April 19th
7pm
This conversation, curated in partnership with the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, a historically queer space, welcomes playwright Adam Ashraf Elsayigh, artist and writer Jason Wee, poet Richie Hofmann and the LLMA’s Director of Curatorial Programs Stamatina Gregory to explore Cavafy’s identity as a gay writer, and his influence on generations of LGTBQIA+ writers, artists and thinkers.
This event is part of a series of conversations and in-store activations celebrating C. P. Cavafy's impact on modern poetry, his intellectual legacy, and his identity as a queer man who deftly danced between the ancient world and the modern metropolis. McNally Jackson bookstores will be transformed into living invitations for passers by to discover or reconsider Cavafy and his canon. Through National Poetry Month and the duration of the festival, each of McNally Jackson’s seven city-wide locations from Nolita to Laguardia Airport, will house artfully made tiny poetry libraries, window displays dedicated to the poet and his work, and Cavafy-inspired “Author Picks” curated by Festival artists and partners. A limited number of complimentary totes and commemorative bookmarks will be available for free.
This evening's program is Co-presented in partnership with New York Arab Festival (NYAF).
Doors are at 6.30
HEALTH, SAFETY, ACCESSIBILITY
This event will take place at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art located at 26 Wooster Street | New York, NY 10013 CART will be provided for this event. Light refreshments will be offered. This is a mask-optional gathering. Guests are welcomed to wear masks, and masks will be available at the museum front desk. We may provide additional instructions ahead of the event for registered guests. Leslie-Lohman Museum strives to provide a welcoming environment to all visitors. External steps lead to our entrance doors: a wheelchair lift is available. All galleries are wheelchair-accessible, and a single-occupancy accessible restroom is located behind the visitor experience desk: all restrooms are gender-neutral. Large print didactics are available.
To request access accommodations please contact info@leslielohman.org at least one week in advance of your planned visit.
Learn more about the Leslie-Lohman Museum here.
Learn more at cavafyfestival.onassis.org.
We recommend that guests wear masks on the night.
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Stamatina Gregory is a curator and art historian. They have taught art history, critical theory, and writing at the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, Parsons/The New School, the School of Visual Arts, and Sotheby's Institute, and have organized exhibitions for institutions including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, the Santa Monica Museum of Art/ICA LA, The Cooper Union, Austrian Cultural Forum, and the 55th Venice Biennale. They are the Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions and Collections at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art.
Adam Ashraf Elsayigh was born in Cairo, Egypt to parents who were reluctantly doctors. When soon thereafter, Adam’s parents relocated the family to Dubai, Adam grew up in a religious Muslim household with American cable television, going to a British school in a Gulf state where over 90% of the population were migrant workers. This upbringing at the cross-section of cultures is at the core of the artist Adam is. Today, Adam is a writer, theatermaker, and dramaturg who writes and develops plays that interrogate the intersections of queerness, immigration, and colonialism. Adam’s plays (including Drowning in Cairo, Revelation, Memorial, and Jamestown/ Williamsburg) have been developed and seen at New York Theater Workshop, The Lark, The Tisch School of the Arts, The LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, and Golden Thread Productions. Adam is a fellow at Georgetown University's Laboratory for Global Performance and an Alliance/Kendeda Award Finalist. He holds a BA in Theater with an emphasis in Playwriting and Dramaturgy from NYU Abu Dhabi and is an MFA Candidate in Playwriting at Brooklyn College. Learn more about what Adam is up to at https://www.adamaelsayigh.com/.
Richie Hofmann is the author of Second Empire (2015), and A Hundred Lovers (2022). His poetry has appeared recently in the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, and The Yale Review. He teaches at Stanford University and lives in Chicago and San Francisco.
Jason Wee is an artist and writer. Recent projects use a choral libretto as an invitation to consider the design of a general assembly (for the 2019 Singapore Biennale), queer secrecies in public spaces and shipping lanes (for the 1st Asia Society Triennale), and the history of 'undesirable literatures' (for the 2022 Kochi-Muziris Biennale). His art practice searches for polyphony and powerlessness in the figurations of Asia and Southeast Asia. His works move restlessly between art, design histories, poetry, publishing, geopolitics, sculpture and photography. He is the co-editor of Softblow Poetry Journal. He founded and runs Grey Projects, an artists’ library and residency. He is the author of two chapbooks and three poetry collections, including An Epic of Durable Departures (Math Paper Press, 2018) a finalist for the Singapore Literature Prize. His most recent, In Short, Future Now (Sternberg Press, 2020) was the Gaudy Boy Poetry Prize finalist.