Julia Desiree Merican
About
Julia Merican is a writer from Kuala Lumpur whose work centres around little trinkets of human experience: scraps of art, moving images, books, found objects, and the way sunlight falls onto brick walls. Her words have appeared on printed and handwritten pages (some public; some that will never see the light of day), unfurling linen scrolls, gallery walls, bare skin, and screens propped up on desks or cupped in your hands, like this.
During her MA, Julia interviewed Amina Cain about how writing sounds, reviewed Will Calver’s still life paintings, recorded a sonic essay on the inexpressible intimacy between strangers who share public space, playedย the fool for an exhibition pamphlet at Peckham Arches, and wrote the first two chapters of her (fingers crossed) first book of essays, provisionally entitled TRACING THE ACHE. From 2023 to 2024, she co-edited five issues of the RCA newspaper, The DODO, and was editor-in-chief for the second volume of the independent magazine, SEARCH. She also wrote about flames for the Malaysian collective MulaZine, olive branches for the second volume ofย Linseed Journal, and ritual and weaving in Yee I-Lann’s photomedia essays for C Magazine.
Julia is preoccupied with echoes, glimmers, nuances and inklings, and the delicate heft of almost imperceptible gestures. She thinks of these things as the ways in which absence makes itself present. If this interests you too, write her a letter, press your lips to it with a prayer, and lace it to an angel’s slipper as they stand poised for flight in some grassy field. She’ll find you.
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