ended. The dance hall is empty. The club is a refuge but also a cage. From a state of grace detached from the rest of the world, it plunges you violently back into reality. Leo (Yiwei) explores this nocturnal dichotomy. He embodies mixed emotions characterized by peaks of excitement and disconsolate melancholy through art installations. His works are visual metaphors for the intricate world of feelings, and they precisely dissect their psychobiological roots, telling us about dopamine and its effects, from euphoria to loneliness. Dopamine causes pleasure, distancing us from the anguish of everyday life, but, like a dark club in which to lose ourselves, it is only a momentary relief. Soon, reality returns to overwhelm us.

The connection to clubbing culture is apparent in Leo’s (Yiwei) works. Everything hints at a party aesthetic, from the disco ball-like quilts to the confetti of glazed stoneware to the silkscreen prints inviting caution on the dancefloor. Yet, something doesn’t feel right. The confetti has now fallen to the ground; the caution signs create a lively phosphorescent grid, but they seem a distant mirage. As in ancient Chinese fairy tales, euphoria and joy are ephemeral and go hand in hand with melancholy.

The complexity of emotions also comes through materials. Even in the medium, there is a substantial dichotomy: Leo (Yiwei) uses unconventional materials with traditional techniques. Textile elements and found materials mix with ceramic crafting. Tradition and pop culture create new visual narratives. This approach, capable of skillfully mixing high and low, ancient tradition and consumerism, recalls the style of great contemporary Asian artists. The ceramic confetti echoes Ai Weiwei’s handcrafted porcelain sunflower seeds. At the same time, the use of repetitive patterns recalls the immense work of Japan’s Yayoi Kusama and her immersive installations of flashing polka dots.

Leo Yiwei Wang’s art is rich and blends different languages and disciplines. As a “world citizen of the digital age,” art is his primary form of expression. An artist, curator, performer and raver, he skillfully draws from his Chinese roots, mixing them with his education and career in Chicago, United States. His work has garnered several merit awards and has been showcased in five solo exhibitions and various publications. Capable of mixing clubbing and pop culture blend and the contradictory nature of emotions, his works are bold and impressive.

Yiwei Leo Wang is the Gold Artist of the ArtAscent Emotions call for artists. To see the full body of work and profile, get a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Emotions issue.

www.madebyleowang.com

ArtAscent Distinguished Writer of the 2024 Emotion call for writers.

Karla Linn Merrifield

Simply

Maybe he’s simply afraid
of becoming just one more
poem in some book’s collection.

Maybe he’s simply leery,
doesn’t want to be numbered
sixty-three in her in-progress opus…

Some poets can perfectly delineate suggestive images to tell an emotion. They put powerful narratives on paper that can evoke or deconstruct a mishmash of feelings. Karla Linn Merrifield achieves this. Simply.

Karla’s style is always recognizable when she writes poems in longer or shorter formats. In this brief poem, she makes emotions visible through her vivid narrative rhythm. Words follow the syncopated pace of heartbeats. How do 16 lines contain the entangled emotions of infatuation? Four concise stanzas reveal longing, desire, and the essence of an intimate connection. The poem is “chock-full of emotions”; it appears to be simply true, not a simulated emotion for literary purposes.

Karla openly declares her inspiration: this is the story of a poet who has found her muse. But relationships are never that simple, and they bring with them doubts and ruminations. The structure of the poem is lucid and plays on duality. It seems a silent dialogue between two lovers, fragments of an amorous speech. This stream of lovers’ thoughts is revealed on paper. The poet reflects on her beloved’s feelings in the relationship: will he trust her, or will he fear becoming just another literary subject? Will he believe her genuine feelings, or will he think he is just another source of inspiration for poems? On the other hand, is it infatuation or just food for thought?

Karla is a poet who questions the best form to express emotions from the beginning to the end. Each stanza is calibrated to close the poem with a decisive and forceful line. Poetic closure is one of her stylistic hallmarks. Her lyrical compositions are eclectic and characterized by immediacy. They play with sounds, metrics, and registers. They result from sharp images, crystal clear first in the brain and then in the writing. The author does not disdain the use of photographic media that allows her to fix emotion and inspiration first visually rather than verbally. Moleskine journals and photographs in the phone’s memory are just some of the visual notes that led Karla to write such accurate poems. The frequent use of imagery harks back to great masters of poetry like Walt Whitman and William Heyen without being an epigone of them. Karla’s references are also strongly contemporary, dialoguing with current poets such as Miriam Sagan.

Research, emotion, and lucidity are the keywords of Karla Linn Merrifield’s poetry. A high standard that has been achieved over a long career, with a thousand poems written, 16 books published to her credit, nominations for National Book Awards, and frequent literary contributions in journals and anthologies. Her immediate poems reveal a paradox: they simply show that emotions are never that simple.

Karla Linn Merrifield is the Gold Writer of the ArtAscent Emotions call for writers. To see the full body of work and profile, get a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Emotions issue.

www.karlalinnmerrifield.org

Orlowska-Justyna—ArtAscent Silver Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Justyna Orlowska

Orlowska-Justyna—ArtAscent Silver Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Justyna Orlowska is a bold and sensitive artist. Her work is touching many souls through the medium of video and performance art. She inspires herself by observing individual experiences, and she creates a hyper-personal space for herself and her audience. The link between environmental ideas and social consciousness drives Justyna’s work.

Justyna’s piece, Haircut, evolves around her upbringing and experiences from her Polish roots. The images are taken from a filmed documentation of a Slavic tradition called ‘Postrzyzyna,’ where the first haircut marks a new chapter in life. This ritual was initially performed by people who are male-assigned at birth and are coming into adulthood. The ritual marks the passage from childhood and being under the mother’s care to transitioning into the father’s care. In Haircut, Justyna positions herself in the ‘Postrzyzyna’ ritual and enters adult life in her own way.

The images are taken in nature; young green grass dominates the landscape and underlines the meaning of youth and a new start. The artist hugs her hair, which almost becomes a second subject in portraying old-rooted traditions; or is Justyna objectifying herself while visualizing this gendered performance? The hair is merging with the grass, forming roots and having its own life, growing and almost breathing in Justyna’s embrace. They are holding each other in the moment of a goodbye, taking spaces of intimacy protected by the height of grass. Everything seems alive in these images: the human, the hair and the soil opened up with blades of grass.

In Justyna’s work, you can detect the inspiration from nature and daily life. The connections in which humans encounter each other in individualized routines and share a common ground on this earth. Justyna observes the world beyond and between the smallest cracks of everyday rhythms. Justyna’s artistic viewpoint can be seen in otherworldly observers like Patti Smith and the biologist Simona Kossak. There are inspiring similarities between the young Patti Smith and Justyna’s current work, especially looking at the poetic, self-reflective and critical approach to engaging with social expectations and norms.

Justyna Orlowska is an interdisciplinary performer who expresses her art through video and imagery. She is a visual artist and graduate of the Faculty of Sculpture and Intermedia, Academy of Fine Arts in Gdànsk, Poland. Justyna works with video, photography, installations, and performance. She has received various awards, including 1st place in the Umwelt competition for the project Relacje and Plant.BioLab in 2018, and 1st Grand Prix Award in the Digital Art Now competition at the international Digital_ia 14 festival in Szczecin in 2014.

Justyna Orlowska is the Silver Artist of the ArtAscent Emotions call for artists. To see the full body of work and profile, get a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Emotions issue.

Barbara Weidell—ArtAscent Silver Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Barbara Weidell

Barbara Weidell—ArtAscent Silver Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

There could hardly be any topic vaster than emotions. Very often, it substitutes the whole content of an art piece, dumping on us the avalanche of intimate experience. But Barbara Weidell demonstrates profound aspects of human emotions in her sculptures.

Edward Munch claimed, “I do not believe in an art that is not forced into existence by a human being’s desire to open his heart.” But talking about emotions doesn’t necessarily have to appeal to one’s subjective reflections. Everyone shares a universal layer in how we react and communicate with the world. And it is most likely to manifest itself in the borderline, pivotal moments of our lives, where we face life, death, fear, and the sublime. Such states fundamental to human culture development can be eloquently expressed through the visuality of archaic art. Barbara prolifically employs this strategy in her practice.

Utilizing materials such as clay, bones, and cloth—echoing the tradition of crafting three-dimensional figures since the Paleolithic age—Barbara creates a tactile surface that triggers a cascade of associations. The viewer immediately recognizes similarities with ancient idols in her pieces, as she seamlessly blends anthropomorphic and zoomorphic features with the simplicity of primordial sculptures. Simultaneously, she refrains from mere replication, maintaining many lifelike details that establish tension between raw material and realistic features. The wide-open eyes of her sculptures, penetrating our gaze, evoke reminiscences of ancient Egyptian portraits, subtly alluding to the transcendental dimensions they bear witness to. Intriguingly, Barbara reveals that the expressions on her sculptures are never premeditated: “It sounds mystical, but when I begin the sculpture, I have a feeling or pose in mind. Yet, as I focus on the facial features, they emerge from concentrating on the overall form.”

And though archaic references have been present in art since the avant-garde of the early 20th century, looking at Barbara’s pieces, we could be reminded of Joseph Beuys. This outstanding German visual artist regularly worked with ritualistic behaviour and natural substances like honey or fur. Both are drawn to the warmth and symbolism of prime natural materials. But if Beuys used them to intertwine his personal mythology with contemporary problems, Barbara maintains a more timeless perspective. She highlights those approaches and methods that became a universal means of channelling our fears and desires and dealing with the world’s incomprehensibility.

Barbara Weidell is a sculptor based in Luther, Oklahoma. She received her BFA in Sculpture from Sonoma State University in 1998 and an MFA in Ceramics from San Diego State University in 2002. As the Professor of Art/Sculpture and Chair of the Art Department at the University of Central Oklahoma, Barbara imparts her knowledge in drawing, mixed media, advanced sculpture, and others. Concurrently, she continues her studio work, experimenting with drawings, printmaking, ceramics, and sculpture.

Barbara Weidell is the Bronze Artist of the ArtAscent Emotions call for artists. To see the full body of work and profile, get a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Emotions issue.

www.bweidell.org

Asnani_Nikhail—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Nikhail Asnani

Asnani_Nikhail—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Distinguished Artist of the ArtAscent Emotions call for entry. To see the full body of work and exhibition, grab a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Emotions issue.

www.nikhailasnani.com

ArtAscent Distinguished Writer of the 2024 Emotion call for writers.

Kesja Dabrowska

Fire

You’re my volcano of love
and the waterfall of pain
extinguishing my attempts of evolving the
trust between us
as I’m yearning to tell you more, confess it all…

Distinguished Writer of the ArtAscent Emotions call for entry. To see the full body of work, grab a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Emotions issue.

http://www.kesjacorvussen22.wixsite.com/welcome

ATARAS-JENA—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Jenna Ataras

ATARAS-JENA—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Distinguished Artist of the ArtAscent Emotions call for entry. To see the full body of work and exhibition, grab a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Emotions issue.

https://www.instagram.com/thefruitpunchshow/at

London-Andrea—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Andrea London

London-Andrea—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Distinguished Artist of the ArtAscent Emotions call for entry. To see the full body of work and exhibition, grab a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Emotions issue.

www.andrealeslielondonphotography.com

ArtAscent Distinguished Writer of the 2024 Emotion call for writers.

Theresa Gage

Mixed Emotions

The sky filled with smoke, and I wondered if there was to be a wedding after all. My nephew Floyd had waited until the COVID years were over to get married to his girlfriend, and now a fire at the wedding chapel? His honeymoon had been postponed already due to a fire that destroyed Maui. He texted me to meet him at the Airbnb…

Distinguished Writer of the ArtAscent Emotions call for entry. To see the full body of work, grab a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Emotions issue.

https://theresagageswritersworld.godaddysites.com

Mandla-Suzan—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Suzan Mandla

Mandla-Suzan—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Distinguished Artist of the ArtAscent Emotions call for entry. To see the full body of work and exhibition, grab a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Emotions issue.

Simovic-Ljuba—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Ljubica Simovic

Simovic-Ljuba—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Distinguished Artist of the ArtAscent Emotions call for entry. To see this in more detail and the full exhibition, grab a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Emotions issue.

Marianna-Baker—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Marianna Baker

Marianna-Baker—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Distinguished Artist of the ArtAscent Emotions call for entry. To see this in more detail and the full exhibition, grab a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Emotions issue.

https://www.mbfiberandclay.com

Novak-Lauri—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Lauri Novak

Novak-Lauri—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Distinguished Artist of the ArtAscent Emotions call for entry. To see this in more detail and the full exhibition, grab a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Emotions issue.

https://laurinovak.com

Ghiuta-Vasile—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Vasile Ghiuta

Ghiuta-Vasile—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Distinguished Artist of the ArtAscent Emotions call for entry. To see the full body of work and exhibition, grab a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Emotions issue.

www.vasileghiuta.ca 

Krone-Aaron—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Aaron Krone

Krone-Aaron—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Distinguished Artist of the ArtAscent Emotions call for entry. To see this in more detail and the full exhibition, grab a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Emotions issue.

http://kroneaaron.wixsite.com/aaronkrone

Gail Marten—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Gail Marten

Gail Marten—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Distinguished Artist of the ArtAscent Emotions call for entry. To see this in more detail and the full exhibition, grab a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Emotions issue.

www.gailmarten.com

Chen-BobbyKimLing—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Bobby Kim Ling Chen

Chen-BobbyKimLing—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Distinguished Artist of the ArtAscent Emotions call for entry. To see this in more detail and the full exhibition, grab a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Emotions issue.

www.trulydgtal.com

Lowry-Diane—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Diane Michaud Lowry

Lowry-Diane—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Distinguished Artist of the ArtAscent Emotions call for entry. To see this in more detail and the full exhibition, grab a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Emotions issue.

www.dianemichaudlowry.myportfolio.com

Riha-Marco—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Marco Riha

Riha-Marco—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Distinguished Artist of the ArtAscent Emotions call for entry. To see this in more detail and the full exhibition, grab a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Emotions issue.

www.marcoriha.com

Noueiri-Lina—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Lina Noueiri

Noueiri-Lina—ArtAscent Distinguished Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Distinguished Artist of the ArtAscent Emotions call for entry. To see the full body of work and exhibition, grab a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Emotions issue.

www.autumnonion.com