Gxrls
Lido Pimienta, [email protected], $5
Gxrls is a beautiful illustrated zine by artist and musician Lido Pimienta. It’s both a personal history and a wider call out to the reader.
In the initial pages, Pimienta depicts the way she felt isolated as an adolescent, like the “weird girl” in class. This starts the zine off with an inherent relatability and genuineness that carries on through its entirety. Following this brief bit of descriptive text the zine then moves on in a series of full-page colour drawings of all different kinds of girls looking directly at the reader.
Lido’s art is tender, colourful and wacky. The colours are carefully chosen and well-designed with different palates on the cover of peach/purple/green/yellows mixing with bright blues, oranges and a rad rainbow skirt inside. The last page of the zine asks us to squash girl-on- girl hate and ties the whole story together with a beautiful unity.
Full disclosure: I am an editor at Shameless (an independent feminist magazine for youth) and Lido, an amazing multi-talented artist, designed the fantastic cover for our Music Issue on stands now. I’m also a big fan of Lido’s work in general and this zine does not fail to honour Pimienta’s talent and inherent ability to create art that is complex, accessible and entirely captivating. (CJ Blennerhassett)
Check out Lido’s pop-up shop at 8-11 Gallery (233 Spading) on August 30 and 31, 12pm-5pm.