Bloom.yvr, Vancouver, BC (2026)

06/27/2022

bloom zine collective - issue #002 harm reduction + healing

🌿"RANGREZA" by Areeka
she/her

"I write a lot about trauma, q***rness, survivorship, and spirituality. I've struggled with substance abuse issues in the past, and recovery took on new meanings in the pandemic. When I’m not dreaming about abolitionist futures that address root causes of trauma, the work I do is with the aim of being of aid to any and all survivors, and any who seek substances or are engaged in lifelong struggles of coping with the impossibility of trauma.

Rangreza is a reflection of my diasporic experiences and grappling some harsh realities on Coast Salish lands. This piece is me trying to stay connected to a culture and way of life that I love, and also addressing that people experiencing addiction or substance abuse are often trauma survivors and need to be cared for and cared about as such. It’s been healing writing this piece. It’s a love letter to the spiritual - which to me is less about religion and more about defining spiritual/spirit in whatever way brings us warmth, in whatever way caresses love and light into our souls. And also building on the Islamic idea of tawhid, oneness, which draws attention to all of our interconnectedness. A reminder that like the interweaving roots of trees - that to love, care for, connect with, look up to, provide shade and life for each other, is perhaps the most powerful way to stay grounded in something more than ourselves.

06/27/2022

🐭 goodbye spring showers, hello SUMMER SUNSHINE 🏵️

Bloom Zine Collective wishes you so much growth, friendships, simple pleasures, and all the prosperity that the sun has to offer
🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞
Happy First Day of SUMMER!!!

Watercolour by: alistair (they/them) Angelart.work

06/06/2022

another throw back to our first zine from spring 2021
bloom zine collective - issue #001 race + gender

🌿 "Miracles (2020)" by Sunny Chen
she/her/they/them
Sunny Chen AKA Sad China

"Living in diaspora means we have to water our roots, and find meaning in our family's histories, even if it hurts. We have to tend to our past, while looking forward to our future. The time of COVID-19 provides the catalyst to rediscovering ourselves.

Inspiration: Revisiting my childhood, both in China and Canada, as well as watching my roommate's and my garden grow, and the anxiety of being outside and visibly racialized."

See Full Video: https://youtu.be/SplZASMYmtM

05/30/2022

a throw back to our first zine from spring 2021
bloom zine collective - issue #001 race + gender

🌿 "Propagation" by Fatima Aamir
she/her

"My poem is titled "Propagation," like growing new plants from old ones. I reflect on my grandmother and grapple with the diasporic longing and uprootedness I often feel having left Pakistan at a young age. Race is experienced in a lot of ways, but I feel it most in terms of my outsider immigrant status, my longing for yet alienation from my homeland. This sense of uprootedness is only compounded by my anxiety at the state of the world right now - not so much the virus, but how capitalism is preventing us from dealing with it - and about my worries for the future having just graduated into this perilous world. In quarantine, plants - growing life, protecting and preserving it - have not only grounded me, but helped me deal with loneliness by giving me purpose - and unintentionally helped me connect with my grandma. My hardy, Punjabi dadi embodies the best of the earth for me. She's seen a lot of death but remained resolutely connected to life, always nurturing and always resilient. Regardless of the weather, she's remained adaptive and instinctive in a way that I never was, especially growing up in a hyper-capitalist North American culture, where I was taught to accumulate rather than tend. This poem represents my impulse to reach out across generations, to "propagate" beauty, and to overcome loneliness. "

05/17/2022

bloom zine collective - issue #002 harm reduction + healing

🌿 "122 BPM"
Cam Hautcœur-Boyer (they/them)hauboy

I’m a trans and indigenous youth who grew up amidst the forests and waters of the K'ómoks Valley. I think I’ve got something that makes office workers in their 40’s feel comfortable swearing while on the clock.

THE WHAT: I make visual and written art. Sometimes I go a little wild and mix the two, and then I submit it to a lovely zine, and then I spill trail mix everywhere when I find out that my piece has been accepted. Themes I find myself coming back to are interpersonal connection, morality, unreality, and home.

THE WHY: I have to put the human experience somewhere or I think I’d drown in it. There are certain things I can only express in caps locked sentences and others only in drawings of hands.

THE HOW: Some nights I feel as though if I don’t make something from myself, I’ll explode. This results in a gargoyle-esque hunch over my bed or desk or couch, furiously creating until my headphones lose battery. This must take place when I need to wake up early the next morning.

05/06/2022

bloom zine collective - issue #002 harm reduction + healing
🌿”BLOOM” by
they/them
linktr.ee/mirroredfatality
postcrypt.cargo.site/mirrored-fatality
Part of the larger “cocoon webs” EP: mirroredfatality.bandcamp.com

this psychedelic cool music video named after, yours truly, “bloom” by mirrored fatality
- - - -
“mirrored fatality is a nonbinary Kapampangan-Pilipinx and Pakistani-Muslim performance art duo Mango and Samar, sharing their rituals, altars, and medicine through DIT (Do It Together) experimental and healing noise punk. mirrored fatality creates their self-proclaimed “cocoon webs” combining performance art, music, spoken word, film, photography, painting, drawing, upcycled garments, anti-imperialist education, healing justice practice spaces; mobilizing and bridging a transnational warrior community who responds urgently to transnational calls-to-action between Turtle Island, Kashmir, and Mindanao.
🌿
mirrored fatality’s performance activism allows them a safe space to release their bubbling, fermenting primal rage rooted in the settler colonialism, transphobia, racism, xenophobia, and intergenerational ancestral trauma they experience daily as nonbinary people of color. mirrored fatality’s intentions for their art is for Q***r Trans Black Indigenous People of Color to embody their rage, disrupt the silence and isolation from existing in a white supremacist capital"

- - - -
See the full video at: https://youtu.be/GG-vBJ5dTVw

05/04/2022

bloom zine collective - issue #002 harm reduction + healing

🌿”BLOOM” by Mirrored Fatality
they/them
linktr.ee/mirroredfatality
postcrypt.cargo.site/mirrored-fatality
Part of the larger “cocoon webs” EP: https://mirroredfatality.bandcamp.com

this psychedelic cool music video named after, yours truly, “bloom” by mirrored fatality
- - - -
“The BLOOM music video features soundscapes and footage from immersing ourselves in nature as we ground in our souls as bodies existing outside of isolation, capitalism, gender dysphoria, and the prison state. BLOOM was written together at the top of a mountain in Happy Valley in Tongva Land, so-called East Los Angeles at Sarita Doe and Champoy yurt dwelling ceremony. BLOOM unearths diasporic q***r spirituality and harnesses our ancestral languages- Urdu and Kapampangan. BLOOM is a prayer to honor the bonds of our love that expands and brings regeneration into our multiverse. BLOOM is a spell to inspire deeper connections to our Earth and welcome in freedom and joy for ourselves and kin.”

mirrored fatality is a nonbinary Kapampangan-Pilipinx and Pakistani-Muslim performance art duo Mango and Samar, sharing their rituals, altars, and medicine through DIT (Do It Together) experimental and healing noise punk. mirrored fatality creates their self-proclaimed “cocoon webs” combining performance art, music, spoken word, film, photography, painting, drawing, upcycled garments, anti-imperialist education, healing justice practice spaces; mobilizing and bridging a transnational warrior community who responds urgently to transnational calls-to-action between Turtle Island, Kashmir, and Mindanao.
🍃
mirrored fatality’s performance activism allows them a safe space to release their bubbling, fermenting primal rage rooted in the settler colonialism, transphobia, racism, xenophobia, and intergenerational ancestral trauma they experience daily as nonbinary people of color. mirrored fatality’s intentions for their art is for Q***r Trans Black Indigenous People of Color to embody their rage, disrupt the silence and isolation from existing in a white supremacist capitalistic apocalyptic world, and harness collective care, catharsis, and holistic healing. Join them in imagining the future we’ve been fighting for and experience mirrored fatality’s reflections to witness our highest, truest selves.

See The Full Video: https://youtu.be/GG-vBJ5dTVw
Read The Full Zine : www.bloomyvr.com

03/29/2022

bloom zine collective - issue #002 harm reduction + healing

🌿“the karmapseudical industry”
kiranjit shoker (she/her)the.muse

A poem which asks readers to reflect on the relationship between medicine and healing

----

“‘The Karmapseudical Industry’ entices the audience to consider what is medicine and healing, and how we have come to these practices. For too long, Western culture has capitalized off of colonized culture without benefiting those communities or people. They will allow all of our love into their home but will not love us equitably in return. Perhaps this poem captures a sense of betrayal or injustice of being used in a disingenuous manner; I love being Canadian, but Canada doesn’t love people who look like me. They will gladly accept my saffron and gold, but not give me equal access to opportunity. Its socio-economically profitable to exoticise and commodify a culture. People say cultural appropriation doesn’t exist, that globalization is about sharing, but tell me what the West is giving back to the colonized while taking their treasures?

Shoker is a South Asian Canadian artist and educator forged from the cracks of diaspora, whose writing and performances centre around agency and self-determination. In exploring race, gender, and colonialism with raw humanity, Shoker’s art builds on empowerment and restoration of self.”

12/22/2021

Happy holidays from the Bloom team! We hope you use this time to relax, eat good food, and spend time with your loved ones. Please remember to stay safe and take care of yourselves.

Thank you so much for supporting our zine over this past year. We look forward to sharing more local artists and leaders in community with you in the new year!

11/20/2021

hi everyone! we’re back after a post-launch hiatus to take some time to recharge and re-energize ourselves. with our return, we would love to take the next few weeks to showcase and celebrate the incredible work of the artists featured in bloom issue #002!

bloom zine collective - issue #002 harm reduction + healing

🌿 “not your drug”
maiya dexel (she/her) blender

The coca leaf has been cultivated in South America for centuries. It is respected in the region and used in a variety of cultural, medical, and religious practices. People chew it, burn it, and use it to make tea. But it is also used to make co***ne. Because of this, the U.S. War on Drugs has worked to eliminate and stigmatize coca growth. Backed by the U.S. and local governments, police in Colombia and other South American countries are tasked with eradicating the farming of coca. They burn and destroy entire crops. Crops produced by rural peasant families. This destroys their source of income with no restitution, and nothing is done to increase the price of alternative crops.

Being Colombian, I understand the damages of the co***ne industry. Much of the violence and corruption in Colombia can be attributed to it. However, punishing farmers for trying to feed their families only further perpetuates poverty and suffering.
Colonial understanding ignores the cultural and economic importance of the coca leaf to local populations as it continues to vilify Indigenous practices.

Maiya Dexel is a le***an mestiza artist who is in her first year at UBC Arts focusing on political science with an interest in Latin American studies and social justice.

image IDs in comments

06/25/2021

❁✿❀ BLOOM ISSUE #002 IS OUT NOW ❀✿❁

we are very excited to announce the release of our second issue of bloom, harm reduction + healing, which unpacks how harm has shown up in our lives, and the ways in which substances live in relationship to our unique cultures, spirituality, recreation, medicine, religion, and other facets of life.

this issue features the work of 9 bipoc youth who have given us the opportunity to feature their work. there is immense strength and vulnerability to share your work and we are so honoured to be able to showcase all of them!

biggest thank you to all of you who took the time and energy to submit your work and we are so extremely grateful for all of your endless support.

we hope you love it as much as we do!

link in our bio to check it out!!

cover art by Cam Hautcœur-Boyer (they/them) .hauboy
titled “122 BPM”

03/18/2021

Exciting news ‼️ We have selected the winning submissions for our issue on Harm Reduction + Healing. We will begin reaching out to these artists veeeeery soon so please keep an eye out on your inbox. 💌

Meanwhile, this powerful piece was submitted by Orlayna (they/she) for our first issue, titled "breathing in a Black body."

[ID: Handwritten poetry on a light yellow background. Title: breathing in a Black body

"i feel like i always knew
so maybe that's why no one
told me, only opened they mouth
to shout in church on sunday and only
open mine to pour down gizzards and
cornbread. i miss the way my grandma's house
smelled when she cooked on the stove on randolph st.
i don't remember walking down any street and seeing
someone white and getting ill because i though about
Trayvon Martin too long. i don't remember a sense of
panic seeing blue and red lights flicker from the driver's
seat of my car, thumb shaking like hell on the Facebook live
button. i remember flipping blonde hair i didn't have in the
third grade, and Momma getting 38 hot at me. "you ain't
white. don't you know you ain't white?" my lips and bottom
were elementary entertainment. i never knew it was wrong
to be Black. i never knew that being born was going to be my
death. never new it wasn't safe to go places with my white
friends because it was going to be my fault automatically.
the news used to be background noise but now it's reality TV.
but it isn't television when i'm experiencing it. it's real and
high definition and violent and aler and i am not unafraid.
i wish sometimes i had never taken
my first breath."]

Bloom.yvr

06/27/2022

06/27/2022

06/06/2022

05/30/2022

05/17/2022

05/06/2022

05/04/2022

03/29/2022

12/22/2021

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