Special Special
4N is a biannual community magazine showcasing extraordinary foreign talent in America. Our first issue features ten foreign artists practicing in America today. Stemming from the creative platform of Special Special, 4N is a conceptual magazine that continues to express the playfulness and community we have always fostered in our projects.
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A Small Pond Under the Blue Sky is a reflection and celebration of the 98 artist collaborations, through 37 exhibitions, performances, and workshops. A record of the pop-ups and product editions conceptualized and presented in our East Village space and beyond from 2016 to 2022. This anthology includes interviews with artists collaborators Aria McManus, Tim Simonds, and Lu Zhang, and personal reflections on collaborations and creativity with the founder and director Wen-You Cai. This collection of thoughts guide readers through a contemplation of creative experiments with art and the everyday.
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A companion to 4N magazine, Special Special provides a blueprint to the 4N universe, a journal on the backstory of how 4N came to be, and a coterie of handpicked 4N icons we all know and love.
The Journal, An Exchange of Foreign Origins, features text by Wen-You Cai on inspirations for the 4N magazine format, and her experience as a visa sponsor and recommendation letter writer. It also features text from Panny Chayapumh, who shares her personal journey of measuring adulthood through three-year O-1 visa cycles, and inspirations for the 4N Magazine design.
Wen-You Cai, Founder and Director of Special Special, shares an autobiographical account of growing up in the art world. Each chapter holds inspirations and vignettes from museums, travels, and random encounters around the world that inspired the formation of Special Special as an art project space and retail shop. Cai conceptualizes the idea of a “reluctant artist”, or someone who is immersed in the arts but having trouble making work.
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This is a photo book by Special Special founder and director Wen-You Cai, that captures her father, mother, and sister over a period of twelve years. Tracing the dynamics of these three immediate members of her family through travels, jet-lag, at parties, at work, on vacation, and at home. These vibrant images follow intimate moments of play, ritualistic practices, and emotional ennui.
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