Friends Are Friends Are Friends is a collaborative zine project by GAUCHE, first launched at the Brooklyn Art Book Fair. The project operates like a game of telephone: 12 contributors respond to a prompt and to each other in a sequence, using any form of artistic output. The process begins with an initial prompt provided by GAUCHE, and each contributor only sees the previous person’s work.
The zine connects creatives with regular art practices, encouraging an exchange of ideas and energy across diverse perspectives. Even though contributors may not know one another, the project fosters an open and exploratory dialogue, resulting in a chain of interconnected works. The final zine evolves organically, capturing the spirit of collaboration, curiosity, and artistic dialogue.
Our opening prompt is: FRIENDS ARE FRIENDS ARE FRIENDS
Bios of contributors displayed in sequential order
1. Benji Heywood Benji Heywood is a writer and musician living in Southern California.
2. Motohiro Takeda Motohiro Takeda was born in Hamamatsu, Japan. He primarily works in photography, ceramics, and sculpture to create site-responsive installations. By utilizing abstraction through the distillation of the medium’s materiality and their inherent metaphors, Takeda’s work explores the ephemeral and transient nature of time and memory, life and death, and the space between man and nature on a personal and universal scale. He received his BFA in photography from Parsons the New School for Design in 2008 and his MFA in studio art from Columbia University in 2023. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn.
3. Meghan Boilard Meghan Boilard is a visual culture writer (who sometimes takes pictures) based just outside Boston. She thinks a lot about prime-time television, demolition derbies, and the sort of photographs that get left behind at estate sales. Sometimes she’s wary of others, but she’s a nice lady once you get to know her.
4. Pupubug A lazy goblin who loves eating vegetables and spends each day lounging under the blue sky and white clouds. She doesn’t like air-conditioning and has recently developed a fondness for painting.
5. Violet Violet is an interdisciplinary artist based in Bushwick, New York.
6. Yiyi Mendoza & Adam Elabd Yiyi and Adam are collaborators and cocreators in a variety of mediums, such as art, food, herbalism, culture, medicine, and traditional folk methods. Their most prominent expression being a kombucha-brewing motherland located in Troy, New York.
7. Sho Hanafusa & Kotomo Hanafusa Hello, people, I’m Sho and Koto. Sho loves creating for music. Koto loves sushi, and me too. Love love XOXO peppa pig oink oink.
8. Raul Williams Raul Williams is a former poet and short-story writer who currently works as an aircraft-maintenance technician. He occasionally writes at the insistence of his friends and loved ones. Raul resides in San Antonio, Texas, with his fiancée and two dogs.
9. Norma Jean Campos I am a mother of three grown adults, a friend to some, and a teacher for middle school students. I long to retire, to buy a small truck and camper, and to travel and hear the ocean waves.
10. Anuska Dhar Anuska Dhar is a queer, Bengali-American creative based in Brooklyn, whose writing has appeared in the Vanderbilt Review, Vice, Refinery29, and on her personal Substack newsletter, Close Friends Only.
11. Katja Cho Katja creates things but has the same inclination toward reality that others do about ghosts.
12. Sade the Brave Sade the Brave is a multidisciplinary artist based in Philly. You can see more of her work on Instagram (@sadexthebrave).