Check out my found object art installation and hear my poetry performance 4/30/2021 9:00pmEDT/ 6:00pm PDT/ 3:00pmHST
The 24th annual United States of Asian America Festival kicks off with the opening reception to Sowing Agency, a visual arts exhibition.
The 24th annual United States of Asian America Festival (USAAF) kicks off with the opening reception to Sowing Agency, a visual arts exhibition. Join us for a night that features a showcase of literary readings, performances and presentations from artists involved in the exhibition and the festival at large.
Automatic live captioning will be available through Zoom.
Followed by an after party and social gathering (more details coming soon)!
OPENING NIGHT PERFORMANCES
Rebecca Maria Goldschmidt (@bigbigbigthings) has been developing a relationship with cotton as part of her research on Philippine weaving and will be "live-spinning" homegrown cotton. She would like to acknowledge her teachers from the @hawaiihandweavershui for sharing their spinning tools, seeds, and knowledge.
Pallavi Sharma collaborates with Shailaja Dixit (performer, musician, and activist) and Sonal Sanghvi (Classical Indian dancer) for an inter-disciplinary performance. A contrapuntal reading of the mythological story of "Raktbeej" the demon who was slain by goddess Durga, the performance draws attention to the contribution of women farmers, how they are exercising their agency to activate spaces and creating discourse on the current global ecological crisis since Chipko movement in1973.
Featuring a poetry reading by Frances Kai-Hwa Wang and Narinda Heng.
With previews of USAAF events, Liwanag 3 by SOMA Pilipinas, Scattered Home Voices by Vida Kuang, The Rooted Recipes Project, Never Again Now! by Jon Jang and Paul Flores.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Sowing Agency is inspired by the fight for environmental justice, activating our Asian Pacific Islander communities to engage in the issues of today’s climate crisis. With a number of artistic disciplines represented, the pieces featured in the show work to realign our relationships with the Earth through introspection and collective leadership. The exhibition’s broad coalition of community partners amplifies calls for increased action to challenge extractive industries, monocultures, corporate greed and colonization. Weaving local and global climate resistance into our cultural consciousness, Sowing Agency is a visual and poetic address to the grief and resiliency rooted in “seeding the future.”
This exhibition is presented in partnership with the Asian American Women Artists Association, Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center, SOMArts Cultural Center, Asian Art Museum along with community partners: Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour, South of Market Community Action Network, 18 Million Rising and Survival Media Agency.
Funded in part by San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco Grants for the Arts, California Arts Council and Zellerbach Family Foundation and proudly sponsored by Asian Art Museum and Rainbow Grocery.
ABOUT THE UNITED STATES OF ASIAN AMERICA FESTIVAL
This year's 24th annual United States of Asian American Festival (USAAF) presents over 20 different programs reflecting the artistic accomplishments and cultural diversity of San Francisco’s Pacific Islander and Asian American communities. USAAF showcases artists representing a diverse range of ethnic and cultural groups and aims to heighten the visibility of Asian and Pacific Islander (API) artists working in all disciplines - theater, music, dance, film, literature, visual arts, and more! Our goal is to nurture and empower these groups to be self-sufficient while providing the support they need to grow.
This year’s theme, Forging Our Futures - SoMa & Chinatown, explores how we are fostering recovery, resilience and regeneration in our communities, what place-making and community building looks like, past, present and future and how we're imagining and manifesting empowered future for ourselves and our communities.
USAAF 2021 is funded by the San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco Grants for the Arts, California Arts Council, Fleishhacker Foundation, Zellerbach Family Foundation, startsmall and National Endowment for the Arts.
New York Writers Workshop is an alliance of published authors and professional writers of fiction, non-fiction, journalism, poetry, plays and screenplays, who live and teach in New York City and a growing list of locales across the globe. NYWW is dedicated to offering professional guidance, resources and workshops that teach craft, foster creativity, and help writers achieve their goals.