Salon Discussion of Ambiguity, Race, Identity

April 6, Friday, 6:30 to 8:30pm
Dr. Kaung's Salon: "Who Am I?" Art as a Mirror of Pre-Judgment

Discussion of that impertinent urge to identify each other, even strangers, by “race” with Bijan Bayne and J. Tomiko Anders.

In our "rush" to judgment, and desire to have a "place" for everything, and for everything a place, we race to identify people. When we cannot define their place, we wonder who they are? Definitions based on complexion, context, and conception fall apart before the reality that the myriad genes swimming in our respective pools express themselves in more ways than we ever could. To answer the question that decorum forbids we ask a stranger on the street, Kyi May Kaung's exhibition of "ethnically ambiguous" portraits, accompanied by writer and historian Bijan C. Bayne's captions, in turn ask the viewer a question: "Who Am I?"

The author of Sky Kings: Black Pioneers of Professional Basketball, Bijan is working on a documentary called “Show People” about the history and practice of exhibiting people of color as exotics. He teaches travel writing at The Writer's Center (Bethesda).

Photo taken at Kefa Cafe by Melinda Jane White.

Why Buy Art?

Quick and good reasons for buying art from painter and art educator, and Space 7:10 artist, Marilyn Banner.

Featured Artist Also Experimental Poet

Kyi May Kaung featured in a post this week on "a multilanguage weblog with links and information on poetic invention – our term for exploratory/ investigative/ experimental/ radical/ conceptual poetry."

Meet the Artist Reception

Burmese painter, poet, writer, economist, and activist Kyi May Kaung
Friday, March 16, 2007 from 6:30 to 8:30pm
Exhibit: Mostly Burmese Mugs, paintings and ceramics

Space 7:10 at Kefa Cafe
963 Bonifant St. in downtown Silver Spring

Scroll down for a post that includes an artist's statement (and another post about the artist's upcoming trunk show of handmade jackets).

Trunk Show: Wearable Art Jackets

Designed and handmade by Burmese artist and poet Kyi May Kaung
Modeled by cafe regulars

Friday, March 30, 6:30 to 8:30pm
Space 7:10 at Kefa Cafe
963 Bonifant St. in downtown Silver Spring

I am thinking back to the genesis of this particular artistic activity of mine, and find I can trace it to two monologues on stage which I did in 1994 at Annenberg Center in Philadelphia. In one of these, “Head Turned Backwards,” based on one of my poems, I unpack a suitcase full of clothes that I had meant to take home with me, while talking about my grandmothers. I wore a jacket made of the cut up parts of my old Burmese clothes that no longer fit.

I decided to make jackets out of the fabrics I have collected on my travels, mostly in S.E Asia.
It is important to remember that I am not a tailor or a dressmaker who makes finely tailored, fitted and highly constructed, padded clothes. I am a poet and artist who sometimes makes poetic and metaphorical clothes. Due to my aging, I no longer do fine stitching or embroidery. I don’t want to contract out and be an employer of sweatshop labor. So I make everything on my own, minimizing seams and leaving in minor defects, because as the Turkish carpet makers say, “Only God is perfect.”

I make the jackets to complement everyday clothes such as the little black dress and the blue jeans, because I think clothes should make the wearer feel secure, covered and more truly herself or himself. I make jackets to read my poetry in.

I am against anorexia and make clothes for the mature woman. —Kyi May Kaung

Parking at Space 7:10 at Kefa Cafe

If you're not lucky enough to find a parking spot at the meters on Bonifant, try one of the three lots on Bonifant, each of which involves a short walk to Kefa Cafe:

• the multi-layered lot with meters next to Silver Spring Metro on the other side of Georgia (turn toward the pirate, yes pirate, restaurant),
• the open lot with meters east of Georgia after the tattoo place, used bookstore, and Mandalay restaurant, or
• a larger open lot with meters, across Fenton.

Reading of New Play by Ivan Kovatchev

Friday, March 9, 6:30 to 8:30pm
Reading of The Overcoat, a new play by Bulgarian playwright and director Ivan Kovatchev and based on Nikolai Gogol’s influential short story.

Stephen Shetler
Stephen Shetler studied acting at The Catholic University of America where he earned his MFA, and The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. He has acted at numerous theatres around Washington, and spent five years in the company at Classika Theatre. In addition, he teaches acting and theater craft at Northern Virginia
Community College.

Ivan Kovatchev
Ivan is pleased to be making his first appearance at the Kefa Cafe. Recently he staged An Hour in Vienna at Silver Spring Stage for the One Act Festival, Without a Doubt -three one-act plays by George Feydeau at the Comedy Spot and Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov at the Classika Theatre. Ivan holds MA in Theatre and Film from National Academy of Theatre and Film Art -Sofia, Bulgaria.

Virginia Bell to Read at DC Takoma Library

Virginia writes:
Please forward the announcement below to more folks--we'd love to see you there! If you came to Anne Becker's wonderful "Woman.Body.Love" reading at the Kefa Cafe, I promise I will read different poems this time!

Tuesday, March 6 at 7:30 pm
District of Columbia Public Library
Takoma Park Branch
5^th and Cedar Streets, N.W.
Featuring: J. Joy Matthews Alford, Virginia Bell, and Anne Dykers
Hosted by Rhonda Williford

Mostly Burmese Mugs

Mostly Burmese Mugs
Kyi May Kaung
Space 7-10, Kefa Café, Silver Spring, MD
March13 – April 7, 2007

Reception: Friday, March 16, 6:30 to 8:30pm

Artist’s Statement
In this show, I am exhibiting iconic portraits that I have painted in oils on canvas since 2005 in an intuitive process that I worked out for myself. Starting from a sketch or snapshot of a real person, I keep painting to a point where the picture starts to tell me what it wishes to be. At this point I put the reference shot away and pay attention to what is happening on the canvas. The subjects change gender or ethnicity, or become iconic figures such as Our Lady of Scorpions or Lady Vanda (an orchid species.) They develop personalities of their own and select the objects they wish to be surrounded by. They also dictate to me, their conduit, in which style they wish to be painted. Some are in lumpy paint straight from the tube, and some are smooth surfaced.

These are the mug shots in this show. The rest are my hand painted ceramics, some of them actual mugs you can drink from.

Kyi May Kaung (Ph.D.) Bio – 2007
Ms. Kaung is a multidisciplinary and multi-faceted writer and artist who does not fit neatly into any pre-conceived category. She has been called “a trained social scientist with the soul of a poet.” She has just won a best short story prize for her story Black Rice from the Northern Virginia Review (#21).

Originally from Burma, she has published two poetry chapbooks; poetry in Rattapallax, CrossConnect, Poet’s Attic, Mosaic, and Passport Magazines; read poetry with DC Poets Against War, Washington Musica Viva and in the U.S.A. and Canada. Her short stories have appeared in Wild River Review, Northern Virginia Review (upcoming), Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine and Shoptalk; foreign policy articles in Foreign Policy in Focus, OpenDemocracy, Asian Survey and Irrawaddy. Her play “Shaman” was praised by Edward Albee and others and she has been a Pew finalist in literature twice. She is also a winner of the William Carlos Williams Award of the Academy of American Poets.

Kyi has been painting professionally since 2001. Mostly Burmese Mugs is her third one-woman show. (Previous shows were Flux – at Foundry Gallery, DC 2002 and Blotches from Burma at Space 7-10, MD in 2005). Kyi paints abstracts in an action painting style that has been compared to Franz Kline and Jackson Pollack, and intuitive and haunting “portraits” generated from photographs of real people and/or her imagination.