Saint-Saëns: Editorial Engineer
M E E T T H E T E A M
🔡 name? Saint-Saëns Aṣli.
💼 position? Editorial Engineer
🎨 favourite colour? Baby pink! {hex code: #FFB7CE}
🐙 which sea creature do you f/w the most?
My sea creature of choice is the octopus! there's something about having so many limbs, undistinguished by boring demarcations like "arms" or "legs" that really resonates with my desire for a capacity that is endless, amorphous and shifting. It also truly tickles me, on a soul level, that octopodes both understand and partake in sarcasm and also actively resist the authority of marine biologists.
❣️what do you love about your role title?
My favourite aspect of my role title is the invocation of engineering in what is, ultimately, an entirely creative capacity. that sort of resolution of controversy through the deliberate imbrication of ideas that are seemingly at odds, with the goal of highlighting how both concepts strengthen and reify one another is a motif in my wider work as an artist. I feel like that illustration of how the unnecessary construction of barriers prevents holistic understandings of social and creative function is essential to what we are trying to do at onyx and to how I approach selection as editor.
⚡️ black creative(s) grounding you right now?
Everyone on my team! Hannah, Theophina & Xaira are absolutely powerhouses. to be surrounded by black, trans artists and movement builders reminds me every day that the world black queer radicals are working towards exists in micro-galaxies of chosen family and active community.
🔮 describe the future of onyx in three words?
black, glittering and tangible.
These role titles were formed using @theslowfactory’s ‘Collective Roles for Liberation’
as a template.
Illustration by Tosin Akinkunmi (@artbytosin)
📚 what’s your favourite point in onyx’s manifesto & why?
X: WE ARE DEDICATED TO SUBVERSION. As black transgender artists trying to create a cultural home for people whose art refuses to be whittled down into nothing and for whom their political contribution is creation, understanding the structures within which we struggle every day and understanding that resistance is what we are obligated to do as descendants of chattel slavery, a commitment to moving outside of these systems is essential to onyx's self concept.
🎧 hyperfocus song?
"many moons" by janelle monae.