Girls Gone Wild is a zine about radical feminism that has neither ink nor paper. Instead, Indonesian artist Claudia Akhsa has sewn together this text with a needle and thread.
Radical feminism is a school of thought based on the view that women’s oppression is the foundation of all forms of exploitation.
Akhsa’s handmade book has sixteen pages. With a gentle but objective tone, she uses text and image to discuss radical feminism’s history, introduce its representative figures (and some of their well-known lines), and explain key terms such as “patriarchy” and “sisterhood.”
The work was Akhsa’s final project at Lasalle College of the Arts in Singapore, from which she recently graduated. Titled Feisty Girls, the project included the inaugural issue of Girls Gone Wild (“What the ‘F'”), along with a series of illustrations. When she first set about choosing a topic, Akhsa drew on her longstanding interest in politics, and her anger at the unfair treatment women encountered. “After doing some research, I realized many people either don’t understand what radical feminism is or have a negative perception of it. That’s when I first decided to create a zine introducing radical feminism.”
激进女性主义（Radical Feminism）是女性主义的其中一个派别，最基本的观点是：女性所受的压迫，是所有剥削形式中最深刻的。
这一本由 Claudia 手工制作的刺绣书，总共有十六页。内容以和缓而客观的语气，图文并茂地讲述了其历史、代表人物及名言，还有和女性主义相关的词语，比如父权制、姐妹之谊等等。
而这其实是 Claudia 在新加坡就读拉萨尔艺术学院的毕业作品。这个名为“Feisty Girls”（意为“勇敢好胜的姑娘”）的项目里，就包含了首期刺绣书《Girls Gone Wild》（主题为“What the ‘F’”）和一系列的插图创作。当初在选择项目主题时，Claudia 提到自己对政治一直都很感兴趣，从小到大，经常对女性面临到的不公平感到愤怒。“经过一连串的资料搜集后，我发现很多人要么是不理解何为‘激进女性主义’，要么就对它持有负面印象。所以我想通过这本书，告诉大家什么才是真正的‘激进女性主义’。”
“Since the zine is about radical feminism, why not go radical and out of the norm?”
By choosing such a unconventional form, Akhsa had to sacrifice a lot of time. It took her eight months altogether, most of her last year at college. She didn’t sleep well during that time, and her grades suffered. “Instead of making it easy to produce, I made it more delicate and difficult,” she says. “I chose embroidery because stitching has always been related to women and stereotypes of women.”
So far there’s only one “issue” of Girls Gone Wild, and there’s only a single copy in existence. Akhsa says issues two and three are still planned, but since she started work after graduation, she just doesn’t have enough time.
“既然主题是关于激进女性主义，何不把形式也做得激进一点？”
Claudia 选择如此非传统的制作方式，时间是必须牺牲的。她总共花费了八个月，占去她大学最后一年的多数时间，每天不能好好睡觉，还为此失去了一些学分。但在看到成果后，她说一切辛苦都值得了。“我不想让它太容易就被生产出来，所以就选了更为精细和困难的方式——刺绣。”她说，“并且自古以来，针线活就和女性相关，可以说它也象征着加诸在女性身上的刻板印象。”
目前《Girls Gone Wild》只有第一期，全世界也只有一本。（Claudia 向我们说，其实第二、三期已经在规划中，但毕业后踏入工作，时间实在不够啊！）
The other portion of the Feisty Girls project consists of a series of illustrations that are also reflections and questions about feminism. Akhsa first focused on girls who consider themselves feminists, giving them a survey about themselves and putting their responses and the emotions they revealed into bold, bright illustrations.
She always takes an original in approach in her art, and this time she drew illustrations of what she considers feminists for a new age onto old storybooks whose main characters are girls. It’s a graphic juxtaposition of past and present depictions of women.
“All feminists have gone through different experiences in their life that have made them who their are. I wanted to tell people how every feminist is different, and how different feminism is now from the past.”
另外在《Feisty Girls》项目里的插图创作，也是一系列关于女性主义的反思和诘问。Claudia 首先针对了那些自认为女性主义者的女孩们，进行一项关于自己的调查，并将她们的回答和从中表露出的多种情绪，呈现在这些大胆、鲜艳的插画里。
关于创作的手法，她一向独创新意。这一次，她把从自己视角出发，描绘出新一世代女性主义者的插图，画在同样以女孩为主角的老旧故事书上，将古今对于女性的不同刻画，有趣且直观地并列出来。
“每个女权主义者的人生经验都不一样，这使她们成为了今日的自己。我想让大家知道，每个女权主义者都不尽相同，而每个时期的女权主义，也都是不一样的。”
