SEWER GODDESS: Yasmin Ramirez reads Martin Wong's poetry

PPOW Gallery

January 13, 2016

Yasmin Ramirez, Phd is co-curator of Martin Wong: Human Instamatic, a traveling retrospective organized by the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Yasmin has written a number of important essays on Wong's Loisiada series. Ramirez's friendship with the artist began in the early 1980s when they were part of the Lower East Side art scene; among her treasured mementos are Wong's paintbrushes which she keeps on her desk.

"SEWER GODDESS: Readings and Inspirations from the Martin Wong Poetry Scrolls" was presented in conjunction with PPOW Gallery's exhibition Martin Wong: Voices. Charlie Ahearn, Monica De La Torre, Carlo McCormick and Juliana Huxtable also read Wong's work.

"SEWER GODDESS: Readings and Inspirations from the Martin Wong Poetry Scrolls" began with Charlie Ahearn's 18 minute intimate video "Portrait of Martin Wong." The evening's readers then performed and brought to life the texture and vitality of Wong's visual and written language, reading Wong's own words from his poetry scrolls as well as new writing inspired by Wong and his artwork. The event's title, SEWER GODDESS, was inspired by the title of one of Wong's poems and the grit and liveliness that his writings embody.

Martin Wong’s relationship to writing began at a young age and he identified with important literary figures from different generations. Narrating the world of melancholia through his poetry scrolls and self-published books, he built his own language to portray his personal life as a flâneur in California and New York. Wong’s serial process of writing and re-writing created and expanded a linguistic space that he would later introduce into the surface of his paintings and ceramics.

https://www.visualaids.org/events/detail/sewer-goddess-baby-readings-and-inspirations-from-the-martin-wong-poetry-sc