Issue 5 Foreword:
Fashioning the Self
by Fía Benitez, 4N Issue 5 Guest Editor
Fía Benitez is a Mexican-born, Los Angeles–based artist whose work across painting, drawing, and text weaves research and personal narrative through the lens of land and labor histories. She has presented recent exhibitions, readings, and panels at Wolfpack HQ, CSUN Art Galleries, Printed Matter, Ehrlich Steinberg, Heavy Manners Library, and MAK Center for Art and Architecture. As an editor, she has contributed to The Vassar Review, Sublevel Magazine, and East of Borneo. Her words and pictures are published by Strip Mall Magazine, 4N, The Big One, and Baest Journal. Fía holds degrees from Vassar College and CalArts. Her work was featured in the very first issue of 4N.
Artists have long crafted personas to move through the world and sometimes simply to survive. The history of cultural production is filled with such figures: the artistic self, the pen name or nom de plume, the alter ego, and, more recently, the screen name or the online alt. These terms point to a simple but powerful idea: that identity is not fixed, but composed through repetition, performance, as well as social forces and cultural frames.
In assuming an identity, we unlock a myriad of possibilities—where we might go next, who we might encounter, and what new life could unfold. It is a play between perception and stability, a tool for navigating new realms.
As artists working internationally, there is yet another layer to this dynamic. We face the translations and misinterpretations of identity across languages, cultures, and bureaucratic systems. One learns to inhabit multiple versions of the self—personal and professional, local and foreign, legible and unfamiliar.
As a 4N artist myself, I was excited to interview this issue’s eleven contributors: Z Yang, Karis Wong, Weiyuan Wang, Nana Said, Mingna Li, Yasmine Laraqui, Kasper Klop, Eunice Jung, Julia Hung, Audrey Chou, and Bomin Ahn. It was a joy to learn about each of their practices and dive into what inspires them creatively. We spoke about managing the uncertainty (and excitement!) of artistic life, moving across borders, and all that which makes them extraordinary.
For some, “alias” emerged through translation and the shifting sense of self that accompanies migration. Others described the roles artists inhabit across disciplines, from design and music to performance and digital media. Several reflected on the mediated identities produced through online platforms and global networks, while others approached aliases through material or metaphor: light, gesture, gender, and storytelling acting as proxies for experience.
Together, these perspectives reveal alias not as a single strategy but as a condition of contemporary artistic life. One in which artists continually adapt, experiment, and redefine who we are becoming.
Get 4N Issue 5 here.