This piece is part of the Imagined Histories folio, which features art by Devyn Mañibo.

Our latest folio in The Margins, Imagined Histories, gathers poetry, prose, and hybrid work that attend to the imagined, nonlinear nature of our pasts. Each piece is accompanied by original art made by Devyn Mañibo, a multidisciplinary artist who also serves as the Art Director of The Margins. 

Mañibo’s glowing and layered images complement the folio’s vision of history as a shifting landscape that comes in and out of focus. In creating the digital images, Mañibo played with light, shadow, and texture to gesture at each piece’s distinct feel. “I see each written and visual piece as part of one landscape woven together,” says Mañibo. “It is a collective attempt to recall and reveal concealed or forgotten fragments to create a wholly new space, our imagined history, present, and future, parallel and incandescent.”

An interview with Mañibo appears below.

Tell us a bit about your creative practice.

As an artist, my thinking has always been at the convergence of texture, gesture, shape, and rhythm on the page, with my hands, and through the body. I write; I paint; I work with textiles and paper; I feed myself and my loved ones; I am constantly observing and doing and trying and learning. How do words teach us to move? How does sound teach us to see? How does shape teach us to read? 

When I write a poem, I imagine its colors, how it might feel on the tips of my fingers, and how its form maps a body. A poem spans discipline and medium, at once a written, visual, and performative composition, a constant translation of itself. In my work as Art Director of The Margins, and as the artist for this folio, my work is that of a translator—to listen, to re-understand, to make again and alongside.

What were you wrestling with or thinking through as you made these pieces?

When creating a visual pairing, it’s my instinct to pinpoint the literal imagery from a piece. Though within the idea of something “imagined,” I see a freedom from the exact. What lies in the shadows of the poem? What fantasy does the writer seek to invoke? What does the reader see or hear? What is concealed that a visual pairing can bring to the surface? I read and reread each piece to myself, pulling words and feelings to help piece together abstract snapshots. I hoped to create a series of images that are cohesive in their feeling and topography, but distinct in their reference and composition, allowing room to continue imagining what exists beyond the page.

Were there any surprises or unexpected turns that happened during the creation process?

As I was creating this suite, I began to notice the organic ways colors, light, and shapes from one piece would present themselves in new ways in the next, sewing a story through which you read and visualize these written works. They call and respond to each other. One seeps into the next, reaches forward and back, through and with. The softness and fluidity of each image is an experiment in shadow and light.

What does the title “Imagined Histories” mean to you?

The first thing that comes to mind is a map—of memory, how we remember and rebuild. In the ways that the pieces in this folio were prompted by the idea of lineage and the ways we seek to fill in the gaps, I see each written and visual piece as part of one landscape woven together. It is a collective attempt to recall and reveal concealed or forgotten fragments to create a wholly new space, our imagined history, present, and future, parallel and incandescent.