Creative Writing Workshop: Poet danilo machado and Artist Smita Sen
alter/altar
What does it mean to write the ways illness and disability alter the body and, in turn, the world? How can alter become altar, a transformative act of offering and solidarity? How can alteration provide a framework for poems and living, especially in our fluid, flustered reality?
In this workshop, we will consider the many scales of change--the bodily and the linguistic, the societal and the intimate--in the context of the things we honor. Together, we will engage themes presented by Smita Sen in her project The Manipura Sanctum through reading, writing, and conversation. The Manipura Sanctum is currently on view at Central Library through April 23rd.
*ALS interpretation and closed captioning provided.
About the Artists:
Born in Medellín, Colombia, danilo machado is a poet, curator, and critic living on occupied land interested in language’s potential for revealing tenderness, erasure, and relationships to power. A 2020-2021 Poetry Project Emerge-Surface-Be Fellow, their writing has been featured in Hyperallergic, Poem-A-Day, Art Papers, The Recluse, GenderFail, No, Dear, Long River Review, TAYO Literary Magazine, among others. An honors graduate of the University of Connecticut, danilo is Producer of Public Programs at the Brooklyn Museum and curator of the exhibitions Otherwise Obscured: Erasure in Body and Text (Franklin Street Works, 2019), support structures (Virtual/8th Floor Gallery, 2020), and We turn (EFA Project Space, 2021). danilo is the co-founder and co-curator of the reading series Maracuyá Peach and the chapbook/broadside fundraiser Already Felt: poems in revolt & bounty. They are working to show up with care for their communities.
Image description: A queer brown person wearing corduroy overalls, brown mask, and pink glasses poses with one leg crossed over the other. They stand on a gray stone path littered with leaves and surrounded by greenery. Photo by Avery Camp.
Smita Sen is an artist working with sculpture, dance-based performance, and advanced technology to research how the body internalizes its environment and significant life events. With installations, Sen attempts to reimagine sites of care and creates environments for the body to enter states of meditative healing. Sen’s work has been shown at venues like Bard College, Flux Factory, Anthology Film Archives, the Knockdown Center, and ISSUE Project Room. Her project, The Manipura Sanctum is currently on view at Central Library through April 23rd.
