Tea with Rupy & Jason with Support from Kiana & Han & Tanika & Momos
Tea is an invitation to immigrant artists (see more below) to join us in conversation about home / not home & what is rejuvenating / not rejuvenating, & learn more about the Immigrant Artist Network.
You are cordially invited to tea.
Tea with Rupy & Jason with support by Kiana & Han & Tanika & Momos is an invitation to immigrant artists (see more below) to join us in conversation about home / not home & what is rejuvenating / not rejuvenating, learn more about the Immigrant Artist Network, and sign-up for a free, cohort-based, 8 Session Immigrant Artist Salons launching in March 2022.
Our Tea continues the development of Queering Dreams' Immigrant Artist Network by Rupy C. Tut & Jason Wyman, which provides immigrant artist-centered & co-created creative, personal, and professional development. It is a way for immigrant artists & their comrades to build collective power to (re)orient immigrant artists narratives into the hands, voices, bodies, and dreams of immigrant artists.
Immigrant artists encompasses artists who are immigrants, first generation or second generation immigrants, artists creating work focused on immigrant issues and life, and draw from the immigrant experience in their creative inquiries.
Queering Dreams is fiscally sponsored by Independent Arts & Media.
What others have said:
"There’s a Sikh principle of ਸੰਗਤ, sangat, of community, that is very important to me and is at the core of what I do in my work as a community organizer, and also what I try to express in my art." HARJOT GHUMAN-MATHARU
"Rejuvenation is being alone, being able to put all of my energy into myself." HAN QIN
"Now, I feel home is me. I’m a compilation of all these spaces that I’ve inhabited. Before I was trying to find a space, right? I am the space." JUAN CARLOS ESCOBEDO
About Rupy C. Tut & Jason Wyman & Kiana Honarmand &Han Qin & Tanika Williams & Momos Cheeskos
Rupy C. Tut is an Oakland based painter dissecting historical and contemporary displacement narratives around identity, belonging, and gender. As a descendant of refugees and a first generation immigrant, Rupy’s family narrative of movement, loss, and resilience is foundational to her creative inquiries. Her work engages in strict practice of traditional materials and methodology associated with Indian miniature painting as she continues to add contemporary images and characters to a centuries old visual language. Rupy’s work has recently been highlighted through exhibition and a select artist panel for the deYoung Open, deYoung Museum (San Francisco) in 2020.
Rupy's practice expands to include calligraphy of South Asian scripts. Her painting and calligraphy are also translated into the medium of photography and stop motion video resulting in large scale visual projections challenging the historical notion of Indian painting as restricted to smaller frames and intimate viewing only.
Jason Wyman is Queerly Complex, an anti-binary social practice artist living & creating on Yelamu, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land or what colonizers named San Francisco. A mystical convener, Wyman creates spaces for comrades to explore & discover who they be individually & collectively. They work with dreams, value(s), structures, & equity to conjure forms of liberation & healing. Wyman's art-making centers the messy, intangible, emotive, & esoteric bits that make us human. It's resulted in a large-scale, participatory sticker mural with artists Celi Tamayo-Lee & Mary-Claire Amable for the Asian Art Museum, a national Youth Media Network co-produced with Myah Overstreet, a fully immersive installation at Black & White Projects called Be Jason, & numerous zines, site-speciic performances, social interventions, and intergenerational programs. Find Jason on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
Kiana Honarmand is an artist born and raised in Iran. Her work addresses issues related to her cultural identity, violation of women's rights in Iran, censorship, surveillance, and the Western perception of her SWANA identity. Derived from her interest in different materials and processes, Kiana’s interdisciplinary practice features the use of digital fabrication tools as well as traditional methods of craft. In 2012, Kiana moved to the United States to pursue and complete her Master of Fine Arts degree. She currently lives and works in the Bay Area. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and Internationally. **photo by Nicolas Cholula
HAN QIN (b.1988, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China) While primarily focusing on digital art, Han’s work also extends to printmaking, video, installation, and performance art. She earned her B.F.A. and M.F.A. in Printmaking from China Academy of Art (Hangzhou) and her M.F.A. in Digital Arts from Pratt Institute (New York) in 2016. Currently, She lives and works in New York and Hangzhou as an artist, and adjunct professor at Stony Brook University (New York) and China Academy of Art. Han’s work has continued to exhibit in the U.S. and China, Nassau County Museum of Art, NY; University of Wisconsin-Madison; Fou Gallery, New York; The Heckscher Museum of Art, New; Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery, NY; Connecticut College, Connecticut; Deji Art Museum, Nanjing, China, Long Island Museum, Stony Brook, New York; Zhejiang Museum, Hangzhou, China; Changjiang Museum of Contemporary Art, Chongqing, China.
Han’s work flows from her experience of home and relocation. Moved from China at age 24, she feels the ambivalence between nostalgia and wistfulness of transition. This encouraged her to create this uncertainty and spectacular feeling throughout her work. Interested in the social phenomenon of groups and individuals moving from place to place, she translated the moments of passing through, getting togethering, migrating, and even conflicting.
Tanika I. Williams (b. 1981, St. Andrew, Jamaica; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) is an award-winning filmmaker and performance artist. She investigates women’s use of movement, mothering and medicine to produce and pass on ancestral wisdoms of ecology, spirituality and liberation. Williams holds a BA from Eugene Lang College, New School and MDiv from Union Theological Seminary. Her films have been screened at festivals and broadcast on American television. Williams has been awarded residencies at New York Foundation for the Arts, Hi-ARTS, and BRIC. Additionally, she has been featured on 99.5 WBAI; and in Art in Odd Places; Creative Time; Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Civic Art Lab, GreenspaceNYC; Let Us Eat Local, Just Food; and Performa. Vimeo | Medium | Momos Cheeskos
TM Davis / Momos Cheeskos is a Black Queer Woman, activist, storyteller, visual artist/performance, festival producer and percussionist with years of successful experience as a multi-talented, public facing performer and producer. She is also a dynamic Creativity/Life Coach, Co-Director of Arts.Co.Lab, Emerging Art Professionals Alumni/Mentor and Culture Equity Advocate.