LOS ANGELES 2020 | LOS ANGELES 2021 | ITALY 2021 | BERLIN 2021
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About Suturo

suturo.com is a new dynamic and interactive website that reacts uniquely to each visitor as they navigate the site, allowing for exploration that fosters new formal and conceptual perspectives between the art, the poems, and the viewers.

Project Team
Steven Wolkoff
Alexandra Wiesenfeld
Eugene Ahn

Website
VAMA Creative

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Artists and Poems: Los Angeles 2021

All those men were there inside, 
when she came in totally naked. 
They had been drinking: they began to spit. 
Newly come from the river, she knew nothing. 
She was a mermaid who had lost her way. 
The insults flowed down her gleaming flesh. 
Obscenities drowned her golden breasts. 
Not knowing tears, she did not weep tears. 
Not knowing clothes, she did not have clothes. 
They blackened her with burnt corks and cigarette stubs, 
and rolled around laughing on the tavern floor. 
She did not speak because she had no speech. 
Her eyes were the colour of distant love, 
her twin arms were made of white topaz. 
Her lips moved, silent, in a coral light, 
and suddenly she went out by that door. 
Entering the river she was cleaned, 
shining like a white stone in the rain, 
and without looking back she swam again 
swam towards emptiness, swam towards death.

Artwork
Mermaid, Green, Lounging 2020
12 x 35 inches
polyurethane foam, coated with UreCoat, pigment, sand and wax
Nancy Evans @artblather
photo by Paula Goldman

Poem
Fable Of The Mermaid And The Drunks 1958
Estravagario
Pablo Neruda

Explore more in Artists and Poems: Los Angeles 2021

Artists and Poems: Los Angeles 2021

Curated by members of the Durden and Ray curatorial collective

Exhibition Team
Steven Wolkoff
Alexandra Wiesenfeld
Eugene Ahn

Artists
Nicole Belle, Gary Brewer, Gul Cagin, Joe Davidson, Mariquita “Micki” Davis, Danny Angel Escalante, Nancy Evans, Rebecca Farr, Leslie Foster, Christine Frerichs, Gajin Fujita, Iva Gueorguieva, Hasef, Mike Hazel, Regina Herod, Kiel Johnson, Aline Mare, Stephanie Mercado, Sandeep Mukherjee, Hung Viet Nguyen, Elizabeth Preger, Max Presneill, Bruce Richards, Colin Roberts, Karrie Ross, Orly Ruaimi, Debra Scacco, Sonja Schenk, Greg Schenk, Coleen Sterritt, Devon Tsuno, Rodrigo Valenzuela, Marnie Weber, Lisa Wedgeworth, Liat Yossifor, HK Zamani

About Artists and Poems: Los Angeles 2021

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Curatorial statement

Early in the pandemic, several facebook friends posted that they were looking for poems to read at a funeral. Given the number of deaths around the world, this request was probably too common.

We often turn to poetry to mark big occasions, to help give these moments more meaning, to better convey the sentiments we feel but cannot express, or to help make sense of things we don’t fully understand.

In the middle of this pandemic, and all the other crises running alongside it, when so many moments are limited to words shared at a social distance, the need for poetry seems much greater.

In Artists and Poems we are inviting artists to pair their work with a poem that has meaning for them given the current state of their world. The pair of works – poem and visual art – are presented together.

Artists and Poems creates a platform for contemplation, responding to the turmoil of recent events through a lens of art and poetry. The juxtaposition of visual art and verse provides insight into both the artists’ work and the poems they have chosen.

The first show was a survey of Los Angeles artists in the months leading up to the 2020 presidential election. The second show, Artists and Poems: Los Angeles 2021, covers the period from Election Day until Inauguration Day. Future shows will explore other cities and other curatorial frameworks, and will include additional curators.

--- Steven Wolkoff, February 2021