Art and Poetry: Collaborations with Genny Lim and Nellie Wong

AAWAA's 20th Anniversary Show, SOMArts, San Francisco, September 2009

Cynthia Tom has been encouraing visual/verbal collaborations between member artists and writers, so I asked Genny Lim and Nellie Wong to work with me to create pieces for this show.

My artist statement: One or two lifetimes ago, when I was an art director working on major corporate accounts, I used to sit around in a glossy office in the Embarcadero Center tossing ideas around with my copywriter. Sometimes he thought of a headline and I came up with a visual; sometimes it was the other way around.  Brainstorming and teamwork were my favorite parts of the job. It was so much fun I could almost forget that we were selling people products they didn't need.

What an honor to be collaborating today with two gifted poets of conscience: Genny Lim and Nellie Wong. We are selling nothing—except the notion that it is vitally important to keep seeing and feeling and thinking.

A closet photographer with a good eye and a shaky hand can find redemption of sorts in digital photography. Cropping and adjusting images is no substitute for technical expertise, but I love to carry my point-and-shoot and squeeze off random shots on my daily walks. And I am lucky enough to have a partner that actually sees when I say, “Lookit, lookit!”

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Aung San Suu Kyi,  2009. 14" x 20". Mixed media-poem by Genny Lim, etching by Shizue Seigel, paper, thread, nails on foamcore. 

Genny Lim's poem, “Aung San Suu Kyi,” captures both the beauty and tragedy of the eternal struggle for justice.  Suu Kyi endures with a clear-eyed serenity that gives her nation—indeed the world—hope. The image of the lady who “disappears behind the clouds” reminded me of my etching “The Moon Remembers.” I love the dark, yet luminous quality of mezzotints. My moon was originally a masculine moon with a Roman nose in a European landscape; now it peeks from behind Genny’s verbal Asian imagery, suspended by thin red threads. Is it still the man in the moon or the rabbit they see in Japan? The same moon hangs in everyone's sky, by turns pensive and accusatory, yearning and yet complete, imbued with meaning as personal as a night secret and as universal as the turning of the earth.

AUNG SAN SUU KYI

The Lady in the house

disappears like the moon behind clouds

No one has seen her in many years

except in photographs or dreams

Who knows if she’s real anymore or just a ghost?

Like all the ones vanished along the Irrawaddy?

The sad-eyed Lady with the flower in her hair

whose name, Suu Kyi, is whispered

on the lips of school children

now floating on the river like dropped petals

The Lady of the house who drifts through

the fetid rice crops washed up for the gods

prays among the wounded 

who wear the clothes of the dead 

She digs in the mud of imperfection

and weeps among graves like Llorona

Daughter of Aung San, the Liberator

who sleeps inside the cage of her captors’ fears

She waits for the long night to end so that morning

may open the petals of forgiveness in her heart

May 9, 2008

by Genny Lim

poem@2008 by Genny Lim/mixed media piece&etching ©2009 by Shizue Seigel

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Making Music, 2009. 8" x 10". Photograph with poem by Nellie Wong, visual by Shizue Seigel.

Nellie's poem “Making Music” reminded me of a window on Clement Street. The family that lives behind it blocks the glances of the curious by pasting up cheap frosted vinyl—bamboo to remind them of home and of a softer landscape than the stucco, concrete and parking meters outside. I snuck a peek inside one evening. I glimpsed a barely furnished room, a Formica dining table, a young mother serving soup.

MAKING MUSIC

The wind smacks its lips against the window pane

Cold air seeps through the cracks

Fingers dance across the keyboard

As tires screech on the street in early spring

Whoosh whoosh whoooosh!

Cries the wind colliding

Against the fertile plains of your heart

Your mouth salivates at oil sizzling in the wok,

Garlic, baby dragons, snap and crackle in heat

Whistling snakes through the walls,

Footsteps tap-dance above your head.

Your consciousness hangs

Out to dry on the laundry line

Snap snap whoosh whoosh snap whoosh snap

Then rumba to Begin the Beguine in La Habana

Songs of exile, songs of home echo

Through clusters of villages

Millions of migrants return from Beijing and Shanghai

To find work, scour the countryside for hope

Human voices rise from the street outside your window

The heater hesitates, silences the stardust hiding

In the crescent of a white moon

Now your fingers rest

Now your fingers listen

In the galaxy of reverie

Nellie Wong

poem © 2009 Nellie Wong/photo © 2009 Shizue Seigel

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Rivulets into Rivers” called to mind a favorite shot of Ocean Beach, early on a grey morning, the receding tide leaving behind hard-packed sand marked only the tracks of the beach patrol and a few early risers “revolving in joy away from machines.” The westerly wind blows in three-week old soot from China and the sea lions are returning to Seal Rocks.

Rivulets to Rivers

Rivulets into rivers, memories noisy

As the wind blowing through the garden

Calling me, soft and tender as a newborn

Hail the storms, the sand dunes, the torrents

Evolving and shaping love,

Love uncontained

Somnambulant, when energy sleeps, when it rises

Tall as the pyramids of Teotihuacan

Eve’s existence debated

In the distillery of the galaxy

Nimbus clouds, those that form dragons or tadpoles

Burrowing furiously through the mind as

Education, even research or physical contact,

Intimacy, the smile of a girl showing her first tooth

Sleekness of young greyhounds on Chenery Street

Summer in the city as I round the corner from Diamond

Ever present this day in my neighborhood Glen Park

Revolving in joy away from machines

                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Nellie Wong

June 6, 2009

Poem ©2009 Nellie Wong/photo ©2009  Shizue Seigel

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“I Also Sing of Myself.” Sing through the night, Nellie! Halfway ’round the world in Bali, I greet the dawn in silence from the white tile verandah of Genny Lim’s Saraswati Retreat. But in my heart I sing to Ganesha and Rama and Krishna, I sing of the wheeling stars and the gardener who loves his trees by cutting off their limbs, just so.

I Also Sing of Myself

I celebrate myself, I sing        

            Walt Whitman

I sing deep into the night

After midnight I awake a hummingbird,

Sometimes a toucan or a nightingale.

The skies enter my ears.

The moon hides behind the curtain

Of a star-strewn sky.

The voice.  I cannot command it.

I cannot censor it.

I sing, sing of myself

The self is a thief,

A reveler, a student,

A jester, a fly, a dancer of tango.

Voices of the self gather

In fields of sunflowers.

My selves merge, then split

As atoms.

Particles of silver adorn

My body.

Slivers of light shower

The universe of aloneness,

The gratitude of breath.

Nellie Wong

poem © 2009 Nellie Wong/photo ©2009 Shizue Seigel

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“Consumed.” Will somebody tell me who started the fad for stuffed animals stuck on workmen's trucks? Jammed under roof racks, lashed to radiator grills, Tweeties and Donald Ducks turn dingy, then grimy, then moldy. Like the hearts of men too tough to ask for a hug? Too cool to show that their hearts are quietly bleeding?

Consumed

Long Island, New York

Wal-Mart employee

34 years old, an African American man

A temporary worker

Stampeded to death at 5:00 A.M.

By 200 shoppers on Black

Friday, day after Thanksgiving.

Who’s to blame?

Wal-Mart’s lack of security?

Many waiting all night

For doors to open

At the crack of dawn?

Wal-Mart’s statement

Through unseen suits

Sends their prayers

Who’s to blame?

The economic crisis?

People whose homes are

being foreclosed?

People who don’t know

 if their next paycheck

may be the last?

People in frenzy to buy

That flat-screen TV

That Nintendo game

That I-Pod, that Blackberry

That barbeque that will cook for hundreds

That Northface jacket

That rocking horse

That Armani knock-off

That pair of Nikes priced

At inflated dollars?

Who’s to blame?

Who’s to blame?

Who’s to blame?

The Dow down 680 points

The official U.S. in recession

The terrorists in Mumbai

The stores opening up at 5:00 AM

Thanksgiving?

Nellie Wong

                                                                                   

Poem ©2009 Nellie Wong/photo ©2009  Shizue Seigel

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“Breakfast  Lunch  Dinner” sings of green chopsticks and pho and the spirit of the food goddess glistening through the grease on a cheap plastic platter. We wolf down chow fun with green pepper and black beans and stare out of the hard fluorescent light into the neon stream of traffic at closing time on a Saturday night. 

BREAKFAST   LUNCH   DINNER

Breakfast

The night before, I place the turkey carcass

in the huge pot, turn the water to boiling

I fill a rice bowl with raw rice,

sprinkle a pinch of salt and dip two teaspoons of

vegetable oil to prepare the rice

Two hours later, the turkey meat falls

off the bones,

the work of the carcass completed

Next I pour the rice into the pot, let it

boil, then simmer

Now for breakfast, I ladle faw gai jook

into a bowl impressed with the shape

of kernels of rice,

with chopped scallion and shreds of turkey meat

Before I eat, I inhale the fragrance

of love, then begin to swallow

the faw gai jook

as if it’s my last meal

Lunch

The waitress places a square white plate

before me.  I hold my green chopsticks, ready.

My eyes take in a pyramid

of green papaya, match-stick thin,

with slivered carrots in a dressing

of lime juice, fish sauce and bird’s eye pepper

Coins of daikon and carrot decorate

the four corners of the plate,

white and orange moons convening the four seasons

Picking up the soy-sauce dish of chopped peanuts,

I shower the salad, my eyes flirting

with the next customer’s bowl of pho

Intoxicated now with the deep-fried onion strips,

mint and basil leaves crowning my lunch,

I guide the salad into my mouth.

Dinner

Bah Bah steams the gee ngook beng

topped with hom ngui

Salted fish preserved for the soul

Ma tosses slices of fuzzy squash

into the wok as they dance in concert

with garlic and onion

Bowls of steamed eggs and ow fu

grace the table.  And, yes, the bowl of soup

with sliced lotus root, a knob of ginger root

and fresh green onions floating on top.

The soup, translucent and fragrant, steaming,

heralds the sit-down dinner

the family has once a week

on our Wednesday night off

from six days of work at The Great China Restaurant

Nellie Wong

Poem ©2009 Nellie Wong/photo ©2009  Shizue Seigel

Women's Caucus for Art CONTROL Show, SOMArts, Aug. 6-29, 2009

“Veils” digital print, 11”x14” in 16”x20” frame, 2009

Statement: Are we seen for ourselves or how we are packaged? Dare we walk around with naked faces and look people in the eye? Is the feminine so powerful it must be controlled, commodified, dissected, denied? 

“SRO” digital print, 11”x14” in 16”x20” frame, 2009

Statement: Single room occupancy hotel (SRO).  Rooms by the day, week, month. Threadbare carpet, long halls, thin walls, a bed, a chair, a sink. A chain across the door. I am in control.

These two works were exhibited in the CONTROL Show presented by the WCA’s South Bay and Peninsula chapters at SOMArts in San Francisco Aug. 6-29.  The show was juried by Guerilla Girls West and curated by Karen Gutfreund. See the Control Exhibition's Facebook site. Photos of 88 of the artworks is at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=124262&id=117770210798.

I was impressed by the variety, quality and passion of the work, and by the formidable intelligence and organizational skills of Karen Gutfreund, who worked so hard to make it all happen. I was inspired to join the WCA’s Northern California chapter, which meets in San Francisco and the East Bay.


Much of my work in the 80s had to do with sexism and its effects on both genders. But in the past couple of decades, we as a society seem to have lost interest in reclaiming our full power as women. I tried to raise my children in a non-sexist household, but my daughters love their cosmetics and shoes, and don't seem to realize that just because their husbands do the dishes doesn't mean the battle is won.

“Veils” and “SRO” are both experiments in combining paintings with found objects. The metal object in “SRO” is a brand-new, never used crampon (ice-climbing spikes for mountain climbers), which I found for a dollar at a sidewalk sale in the Haight. Esther, who runs the sale, is pretty remarkable in her own right.

Eth-Noh-Tec Salon! You're On!

I had originally been invited to present art and poetry in February, but Cynthia Tom asked me to move to March, International Women's Month, and present with Cynthia and Nancy Hom as part of  a project of the Asian American Artists’ Association. AAWAA’s “A Place of Her Own” invites women to consider “If I had a place of my own, what would it be?”

For me, it's less a place than a state of mind, one that I've fought for my whole life, and which, most days, I achieve. Where is my place? Here. Now. observing the world and responding to it creatively. There's nothing else I'd rather do. The creative act, no matter what kind, is where i feel freest, yet most connected. Once you have spent time with the muse, it's hard to pull yourself away, Because you're not really creating the work, you're a vehicle trying to express some sort of universal law or rhythm. 

The act of creation, or co-creation with the muse, is so seductive, i don't even like to take the time to get the work out there. I'd rather be creating something new than submitting, framing, networking, proposal-writing, and all the other stuff that scares me to death.

So that is my current challenge. I'm gaining confidence about my work, but I'm not so confident that others appreciate it. So I'm making an effort to put the work out there, to form relationships and collaborations with other artist, to use calls for submissions as food for thought and springboards for new work.

The Japanese American Incarceration

The preferred terminology is now “incarceration” rather than “internment” because it is legal to “intern” citizens of enemy nations during wartime, whereas it is unconstitutional to hold American citizens  indefinitely without charge or trial. And two-thirds of the 120,000 Japanese Americans “incarcerated” or “imprisoned” during WWII were loyal American citizens who simply had the misfortune to look like the enemy.

As I think about it, I haven't done much artwork directly about the internment, though I have written extensively about it. Rather than depict the oppression, my artwork has focused on identifying and contradicting internalized oppression—the feeling that many victims carry of being somehow less worthy or deserving of injustice. I was fortunate to have a father who was very proud of his Japanese heritage and culture and to watch grandmothers and aunts put their Buddhist values into daily practice. Much of my Japanese American work has been about celebrating what they taught me.

The Floating World, 36 x 44, oil. The heads of my grandfather and grandmother hover over me at age five, dressed—like all the other children—in an elaborate Buddhist outfit when the Grand Abbot visited from Japan. The gold crown sat atop a silken pillow, on my slippery black hair. I had to hold my head very straight to keep the crown from falling.  My head is wreathed with the lines of a Buddhist prayer, “ I am a link in Amida's golden chain of love that stretches around the world. I must keep my link bright and strong.... I will try to think pure and beautiful thoughts, to say pure and beautiful words, and to do pure and beautiful deeds, knowing that on what I do now depends not only my happiness and unhappiness, but also that of others.”

The title alludes, not simply to the floating world of ukiyoe wood-block prints, but to a certain view of life. I was born a few months after the last concentration camps closed. I grew up with loss as a fact of life. But incarceration had not been the first , now would it be the last hardship for my relatives. Children died, jobs were lost, loved ones were difficult. My relatives knew that NOTHING material can be counted on. We are adrift on a sea where things are dying and being born every minute. The only things we can count on are change, and the sea of existence itself, the unnameable something that sustains us amidst change.

Line of Succession, 18" x 24". Acrylic. Hippies are stereotyped as anti-establishment types who didn't “trust anybody over thirty,” but we were not anarchistic. Although we rejected some of the values and power structures we grew up with, we actively sought and honored models that worked, new or old. We drew inspiration from Thoreau, Emerson, abolitionists, early feminists, and leaders of color, as well as the craftsmanship, culture and spirituality outside the “civilized” world. The nine months I spent on an Indian ashram in the early 1970s helped me truly understand my grandparents’ religion and lifestyle, and  coelesce values into bedrock that continue to ground my life and my children's.

Buddhism in America, 18" x 24". Oil. The Buddhist lessons I learned in India (and continue to learn every day) about self-created suffering, nonattachment, and satori paralleled what my grandparents learned in their journey from Meiji-era Japan to late-20th century America. The integrity with which they lived their lives continues to illuminate my response to today’s challenges.

Jiichan, 11 x 17 photocollage. This is one of the few works that physically shows an internment camp. My grandfather's photo, lost farm fields, karuta poem cards, my grandmother's kimono, scissors to symbolize what was severed, and grasses from a memorial garden symbolize the lessons that do not die, including our duty as Americans to safeguard democracy for everyone.

Trunk of Dreams, photocollage with poem. The text reads, “Dear wife/We were so hopeful/in the first days./How could I know/that the new land/would hollow out/your heart/and fill my mouth/with sand./Gaman/we said/Gambatte./Shikkari nasai./Until the last weed/died in the desert./I never told you/how sorry I was.

Barry in Grade School, 11" x17", digital collage. I'm working on a series entitled “loyal•disloyal” about my father's journey from segreated Stockton to thr Rohwer incarceration camp to a twenty-two year career in U.S. military intelligence. In this first grade photo, he already looks intense, isolated and haunted. Note that the class is mostly children of color, somewhat shabbily dressed. More later.

Labels: Buddhism, internment, Japanese American

Assim-U-lation

Assim-U-lation, series of three paintings, acrylic on 12” x 12” canvas, with found objects. In the past 30 years, consumerism has replaced education as a primary means of assimilation for immigrants of color, encouraging them to reinvent themselves as simulations of the dominant culture. The work raises questions about the relationship between consumption and perceived attractiveness, success and self-worth. And questions whether bleached hair, spike heels and hot cars attract romance or simply a credit card hangover.

1. “Lookin’ for Love. Hiding behind a cigarette, trendy hair and attitude, a young woman seeks love. In the absence of reality-based community for young Pinoys, can MySpace provide true connection, or leave them suspended in electronic limbo, barely visible, neither fully Filipino nor fully American.

2. Tides of Desire. A Mazda RX-7, yesteryear’s hot car, is washed up on a beach amid the detritus of American machismo: beer cans, cigarette packs, Playboys, and hamburger wrappers. Tire tracks lead to the timeless ocean, but the eye is drawn to the colorful ephemera in the foreground. In the absence of strong, realistic models of Asian American manhood, where does our youth look for guidance? How long do the things we lust for hold their value? And do macho trappings impress the girls or simply other dateless males?

3. Shopaholic Halfie. If boys are taught to use cars as bait, girls turn to clothes. “Sara” obsesses on shoes and posts provocative photos on-line. She fetishizes on shoes in hopes that men will fetishize her. Is it a successful strategy? She confesses that she is “a certified halfie...genetically chinese-filipino. MY LIFE IS AN OPEN BOOK. i am still single and it seems that guys are kinda intimidated with the kind of lifestyle i am living right now... GUYS, don’t worry.... I DON’T BITE.... i am into collecting items of signature brands and i am a SHOPAHOLIC.... it has been my devotion to buy lots and lots of clothes...shoes... bags...& accessories.... FEEL FREE TO ASK ME WHATEVER YOU WANT TO KNOW ABOUT ME...”

Identity and internalized Oppression

“LukoLoco,” photocollage, 11"x14", evolved from an installation piece. “Luko loco” is slang for “crazy” in the Philippines, as in “You make me luko loco!” And “luko loco” is the way many young Asian Americans feel—caught between expectations to be a blonde Barbie, a computer whiz, an Asia Pop cutie or a nice traditional girl just one generation removed from the slums of Manila or Hong Kong...

(Manila slum photo by permission of Eric Talmadge.) “LukoLoco” evolved from the installation below.

“Know Your Place,” mixed media installation piece, 32"w x 46"h x 22"d, acrylic on canvas with traditional silk malong, rice, sampaguita (national flower) petals, star anise, rosary, computer chip and other found objects. Exhibited at Cultural Resilience show at Manilatown Center, Sept- Nov 2008

“Behind Closed Dollars,” Manilatown Center, May 10-July 19, 2008

1. “The National Interest: Where Are Our Mothers?” Photo collage, 14" x 11". Grainy faces of Filipino children are almost obscured by symbols of international economics—dollar signs, flags and a map. The size and placement each flag indicates the population and location of overseas workers around the globe.The children’s photo is by Amaryllis T. Torres fromwww.imagesphilippines, used by permission.

2. “The National Interest: Remittance.” Photo collage, 14" x 11". A group of Filipino boys are contrasted with the number of dollars remitted to the Philippines by overseas Filipino workers from ten countries, sized by dollar amount, and positioned by geographic location. About ten percent of working-age Filipinos are deployed abroad, and the money they send home amounts to over 13% of the domestic economy. The children were photographed by “Sayote Queen,” a prolific and talented photographer who resides in the Philippines. Photo fromwww.flickr.com, used by permission.

3. “The National Interest: Left Behind.” Photo collage, 14" x 11". There are over 11 million Filipinos living abroad, counting Philippines citizens who are temporary overseas workers or permanent residents of other countries, as well as those who have become citizens of their countries of residence. A photo of children behind a fence is overlaid by a map showing the distribution around the world of overseas Filipinos. Ironically, the photo was snapped by a Dutch tourist, who posted it on Flickr under the title, “Like you’ve never seen a white person before.” When I emailed for permission, he wrote, “I took this picture somewhere deep in Cebu city. We were eating chicken heads, feet, etc with Filipino friends. These children passed by, and then came back when they saw those long-nose white persons. ‘Hey Joe!’” Photo from www.flickr.com, used by permission of Lennart Woltering.

Warmth, humanity and patience make Filipinos excellent caretakers; and intelligence, education and discipline make them excellent engineers and technicians. But if these qualities are exported and exploited rather than invested in the family and society at home, what qualities will be inherited by the next generation of Filipinos?

I am not Filipino American, but over the years, my Filipino friends have shared experiences and perspectives about absent parents, the dual economy, and false values fueled by Western salaries, Catholic oppression, negative stereotyping, and internalized oppression about indigenous and village culture.

I became more closely acquainted with overseas Filipino/a workers in 2006 when I spent two months in a skilled nursing facility with a broken leg. I spent many hours with Filipino/a LVNs and CNAs. They were kind, caring and conscientious professionals who displayed tremendous compassion even for homeless and addicted patients. They were great teamworkers who retained the ability to laugh and joke in difficult circumstances. And many spoke movingly about their children, who remained in the Philippines.

The work asks whether the true measure of success is material or a more complex blend of psychological, spiritual and social richness. It raises awareness about the global impact of exported labor and its impact around the world.

In keeping with the theme of globalism, some of the images were found on the Internet and are used with the permission of photographers in the Philippines, the United States and the Netherlands.