Cliff Notes
Each week, our regional Cliff Notes columnists Jaydra Johnson, Brittney Frantece, Blessing Greer Mathurin, and Quintessa Matranga pick the most exciting events and exhibitions on the West Coast.
Jayme Yen: Echo (repeat and reflect)
The Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA
March 27, 2025 – January 31, 2027
A new artistic collaboration at the Frye Art Museum is Frye Parlor, which takes over the back space of the museum, located next to their auditorium and Mari Pili at Cafe Frieda. For the next two years, Jayme Yen’s Echo (repeat and reflect) will fill the space with lively, light, and playful visuals. It’s the perfect space to digest the art on view.
Yen’s concept is both visual and literary. For visuals, there are pieces of sheer fabric in light pastel colors of coral, peach, lime, and seafoam green hanging from rods attached to the walls or dropping down from the ceiling. This sheer fabric ranges from medium-scale rectangles to large-scale squares. The breeze from the hallways makes the fabrics sway into each other. Along with colorful sheer fabric, there are small and large reflective boxes that lay flat on the walls. The surface is similar to the texture of aluminum foil with its wrinkles and abstract reflection of color and shape. On the fabrics and reflective surfaces are poetic phrases. Quirky and astute, brief yet profound, the phrases offer a moment of co-imagining of a fuller story or a fuller thought. The phrases are inspired by Frye Salon, the museum collection of paintings and sculptures presented in “salon style.” A phrase that struck me was “a lady crucifixion” on a coral sheer fabric hanging from a larger reflective flat surface. “A lady” is bold and “crucifixion” translucent and harder to see. My mind then wonders about this phrase—thinking it’s a statement against gender conformity, a note on witch trials, and seeing women as akin to holy martyrdom.
It was so lovely to see the change in the Frye’s parlor, using another part of the museum space to highlight local artists’ works.
Reflection: If you read “Roses for Emma./Books for Charles.” on a pink sheer fabric, what comes to mind?
wawoh! : A movement ritual exploring the grief of migration
A Resting Place, Seattle, WA
April 6th, 2025
Globally and collectively, so many of us are experiencing much uncertainty and loss. And for some of us, the loss has been generational, starting before we were even born. Thus, a moment to breathe and mourn in community is necessary. On April 6th, the transdisciplinary and collaborative performance project, Little Brown Language in partnership with A Resting Place gifted us with wawoh! A movement ritual exploring the grief of migration. This embodied exploration of loss, joy, and togetherness, spanned across generations and geographies and highlighted South American and Black American movements, language, and rituals.
Participating artists Naomi Macalalad Bragin, Aviona Rodriguez Brown, Akoiya Harris, Nia-Amina Minor, and Milvia Pacheco Salvatierra were dressed in white and their skin was adorned in white lines and shapes. They moved about while holding, standing on, and sitting on tarimas. At times the tarimas seemed too heavy to carry and other times, the tarimas seemed light enough to play and dance with. Bragin informed me that tarimas are “wooden stages emerging in the Afro-Mexican Fandango tradition when drums were prohibited” and that they help the ensemble “interconnect hidden histories of enslavement and colonization.”
There were many fascinating moments that allowed me to connect deeply with my body and breathe around others. I enjoyed witnessing the collaborative effort of moving with grief. The artists engaged and responded with each other through body mirroring, stomping, tapping, and song. Each artist had their own segment where they told their own story through movements and sounds. Though this work was powerfully anti-individualistic, it helped me see the various ways we experience and cope with grief—through audible sobs, through hiding, through playfulness, through curiosity. Even though each artist had a chance to move through a solo story, they were never alone. For example, when Milvia Pacheco Salvatierra stomped on her tarimas with rhythmic and poetic power, the other artists rapped on their tarimas or stomped the ground in rhythmic harmony. When Aviona Rodriguez Brown released audible moans during her story, the ensemble moaned with her.
Reflection: How do you reach out to your community when feeling a sense of loss is overwhelming?
Reflection: How do you reach out to your community when feeling a sense of overwhelming loss?