Meet Josafina Garcia
Josafina Garcia, 22, of Owensboro, combines writing with visual fiber work, among other innovative projects. She was selected for her cutting edge artmaking, taking risks to break boundaries of genre and medium and her vulnerability in addressing mental health in her writing. Her artwork addresses topics such as body image, mental health, depression and eating disorders.
Much of Josafina’s work combines multiple genres. Her primary artform is writing, but she also works in fiber and photography.
One recent project that her nominator Kelly Moffett described as “perhaps her most innovative piece” was using the traditional “domestic” art of crocheting in order to create a QR Code. If you hovered your phone over the crocheted QR Code, it goes to an online page that has a creative nonfiction piece about her struggle with an eating disorder. Josafina has also created a series of Zines that highlighted different things such as a subculture of Pokemon Go folks who survived the isolation of the pandemic by doing this activity together outside and socially distanced. All members of the group were dealing with various mental health issues or other deep struggles. One zine she created was extremely experimental, creating concrete poetry in a booklet that could be read both on the outside and (when turned inside out) could be read on the inside–in order to show these layers of a person, addressing body issues as a woman.
Josafina said, “I feel that if I can write about my own personal struggles and share them, maybe others will feel less alone. I think there’s something powerful about opening up myself to others through writing. Sharing these issues, these struggles shows that I’m not alone. I recently started a project that I hope to continue, where I crocheted a QR code that leads to a piece that I wrote.
That specific piece talked about my past with an eating disorder. I think opening up about that can be feminist. I know a lot of girls and women who have eating disorders because we feel like our bodies have to fit this shape that is presented to us, so being honest and blunt about it is kind of like pushing back. I feel like I am questioning norms on what art can be – writing is art and the more I do it the more I believe it. I’m not done creating art. I want to keep crocheting and putting my words into it. I also do photography, and I’m trying to figure out how I can put stories into photographs, trying to figure out how to share my truth through still images. My work is sharing my truth, and I hope to keep finding ways to do it.”
Her nominator Kelly Moffett said, “Her own work wrestles with being a Lantinx woman struggling to be a kind of beautiful our culture will accept. I have never seen such innovative/experimental work as what Josafina can do with her booklets and crocheted QR codes and other interesting hybrid projects. I feel it is important for us to think about genre and medium boundaries and see how we can break through them in the same way we are doing with gender boundaries, and this kind of fluidity is in Josafina’s work. She is doing the work of the future.”
Josafina has exhibited leadership in her artmaking and in programming and community building. As Editor-in-Chief for Loch Norse at NKU, she ran open mic nights as well as the finished literary magazine, where she and the team worked to be a safe and inclusive space. As a result, women and BIPOC people made up a large percentage of submitters and open mic attendees/readers. The event attracted crowds of over 100 people and she ran the entire event as the MC and introducer. “BIPOC and women found us to be a safe space to share their experiences of being BIPOC and/or women,” she said, “but we were more than that. We were a space for everyone, and we wanted everyone to feel like they could enjoy our events and our finished literary magazine.
On receiving the Firestarter Award, Josafina said, “I am absolutely honored. I’ve done lots of ‘artsy things’ my whole life, but I’ve never really felt like an artist. This award makes it feel real, it makes me feel like I can create work that people will care about and find meaning in. I’m so incredibly grateful.”
To see Josafina’s writing that the QR code links to visit: https://cdn.me-qr.com/pdf/14135718.pdf
To contact Josafina or learn more about her work, email her at josafina.garcia@gmail.com.