Exhibitions

Sowing Agency

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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.”

Presented by the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center as part of the 24th annual United States of Asian America Festival: Forging Our Futures – SoMa & Chinatown.

As a curator for this show, I worked with Asian Women Artists Association, SOMARTS and multiple community groups to plan, develop and present this show physically, virtually, in 4 online events and through print.

Exhibitions

Friends with Benefits

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“Friends with Benefits” Exhibition by Bethanie Irons
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of PhD, Art Education.
Dates: August 20 – 24, 2018
Reception: Friday, August 24, 4:30-6:30pm

Exhibition Statement:
“Friends with Benefits” is an exhibition by University of Missouri student Bethanie Irons, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of PhD, Art Education. This exhibition focuses on the marriage between materiality and technology and examines how artists, teachers, and researchers can embrace the potentials of engagement with online art communities. Through this collaboration, thematic lines of inquiry and collections are shared, re-orienting the thought process of the viewer and establishing them as both a participant and maker of content and cooperative experiences.

Biography:
Bethanie Irons is an artist, educator, and curator. She earned her BFA in painting from the University of South Dakota and her MFA in painting from the University of Missouri. She is currently a PhD student in Art Education at the University of Missouri, with an emphasis in college teaching and teaching with technology. Bethanie has shown her work internationally, including exhibitions in Germany, United Kingdom, and Australia and has been featured in numerous print publications including New American Paintings and Friend of the Artist. Since 2015, she has curated the online-only gallery PLEAT.

Participating Artists:

All photos by Tony Irons @i_r_o_n_s_i_n_t_l

Exhibitions

Appendix </3 Install @ SF LGBT Center

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Readings

Fresh Off the Starships – Diasporic Asian Narratives

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Hmodern Hmong & Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) is celebrating their 40th Year Anniversary during Asian Heritage Month with Fresh Off the Starships – Diasporic Asian Narratives.

Location: San Francisco Public Library – Main, Koret Auditorium
Address: 100 Larkin St, San Francisco
When: Tuesday, May 15, 2018
Time: 5:00 PM – 7:30 PM

FREE TO THE PUBLIC

I’ll be headlining along with Bryan Thao Worra, Lauren Andrei, and Hauntie!

Exhibitions

</3

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~*~ 21st Annual United States of Asian America Festival: Regenerative Community ~*~

Presented by the API Cultural Center- San Francisco, SF LGBT Center, and the Queer Cultural Center:

Appendix Collective brings </3.

</3 embodies the unspoken heartache in relationships with family, home, lovers, work, neighborhoods and ancestral colonial trauma. The exhibition provides a space specific to the experiences of API womxn and GNC, queer and allied artists who pull from their experiences of resistance and healing to address, navigate and interrogate heteropatriarchal and homonormative forms of love, care and representation.

OPENING RECEPTION

May 10 @ 6:30-8:30pm

Features local QTPOC DJs, light refreshments, and live readings and happenings.

EXHIBITION DATES

May 1 – May 31, 2018

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

Erina C Alejo Karen Chin Mariela G. Montero Marlene Iyemura Shelley Kuang Diana Li Lisa Pradhan Dorothy Lee Mallika Roy and more.

ABOUT APPENDIX

Appendix is a growing collective of multi-ethnic API womxn and GNC, queer and allied artists whose practices in the Bay Area work to reclaim personal, intimate and diasporic narratives of intergenerational memory, healing, and trauma. Formed in 2016, through an eponymous exhibition at the Pacific Heritage Museum, Appendix artists draw from a wide variety of 2d, 3d, experimental, and digital media and conceptual frameworks, such as Asian Futurism, Fluxus, and autoethnographic modalities. Folx in the collective blend together art, education, and organizing, with the goal of creating cultural change through tender moments of healing. In community, Appendix members work with Kearny Street Workshop organizing APAture, show and learn from the Asian American Women Artists Association, produce community art with the Asian Art Museum, and organize SoMapagmahal an Alternative Exposure-funded youth photography mxntorship program at Galing Bata.

IG @appendixcollective

COMMUNITY PARTNERS

Asian American Women Artists Association

API Wellness Center

BFF.fm- Best Frequencies Forever

Kearny Street Workshop

Project Voice

FEELS Issue 05: Wanderlust Launch

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Come celebrate the official launch of Feels’ fifth issue, Wanderlust!

Bring your friends, grab a treat & a copy of the issue, and chat with creators Hannah Browne & Sarah Vardy and some of our lovely contributors.

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We’re very excited to be launching this issue at Antikka – Cafe & Records! A lovely new shop at Queen & Ossington.

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Back issues will also be available in limited quantities, as well as our ‘Feels’ enamel pins.

** Sales table for FEELS will be cash only **

Issue 05: Wanderlust features:

Aaron Manczyk, Frank Turner, Theo Wong, Maia Boakye, Chloe Hill, Emily Hines, Megan Joyce, Miguel Garcia, Holly Edwards, Amelia Best, EA Douglas, Ryan Stewart, Grace Batista, Rebekah Maurice, Rebecca Leach, Lindsay Rosset, Sophie Berg, Lisa Pradhan, Jared Durelle, Colleen Conroy, Christopher Manousos, Spencer Folkins, Anu Randhawa, Anjie Beltran, Julia Hawthornthwiate, Amanda Caswell, Jean-Phillipe Allamby, Jason Patrick Anderson, Erin Pehlivan, Jessica Felicity Kasiama, D Carey, The Wanderly + many anonymous contributors.

Readings • Work

Chhori: Mummy Yo Mhyah – Holding on for Dear Life

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This photo was taken at a performance of Chhori at Dear Mother at San Pablo Gallery in March 2018. Actors seen are Diana Li (left), and Erina Alejo (right).

Chhori: Mummy Yo Mhyah – Holding on for Dear Life, 2018

When my mother moved to America she brought two suitcases filled with shoes, clothes, sarees, and jewelry. Objects not included: How to Raise an American Daughter. Chhori: Mummy Yo Mhyah – Holding on for Dear Life is a process zine modeled after the language and conception typified in Yoko Ono’s conceptual art book Grapefruit. By replicating the Fluxus attitude and language of scores and instructions, Chhori, explores the magical realism of hyphen American mother-daughter relationships with humor. It asks — in the disorientation of diaspora, what do we pass down to our children? By stripping the complicated, transnational identity construction of diaspora to the lowest common denominator of most basic interactions, Chhori documents how the liminal world of gestures replicates larger contemporary Nepalese matrilineal of care and renegotiations of hegemonic cultural scripts.

This zine explores themes of Queerness, Sexuality, Arranged Marriage, Formation of Community, Destruction of Community, Abstinence, Dating, Womanhood, Hospitality, Respectability politics, Consumerism, Guilt and nonverbal communication. Additionally, this zine serves as a manual, documenting what’s already been lived through while describing the potential for time travel, space travel, and the exploration of the perhaps, leaving room for something wild to occur.

PERFORMANCES

2018 Dear Mother, San Pablo Gallery, San Pablo, CA

EXHIBITIONS

2018 Dear Mother, San Pablo Gallery, San Pablo, CA

Exhibitions

Dear Mother

2018-03-072018-05-03lisapradhanLeave a Comment

Dear Mother

Conversations between Mothers, Daughters, Grandmothers, and Aunties

Dear Mother explores conversations between mothers, daughters, grandmothers, and aunties. With a strong political and generational backdrop, these legends are passed down through time, guided by strong womxn to create and empower strong womxn. Through film, literature, and visuals, these artists illustrate the pain in beauty and the beauty in pain. As such, we expand our vision of transnational hope, strength, and ambition.

This exhibition runs from March 10, 2018 to April 15, 2018.

Location: San Pablo Art Gallery, 13831 San Pablo Ave., Maple Hall, Bldg 4, San Pablo, CA 94806

Gallery Hours: Saturday and Sundays, 12-4PM

Artists: Aishwarya, Vardhana, Denali Gillaspie, Diana Li, EK, Elizabeth Tannie Lewin, Erina C. Alejo, Evelyn Obamos, Grace Jahng Lee, Ji Jung Lim, Jimizee, Karen Chew, Karen Nagano, Lena Shey, Lisa Pradhan, Melinda Luisa de Jesús, Narinda Heng, Natasha Singh, Priscilla Otani, Rachel Marchelo, Romina Saha, Sena Kwon, Sharryn Park, Tina Kashiwagi, Taiwanese Noodles, and Yoojin Seol.

Curated by: Katie Quan and Midori Kimata

Readings

poetry in a living room (autumn 2017 edition)

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🌗 Join us for an evening of poetry, spoken word, and other art forms as we welcome the midst of autumn. 🌗

FEATURING:
— Spike Dougherty
— Zach Goldberg
— Lisa Pradhan
— Maya Sisneros

⭐ SPIKE DOUGHERTY is a young k9 poet & collaborator living in Oakland. Find work at claydoughworks.tumblr.com. Email projects to spikedougherty@gmail.com. Pick up multimedia collaboration Fields, Rituals & Distance on Oct 21st.

⭐ ZACH GOLDBERG is a North Carolina-born writer, performer, and educator. A student of the Page Meets Stage movement, his work navigates issues of family, identity, and history. Zach’s manuscript “XV” was a finalist for the 2017 Bird’s Thumb chapbook prize and is forthcoming in one formor another. Catch him in in Oakland, where he lives with a motley crew of 13 adults and 2 toddlers, or San Francsico, where he works as a theatre arts administrator.

⭐ LISA PRADHAN is a Nepalese-American writer and multimedia artist. Lisa’s poetry explores themes of nostalgia, heartbreak and loss, delving into the anxieties and tensions underpinning moments of pause in life. Recently, Lisa collaborated with the Buddhist Peace Fellowship for its project on Asian-American Buddhists and has previously written and spoken at Smith College about Nepalese diasporic studies. Currently, Lisa is involved with KSW’s APAture Performance Art General Planning Committee and the API artist collective, Appendix.

⭐ MAYA SISNEROS is an Oakland-based writer whose poetry and fiction chronicle identity, alienation, and lines of f/light. Maya has performed for Quiet Lightning and Get Lit, and her non-existent chapbook’s been in the making since for-e-ver.

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ABOUT THE LIVING ROOM:

PRESENT TENSE (previously known as “ABLESEA”) is a living room art/community space located on the border of Oakland and Berkeley. Established in the fall of 2016, the space has featured local Bay Area artists in exhibitions related to the topics of ‘Resistence’ and ‘Progress’.

ACCESSBILITY
The apartment is located on the third floor of a complex. Unfortunately, there is no elevator in this complex 🙁 This building admittedly has very poor accessibility.

5/30	6 PM	San Francisco, CA	SF LGBT Center	</3 Closing Reception
6/3	2 PM	Oakland, CA	Wolfman Books	Signs Point to Yes
6/18	9 AM	Detroit, MI	The Alley Project	Without a Doubt
6/18	7 PM	Pittsburgh, PA	Phosphor Project Space	Magic 8 Ball: A Performance by Lisa Pradhan
6/19	8 PM	Pittsburgh, PA	Trampire State Building	Decidedly So