Join us at The Bowtie Project for an evening around the fire as Yansi Pérez and Raquel Gutiérrez read new and favorite works while the full moon rises over the LA River. 

This special Reading by Moonrise is organized in collaboration with artist Beatriz Cortez in response to Tzolk’in, her new sculpture, installed in two parts at both the Bowtie and the Hammer Museum.

Sited in two vastly different contexts, Tzolk’in uses ancient Mayan technology and industrial materials to evoke the experience of divided families’ strained communication, the feeling of simultaneously living in two realities, and to consider the river as both a symbol of life and a border that separates. In response to these ideas, Cortez has asked Yansi Pérez and Raquel Gutiérrez to read work that speaks to Salvadoran and Central American experiences of migration to the city of Los Angeles.

This event is free and open to the public. Clockshop suggests a $5 donation to support our Reading and Listening by Moonrise series.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Born and raised in Los Angeles and currently taking the Southwest by surprise, Raquel Gutiérrez writes and performs about brown ontology, art, space and institutionality and publishes chapbooks by queers of color with the tiny press Econo Textual Objects, established in 2014. Gutiérrez was recently awarded a Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant this year to support a short-form essay series about contemporary artistic practices in Los Angeles (or what does it mean to be a brown artist in the Trump era?).

Yansi Pérez was born in El Salvador and moved to the United States in 1982. She holds an A.B. in Comparative Literature from Stanford University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University. She is an Associate Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at Carleton College in MN and last year she was a visiting scholar at the only Central American Studies Department in the United States at the California State University, Northridge. She has published about Central American authors such as Roque Dalton, Horacio Castellanos Moya, and Claudia Hernández, among others. Currently, she is working on a  project entitled Los Angeles: A Cartography of Material Memory of the Central America Diaspora.

ACCESSIBILITY
Please note that seating is not provided for this event. Guests are encouraged to bring picnic items and blankets. S’mores will be provided between readings.

Restrooms
There are several all-gender public restrooms and portapotties on site.

This event was made possible with support from the Department of Cultural Affairs.