10/15/2022 #85
Here & Now (art show), Katie Gee Salisbury (on Constance Wu), Art of Guantánamo Detainees, Viking Eggeling, Tarkovsky Quartet.
HERE AND NOW
Since I’m devoting most of my time this weekend (Oct. 15, 16) to participate in an open studio showing at the Carl Cherry Center for the Arts (part of a much larger, county-wide open studios event sponsored by Arts Habitat), I’m keeping the issue brief. The event is going well; I’ve met lots of interesting visitors and artists, and am glad to have a chance to meet folks and chat about art.
(MORE) ART
A few other pieces, available at the Carl Cherry Center:
LINKS
In 2020, Paloma Press published my chapbook, Marcelina, about the murder, in the 1930s, of Celine Navarro by Filipinos that she knew in her community near Stockton, CA. I also read excerpts from the chapbook in The Celine Archive, a film by director Celine Parreñas Shimizu. Navarro’s story haunted me, as did the issue of pressure on women to “represent” their ethnic minority community in prescribed ways, and to live up to a larger-than-life ideal of womanly perfection and behavior.
This issue of representation comes up again in actor Constance Wu’s experience of public shaming via social media. In “When We Eat Our Own,” Katie Gee Salisbury (in her Substack newsletter Half-Caste Woman) discusses Wu’s experience, which led her to contemplate suicide. The public scolding of a woman in the spotlight is not a new thing, although social media can horrifically magnify responses. Gee Salisbury considers her own perceptions of Wu, and also does a very good job of placing Wu’s experience in historical and social context by comparing it with that of Anna May Wong.
Constance Wu’s book, Making a Scene.
From Hyperallergic: An article by Jasmine Liu, “Guantánamo Detainees Ask Biden to Free Their Art,” reports on Guantánamo former and current detainees who are petitioning the president to end a restriction barring art from leaving the prison. For insight into what that art has meant for detainees read “Art from Guantanamo” in Postprint Magazine. Focusing on a 2017 exhibit at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the article shares images and poems, and also gives you a sense of how important the presence of the ocean became for the artists.
SOUNDINGS
Thanks to Jeff Treviño for pointing out this beautiful 1924 art film (with Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 as the soundtrack) by Swedish artist and filmmaker Viking Eggeling:
Trevino saw some correspondence between this film and my drawing below (I’m honored)!
Thanks to my partner Michael for turning me on to the Tarkovsky Quartet. Their improvisatory work complements the moody surrealism and haunting sense of displacement in director Tarkovsky’s films. See for yourself:
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More to come next weekend . . .