well born: Seeking Truth Beyond the Western Lexicon
a two-part art and performance salon
Friday August 30th, 2019 7pm-10pm | Saturday August 31st, 2019 6pm-9pm
A two-part art, performance and literary salon featuring works by Yunuen Rhi, Elizabeth T. Vazquez, Silvi Naçi, Vinhay Keo, Zen Cohen, Sterling Hedges, Ana Estela, and a discussion with Kandis Williams in conjunction with CASSANDRA Press. Over the course of two evenings, artists Kandis Williams, Yunuen Rhi and Elizabeth T. Vazquez present a salon of creative discourse from institutionally othered perspectives using art, film, writing, and performance to reframe quests for knowledge through Black, Brown, Immigrant, and Queer narratives. Friday night will start the event with performances and readings outside in the courtyard. Artist, writer and publisher Kandis Williams will lead a discussion in conjunction with CASSANDRA Press at the Hansell Gallery where multimedia works will also be exhibited. Beverages, snacks, and opportunities to mingle will be provided at the reception outside the gallery space. On Saturday, all video works (including performance documentations from the previous night) will be showcased in the auditorium throughout the evening.
Participant bios:
Yunuen Rhi is a two-spirit martial and performance artist, anthropologist, and healer with roots in Mexico, the United States, and Korea. They have cultivated theirself in western, eastern, native medicine pathways and practices as a way to deepen the understanding of “selves.” Rhi’s performance work incorporates ritual and psychomagic elements. Their performance interests lie in social practice as a way to build bridges between performance and the communities with which they interact. @yunuen_rhi // isuini.com
Elizabeth T. Vazquez is a first-generation, Mexican-American artist, writer and filmmaker from Los Angeles. She received her B.A. in Film at the Arts University of Bournemouth and is currently a Screenwriting Fellow at the American Film Institute. Additionally, she has been attending the Philosophical Research Society since 2017. Her work has been shown all over the world and often incorporates deconstructions of logic through off-beat relationships between text and image. @stripmalldreams // etvazquez.com
Kandis Williams is an artist, writer, editor, and publisher living and working in Los Angeles and Berlin. She received her BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art, New York and has had recent solo shows in New York, Los Angeles, Baltimore and Vienna. She has an active curatorial and writing practice, and runs CASSANDRA Press with artist Taylor Doran. Her work often explores contemporary critical theory including, but not limited to, racial-nationalism, authority and eroticism. She is also a visiting faculty member at CalArts. Kandis is represented by Night Gallery in Los Angeles.For the inaugural Well Born event, Kandis presented works by her students: Sterling Hedges, Vinhay Keo & Silvi Naçi. @kandis_williams @cassandra_press // cassandrapress.org
Silvi Naçi (b.1987, Albania) is an art worker and educator working between Albania and Los Angeles. They work with performance, video, sculpture, photography, text, and installation. Their interest lies in the subtle and violent ways decolonization and migration affects and reshapes a people, language, gender identity as well as social and cultural dynamics. Naçi holds a dual BFA in Fine Arts and Graphic Design from Suffolk University (2011), and an MFA in Photography + Media from California Institute of the Arts (2019). Naçi co-founded Radical Sense, a feminist reading group in Tirana, Albania, with Leah Whitman-Salkin and Doruntina Vinca. The group has taken form as performance in the Romania Bienniel (2019), presented at Montez Pres Radio, NY (2020), and is in the process of publishing two volumes of feminist translated texts into Albanian for the very first time. They work closely with a group of volunteers translating and making texts available to communities in Albania who do not speak English nor have access to feminist texts. The group meets weekly at 28 November, a bookshop and gathering space for readings and organizing. With Arts in a Changing America, they created opportunities for artists and community leaders, bringing unheard leadership voices to the forefront of social discourse, arts production, and community change. Naçi teaches at the Photo Conservatory at NYFA, Burbank, sometimes writes for East of Borneo, and other independent publications. @silvi.naci // silverprojects.co
Vinhay Keo is originally from Battambang, Cambodia. He received his BFA from Kentucky College of Art + Design at Spalding University and is currently an MFA candidate at the California Institute of the Arts. As an interdisciplinary visual artist, his work examines intersectional identities as an immigrant, a Cambodian-American, a brown-body, and a queer person. His practice unpacks the nuances of trauma in a historical and contemporary context in order to address the marginalization of minorities. @vinhaykeo // vinhaykeo.com
Sterling Hedges was born in Pasadena, CA and lives and works in Los Angeles. They/them hold a BA in Art History from the University of Arizona and are currently an MFA candidate for Art & Technology at the California Institute of Arts. @sterlinghedges // cargocollective.com/sterli_ng
Zen Cohen is a time-based media artist working with video, sound, digital photography, installation and performance. She received her MFA in Art Studio at the University of California at Davis and her BFA in Media Art from the California College of the Arts in Oakland, CA. Her work has been exhibited throughout the San Francisco Bay Area at the deYoung Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SFMOMA, SOMarts, The Lab, The Montalvo Center, and nationally at ARTSpace New Haven in CT, Vanity Projects in NY, Public Space One in Iowa City, and internationally at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City and Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno in the Canary Islands. Her photographs have been published in Hyperallergic, Art Practical and Southern Illinois University Press. In 2013, she received an Individual Artist Commission Grant in Media Arts from the San Francisco Arts Commission. Additionally, she curated monthly moving image programs and group exhibits at artist run spaces. Her production experiences include working as a video editor for Al Jazeera America and owning a media production studio in San Francisco, which produced short documentaries, music videos, photo shoots and graphic design for artists and organizations. She moved to Iowa City in 2018 and is currently an Assistant Professor of Media Art and Film Studies at Coe College. @zen_cohen // zencohenprojects.com
Ana Estela is a writer born and raised in South Los Angeles to Salvadoran immigrants. She leads writing workshops and meditations at Mostly Angeles, a metaphysical shop based in L.A. Her work at the shop and in her writing aims to hold space for those needing to find their place. @wondrousninfa
A two-part art, performance and literary salon featuring works by Yunuen Rhi, Elizabeth T. Vazquez, Silvi Naçi, Vinhay Keo, Zen Cohen, Sterling Hedges, Ana Estela, and a discussion with Kandis Williams in conjunction with CASSANDRA Press. Over the course of two evenings, artists Kandis Williams, Yunuen Rhi and Elizabeth T. Vazquez present a salon of creative discourse from institutionally othered perspectives using art, film, writing, and performance to reframe quests for knowledge through Black, Brown, Immigrant, and Queer narratives. Friday night will start the event with performances and readings outside in the courtyard. Artist, writer and publisher Kandis Williams will lead a discussion in conjunction with CASSANDRA Press at the Hansell Gallery where multimedia works will also be exhibited. Beverages, snacks, and opportunities to mingle will be provided at the reception outside the gallery space. On Saturday, all video works (including performance documentations from the previous night) will be showcased in the auditorium throughout the evening.
Participant bios:
Yunuen Rhi is a two-spirit martial and performance artist, anthropologist, and healer with roots in Mexico, the United States, and Korea. They have cultivated theirself in western, eastern, native medicine pathways and practices as a way to deepen the understanding of “selves.” Rhi’s performance work incorporates ritual and psychomagic elements. Their performance interests lie in social practice as a way to build bridges between performance and the communities with which they interact. @yunuen_rhi // isuini.com
Elizabeth T. Vazquez is a first-generation, Mexican-American artist, writer and filmmaker from Los Angeles. She received her B.A. in Film at the Arts University of Bournemouth and is currently a Screenwriting Fellow at the American Film Institute. Additionally, she has been attending the Philosophical Research Society since 2017. Her work has been shown all over the world and often incorporates deconstructions of logic through off-beat relationships between text and image. @stripmalldreams // etvazquez.com
Kandis Williams is an artist, writer, editor, and publisher living and working in Los Angeles and Berlin. She received her BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art, New York and has had recent solo shows in New York, Los Angeles, Baltimore and Vienna. She has an active curatorial and writing practice, and runs CASSANDRA Press with artist Taylor Doran. Her work often explores contemporary critical theory including, but not limited to, racial-nationalism, authority and eroticism. She is also a visiting faculty member at CalArts. Kandis is represented by Night Gallery in Los Angeles.For the inaugural Well Born event, Kandis presented works by her students: Sterling Hedges, Vinhay Keo & Silvi Naçi. @kandis_williams @cassandra_press // cassandrapress.org
Silvi Naçi (b.1987, Albania) is an art worker and educator working between Albania and Los Angeles. They work with performance, video, sculpture, photography, text, and installation. Their interest lies in the subtle and violent ways decolonization and migration affects and reshapes a people, language, gender identity as well as social and cultural dynamics. Naçi holds a dual BFA in Fine Arts and Graphic Design from Suffolk University (2011), and an MFA in Photography + Media from California Institute of the Arts (2019). Naçi co-founded Radical Sense, a feminist reading group in Tirana, Albania, with Leah Whitman-Salkin and Doruntina Vinca. The group has taken form as performance in the Romania Bienniel (2019), presented at Montez Pres Radio, NY (2020), and is in the process of publishing two volumes of feminist translated texts into Albanian for the very first time. They work closely with a group of volunteers translating and making texts available to communities in Albania who do not speak English nor have access to feminist texts. The group meets weekly at 28 November, a bookshop and gathering space for readings and organizing. With Arts in a Changing America, they created opportunities for artists and community leaders, bringing unheard leadership voices to the forefront of social discourse, arts production, and community change. Naçi teaches at the Photo Conservatory at NYFA, Burbank, sometimes writes for East of Borneo, and other independent publications. @silvi.naci // silverprojects.co
Vinhay Keo is originally from Battambang, Cambodia. He received his BFA from Kentucky College of Art + Design at Spalding University and is currently an MFA candidate at the California Institute of the Arts. As an interdisciplinary visual artist, his work examines intersectional identities as an immigrant, a Cambodian-American, a brown-body, and a queer person. His practice unpacks the nuances of trauma in a historical and contemporary context in order to address the marginalization of minorities. @vinhaykeo // vinhaykeo.com
Sterling Hedges was born in Pasadena, CA and lives and works in Los Angeles. They/them hold a BA in Art History from the University of Arizona and are currently an MFA candidate for Art & Technology at the California Institute of Arts. @sterlinghedges // cargocollective.com/sterli_ng
Zen Cohen is a time-based media artist working with video, sound, digital photography, installation and performance. She received her MFA in Art Studio at the University of California at Davis and her BFA in Media Art from the California College of the Arts in Oakland, CA. Her work has been exhibited throughout the San Francisco Bay Area at the deYoung Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SFMOMA, SOMarts, The Lab, The Montalvo Center, and nationally at ARTSpace New Haven in CT, Vanity Projects in NY, Public Space One in Iowa City, and internationally at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City and Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno in the Canary Islands. Her photographs have been published in Hyperallergic, Art Practical and Southern Illinois University Press. In 2013, she received an Individual Artist Commission Grant in Media Arts from the San Francisco Arts Commission. Additionally, she curated monthly moving image programs and group exhibits at artist run spaces. Her production experiences include working as a video editor for Al Jazeera America and owning a media production studio in San Francisco, which produced short documentaries, music videos, photo shoots and graphic design for artists and organizations. She moved to Iowa City in 2018 and is currently an Assistant Professor of Media Art and Film Studies at Coe College. @zen_cohen // zencohenprojects.com
Ana Estela is a writer born and raised in South Los Angeles to Salvadoran immigrants. She leads writing workshops and meditations at Mostly Angeles, a metaphysical shop based in L.A. Her work at the shop and in her writing aims to hold space for those needing to find their place. @wondrousninfa
image credit: Elizabeth T. Vazquez
