By Kenna Hurtuk ’23
Staff Writer
Aftan ’23 is an artist in more ways than one. Incorporating both visual and written elements into their work, they create warped yet reality-based pieces that reflect the existing world as well as the utopias they envision. Their poetry casts a dark but wistful spell over the page, and their art displays darkness openly but with powerful nuance.
“I feel like there’s a lot of exploration of the body in my art,” Aftan reflected. A psychology major with a particular interest in memory and self-narrative, Aftan uses art to make the internal experiences of physicality and corporeality tangible, often through depictions of the body. Aftan said that their emotions gain tangible form in their art.
This mind-body dialogue is a recurrent theme for Aftan. They said they are “constantly thinking about the narrative my [written and visual] art create in isolation from each other, but also in relation to each other.”
Differing mediums provide this cyclical basis of inspiration in Aftan’s work. “My visual art is a byproduct of my poetry,” they explained. “The way I think is through poetry, and then that manifests itself in my [visual] art.” Aftan acts as an artistic translator, ensuring that their sketches and paintings maintain the poetic qualities of their written counterparts.
Aftan is inspired by Franny Choi, Kaveh Akbar, Kristin Chang and Yanyi. “I’ve learned a lot from queer Asian poets,” they explained. These voices both reflected and introduced new perspectives to Aftan’s identity as a South Asian nonbinary poet.
Another influence in Aftan’s work is their boundless love and care for others. “Love is everywhere in my art,” Aftan said. “I love very deeply. Love languages are important to me — making art and writing poems for people.” Their greatest hope is that those on the receiving end of their emotional energy “think about the emotions it evokes with intentionality.”
This intentionality is ever-present in Aftan’s life and work. Just as their written and visual art build on and lend creativity to each other, Aftan hopes to see more instances of community where people can depend on each other and build from their resources. They define simply surviving as “allowing the community to sustain us materially, physically and emotionally.”
However, they are looking for more than that. “What drives my art,” they said, “is the community around me and envisioning a future where living is considered beyond survival.”
To support Aftan’s work, direct contributions can be sent to Amika19 on Venmo. Aftan can also be reached atsethi23a@mtholyoke.edu for inquiries about commissions.