North Fork Arts Projects

“Poetry Ekphrasis” JEAN VENGUA October 2019 North Fork Arts Projects is pleased to celebrate October as Filipino American History Month by presenting an exhibition of four new paintings by Jean Vengua. Jean’s exhibit is entitled “Poetry Ekphrasis” as each of her paintings is rooted in poems by four Filipino-Pilipinz poets: Nick Carbo, Eric Gamalinda, Barbara Jane Reyes, and Eileen R. Tabios. Ekphrasis is art inspired by another art form, in this case paintings inspired by poems.  From bottom right and going clockwise, the paintings are “Calle de Recuerdos” by Jean Vengua, inspired by Nick Carbo’s poem “Directions To My Imaginary Childhood” “Lunar Night” by Jean Vengua, inspired by Eric Gamalinda’s poem “Zero Gravity” “Heartlines” by Jean Vengua, inspired by Barbara Jane Reyes’ poem “Having Been Cast, Eve Implores” “Hourglass and Ellipsis” by Jean Vengua, inspired by Eileen R. Tabios’ poem “Kapwa’s Song” All paintings are 10 x 10 x 1.5 in...

As a writer, my raw material is words. For some in this position, specificity is important—and yes, it’s important to me, too. But what I’ve mostly taken from decades of dealing with words is the instability of language and meaning. Thus, when I look at visual art that’s partly based on words and/or letters, I have an interest in seeing where the text deteriorates or melts against fixed definition(s). Consequently, I’ve followed Jean Vengua’s haptic explorations, and was truly honored when she created this sketch that she was willing to call a “Portrait of Eileen Tabios”—yup, me.   Indeed, instead of an author photo on my website , I use this image: I love the haptic that she calls my portrait specifically because it’s asemic . Much of my work as a poet has been interrogating English, thus often subverting dictionary-based definitions, in part because of English’s history as a colonizing tool for my birth land, the Philippines (for more on that aspect of my poet...