BRIDGE BOOKS: “My Eyes, Your Gaze” by Darya Foroohar (Forthcoming Spring / Summer 2024)

Graphic Novels
Written By Michael Workman

AVAILABLE SPRING / SUMMER 2024 — CLICK HERE TO PREORDER

My Eyes, Your Gaze by Darya Foroohar
Bridge serialized Darya Foroohar’s “My Eyes, Your Gaze” on social media throughout fall 2023, and in a flip-book in the Bridge Member’s Section, culminating in publication of the full graphic novella in spring / summer 2024. From the theories of urbanist Georg Simmel to the bars of rapper Megan Thee Stallion, there has been no dearth of work exploring how cultural expectations of physical presentation have shaped people’s relationships to both their bodies and those around them. My Eyes, Your Gaze is a graphic essay on the cultural perception and conception of the body, especially as it relates to gender and sexuality. Using her own experiences as a thread tying the piece together, Foroohar engages with both queer, anticolonial, and feminist theory in addition to modern pop culture to explore the ways in which the concept of the physical body is intertwined with the legacies of colonialism, misogyny, and queerphobia.

Darya is a fourth-year student at the University of Chicago studying creative writing and urban studies. She has self-published two graphic novels, “Somewhere Far From Here” (2022) and “I Wish I Didn't Think About This” (2021). She is the recipient of the 2022 Seidel Scholars Grant, which funded her self-directed adaptation of the Persian myth the “Shahnameh” into a graphic novel. In addition to working on this, she is working on her creative writing thesis this year, as well as personal comic projects and commissions. Outside of writing, Darya likes to make music, do the NYT crossword, and take long, long walks.

Michael Workman

Michael Workman is a choreographer, language, visual and movement artist, dance and performance artist, writer, reporter, and sociocultural critic. In addition to his work at the Chicago Tribune, Guardian US, Newcity magazine, WBEZ Chicago Public Radio and elsewhere, Workman is also Director of Bridge, an artistic collective and 501 (c) (3) publishing and programming organization (bridge-chicago.org). His choreographic writing has been included in Propositional Attitudes, an "anthology of recent performance scores, directions and instructions" published by Golden Spike Press, and his Perfect Worlds: Artistic Forms & Social Imaginaries Vol. 1, the first in a 3-volume series, was released by StepSister Press in October 2018 with a day-long program of performances at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Most recently, two of his scores were accepted for publication in a special edition of the Notre Dame Review focusing on the work of participants in the &NOW Festival of Innovative Writing.

https://michaelworkmanstudio.com
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