Things I Observe at my Joint 18th Birthday Party
By Orli Baumgart
A jumble of jackets and bags strewn about my friend’s bedroom near the entryway. A staircase that stretches up to the main floor with rainbow streamers tied along the banister, each one waving in greeting as someone passes them. My strappy dress and teary mum who ties it up for me. My fresh tattoo, centred in a thigh slit as if between fabric curtains. Gold sequins that glisten on my skin, which hasn’t been exposed in months. Fairy lights in the back garden. Stoned teenagers clustering between bushes, coming and going like a game of sardines where no one remembers the rules. That I wish it was a drug, the way my brain slows down sometimes and I hover outside my body even when I don’t want to, because at least then I’d know when it would wear off. A biting August breeze. Homemade pizzas sizzling on the barbeque my Dad brought in my sibling’s car because it couldn’t fit in his two-door MINI Cooper. The whispering nausea I’ve come to register as hunger. An auto-camera on a tripod. Feather boas, plastic hats and neon glasses. My friends’ hysterical posing. That stifling feeling that makes me look away from mirrors. Innumerable empty Vodka Cruisers. Flushed cheeks. Plants potted in thrifted teacups and ribboned with ‘Happy Birthday!’ tags that partially obscure unrelated phrases like ‘Daddy’ and ‘Congrats on the Promotion.’ The warmth of how things don’t make sense but maybe don’t have to. My winged eyeliner and wild curly hair making up for years of straightening. Friends I believe actually like me. Music vibrating through the house’s skeleton and into my own. The realisation that I’m able to feel things again. How it’s too much and not enough. Ice cream with toppings. Breaks in the bathroom. Shaky breathing. Craving to feel real and then choking on it. Rows of pink scars that won’t be photoshopped out of Instagram posts. Knowing I could wake up and find it’s come back—that suffocating nothingness that pools beneath my skin and behind my eyes. How it felt like I’d become a remnant, hollowed out by its hunger for apathy. How I tried to picture the gory disentangling of myself from it, which my psychologist called recovery, and how I felt sceptical because I wasn’t sure I existed anymore. Using breathing exercises even though they feel stupid. Reminding myself that relapses in depression are normal. Wondering if I’d have the energy to pull myself out again if I did.
Orli Baumgart (they/them) is a queer and trans uni student living in Australia. They love Greek mythology, knitting, long nails, re-reading and re-watching, making things political, weird and wacky art, and an orange cat named Sebastian (whom they love more than most people). They write because sometimes existing in a chronically ill body is a lot, and allowing that to live on paper can make it feel less consuming. Find them on social media: Instagram: @orli.bee Bluesky: @orli-bee.bsky.social Twitter: @orli_bee
Artwork Source: “Outgrowth,” allison anne
Artist Statement: Collage is a site of expansiveness and change, part of a creative ecosystem of transformative mediums that rethink how art can be shared. It reframes and pushes against capitalist ideas of ‘value’ while exploring different avenues of community-building and exchange. There’s an element of collage that has always felt inherently queer — remaking and restructuring, collaborating with the very world around us.
My personal creative practice is primarily abstract, shaped by my experience and identity as a fat, queer, white, nonbinary person. American culture is not singular, nor is it a monolith — surrounded by layers of paper, fingers sticky from adhesive, drawing on my background in sociology, cultural studies and gender studies, I find myself asking questions — what do we value, and how do we represent it? What do we leave behind, and what is changing as we look ahead? Collage offers a chance to further interrogate, reclaim and broaden our perspectives.
allison anne is a queer, nonbinary multidisciplinary artist based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA (unceded Očhéthi Šakówiŋ land), working in collage, zinemaking, mail art, book art, design & publishing. By recontextualizing images and materials, allison seeks to create complex textural, intuitive abstractions and configurations which prioritize that which is found, discarded and left behind, exploring the intersections & interactions between context, materiality and creativity. They co-founded the projects Twin Cities Collage Collective and NONMACHINABLE, which connect and publish artists & creatives locally and around the world. Connect with them at allisonanne.com or on Instagram at @allisonannecollage.
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