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Poetry &

Poetry &: 2022, #4 with Victoria Chang and Dianna Frid

June 9, 2022, 6 pm, Dia Chelsea

Event Details
Thursday, June 9, 2022, 6 pm

Dia Chelsea
537 West 22nd Street
New York, New York

Free. Register for the event here.

Sharing an interest in the obituary, poet Victoria Chang and artist Dianna Frid are intrigued by its use as a formal device to summarize and narrate a life as well as its purpose as a private and public expression of loss. Taking this narrative form as inspiration, the pair have used obituaries to structure their works, notably in Chang’s poetry collection Obit (2020) and Frid’s ongoing series Words from Obituaries (2011– ). Implicit throughout is a reckoning with death, but the artists also use these texts as mirrors to reflect back on the mysteries and ambiguities of life itself. For the last Poetry & event this spring, they will present a collaborative talk about their recent work, narrating their shared chronology as artists. Their forthcoming broadside, 2022, #1, will be available for free in the Dia Chelsea bookshop.

About the artists

Victoria Chang was born in 1970. Her new book of poetry, The Trees Witness Everything, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press and Corsair Books, and her nonfiction volume, Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief, was published in 2021 by Milkweed. Her poetry collection, Obit (2020)received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the PEN/Voelcker Award. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and is a core faculty member in the MFA program at Antioch University.

Dianna Frid was born in Mexico City in 1967. Her artist’s books and mixed-media works make visible the tactile manifestations of language. She often uses embroidery to explore the relationships between writing and drawing as well as the intersections of transcription, translation, and legibility. Her work has been presented in solo and two-person shows including Dianna Frid and Cecilia Vicuña: A textile exhibition, Poetry Foundation, Chicago (2015); Dianna Frid: It Takes Time, University Art Galleries at Illinois State University, Normal (2017); and All Days Combined: Dianna Frid and Monika Müller, Alpineum Produzentengalerie, Lucerne, Switzerland (2018).

Books

Citizen Illegal

“Citizen Illegal is right on time, bringing both empathy and searing critique to the fore as a nation debates the very humanity of the people who built it.” ―Eve Ewing, author of Electric Arches

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