Julie Ezelle Patton in performance with Sholeh Asgary and in conversation with Tonya M. Foster

Mazza Writer-In-Residence
Julie Ezelle Patton
in performance with Sholeh Asgary
and in conversation with Tonya M. Foster

Tuesday APRIL 1, 6:00 PM
Minnesota Street Project atrium
1275 Minnesota Street, San Francisco

supported by the Sam Mazza Foundation

The Poetry Center, San Francisco State University, in partnership with Black (Space) Residency and Makaan Arts, is proud to announce a highly anticipated performance featuring Mazza writer-in-residence Julie Ezelle Patton and sound artist Sholeh Asgary, for an evening of improvisational exploration. Following their performance Patton and Asgary will be in conversation with the George & Judy Marcus Endowed Chair in Poetry, Dr. Tonya M. Foster, who is co-directing SFSU Poetry Center events and activities with Andrew Joron.
 
This collaboration marks a significant moment for The Poetry Center as it relaunches its Mazza writer-in-residence series, reaffirming its commitment to showcasing innovative and diverse artistic voices. Celebrating its 71st anniversary, The Poetry Center remains dedicated to its mission of presenting and preserving the work of contemporary poets and artists.

This performance is part of The Poetry Center’s “Undisciplining the Fields” series, organized with Tonya M. Foster and designed to generate cross-disciplinary dialogue and collaboration, echoing San Francisco State University's legacy of progressive thought and artistic exploration. The Poetry Center, celebrating its 71st anniversary, remains dedicated to its mission of presenting and preserving the work of contemporary poets and artists.

Bios

Julie Ezelle Patton is the author of The Flower Poem (Tender Buttons, 2024), Notes for Some (Nominally) Awake (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2007), and “Car Tune” & Not So Bella Donna (belladonna*, 2003). A 2024 special issue of Chicago Review is devoted to her poetic, performative, and visual work and building maintenance projects. Patton’s work has been published in About Place journal and the anthologies nocturnes, Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe (Henry Holt, 1994), Eco Language Reader (Nightboat Books, 2010), Letters to the Future: Black Women / Radical Writing (Kore Press, 2018) and Other Influences: An Untold History of Feminist Avant-garde Poetry (The MIT Press, 2024). Patton has received a 2012 Doan Brook Association Watershed Hero Award, a Cleveland Arts Prize, a Museum of Fine Arts Houston Core Program Residency, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship.

Patton’s multidisciplinary installation, Womb Room Tomb, interfaces with the visual art of Virgie Ezelle Patton (with Theresa Ramey) and was part of the 2018 FRONT Triennial. Patton also creates in-the-moment compositions with a typewriter and nonconventional instruments, and has performed at Arts for Art, The Stone, Artists Space, the Center for Book Arts in New York City, and other noted venues.

Sholeh Asgary (b. Iran) engages performance, interdisciplinary forms, and collective processes to investigate, memorialize, and express the complexities of joy and survival inherent in diasporic and refugee experiences. Asgary’s primary material and deepest conceptual concern is sound. Through site-specific installations, sound sculptures, performance, archival projects, and collective collaborations, her work challenges colonial assumptions about what is heard, proposing new futures through sound. Asgary's debut EP, "آﺑـﺎن (Aban)," released with Sming Sming Books and Crystalline Morphologies to critical acclaim. Her practice is internationally published in SONDUKE and Art in America's New Talent Issue. A solo exhibition of her work is featured in the 2024-25 Pacific Standard Time-Getty exhibition, "Atmosphere of Sound."

Asgary is a 2023 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts BAN9 artist and Artadia finalist. Her work and performances have been presented by institutions including Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Sotheby’s, ARoS Kunstmuseum, Kadist, The Lab, and Stanford University, with support from Headlands Center for the Arts, MASS MoCA, Bemis Center, Culture Hub, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the California Arts Council. Her Audio Archive Booth is short-listed for a Creative Capital grant. Asgary is faculty at University of California, Berkeley.

The Poetry Center, San Francisco State University, is dedicated to presenting and documenting contemporary poetry and related arts, preserving original audio and video recordings, and ensuring public access to live performances and archival resources.

Black (Space) Residency (B(S)R) provides a physical container for imagination, inquiry, activity, and rest for Black creatives working across a myriad of disciplines. Operating at the intersection of abundance, well-being, safety, and self-determination, our work is rooted in the love of Black culture as a means of creating and offering space without any expectation of performative or production output from Black artists. B(S)R is located at 1240 Minnesota Street Studios and offers two-month residencies where artists have 24-hour access to the studio building.

Makaan Arts. The word ﻣﮑﺎن makaan from the Arabic َﻛﺎن َﻣ(makān) meaning “a place, a location, a station, a situation, a position, habitation, dwelling, an abode, a house, a home, a room” is shared amongst many of the languages in the CWANA region from Central and West Asia to North Africa. It points to the centuries-old interwoven connections amongst the diverse people of the region. Reflecting on the spirit of the word makān, Makaan Arts offers a communal hub for Bay Area and visiting CWANA artists. It is a place for creative exchange, for artists to reflect, experiment, and collaborate.