Let’s converse? Let’s play.
Dipika Kohli is a bricolage artist who makes art books and zines in Phnom Penh. Using found materials–glossy magazines, broken foreign-language novels, thin or thick papers, cut boxes, scraps of textiles, leaves and flowers, beads, and pages of her own diaristic writings–she stitches closed layered pages that enfold juxtaposed stories.
Each reading reveals a new telling, each person viewing interprets in a new way. What holds Kohli’s attention is the chance and ephemerality of this, and the anticipation of new possibilities, too. For the same reason, she hosts salons and miniparties, so people can meet and co-discover what may surprise or delight them. As such, hers is a relational art. Her books are artefacts of these encounters. They’re expressions of being immersed, and at play. Kohli’s zines have officially been in shows and festivals in Seattle, Oulu, San Francisco, and Sapporo and at popup fringe events she’s hosted in London, Bangkok, and Singapore. She co-founded Design Kompany in Seattle, which set a foundation for what today is a smaller scale version of shaping space for people to try new things, in the Art & Copy Zine Club. ‘Co-creating is my favorite jam. Try it with me. Make Art & Copy zines.’
ARCHITECTURE & JOURNALISM. DK today makes DESK. It’s inspired by her past in architecture. (She was a graphic designer and intern architect at two international architecture firms for short stints in Tokyo and Raleigh-Durham.) Wanting to write and publish stories, she then switched to journalism. The timing was perfect for her to become a full-time staff at a startup alt newspaper, which was publishing fortnightly in southwest Ireland. Two years later, she joined a daily newspaper in the A/E/C industry in Seattle as their environment edtior where she worked for another two years.
SERENDIPITY. These days, she gathers people in very small-scale conversations, making sure to invite lots of perspectives to each one. That’s by design. To invite new input, and let people have a chance to hear and share what might be new for each of them. Serendipity or a chance encounter could really inspire something new, or challenge our core beliefs and give us ways to discover stuff we mightn’t have known about, otherwise. Many years of solo travel and bumping into new people in far flung places has given her the awareness that it’s fascinating to just simply make time to hear what other people have to say.
She had studied civil engineering at N. C. State, studying in Kyoto for a year to investigate and immerse in the architecture there at Stanford Japan Center. She won two grants from the Japan Foundation for her photo essay series, ‘Japanese Lines’. She studied art briefly at Pratt Institute while working part-time at a used jazz record store in the West Village, both experiences informing her technique and the way she approaches making anything.