'What is a (w)Hole?' : Salon of Mysteries March 24, 2011

Readings and contemplations by Joel B. Tan, Nick Brinkley, Paul Brown, Laleh Khadivi, Morgan Weinert, and Jack Fertig designed entirely around your, my, our (w)Hole, and specifically located within the large hole (mechanics pit) in the floor of SOMArts Main Gallery.

Joel Barraquiel Tan is an award wining editor, writer, visual artist, & a Sister of Perpetual ...Indulgence, Founding House. He served as activist & public health professional in the fight against HIV/AIDS for 17 years and is a co-founder of Los Angeles' Asian Pacific Islander AIDS Intervention Team. He received his BA in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley and his M.F.A. in Poetry at Antioch University. Joel is the Director of Community Engagement at YBCA. He is especially none of these things as is the Persian with the Red Beard.

Nicholas Alexander Brinkley is a self-taught artist originally from Sacramento,CA. While he plays with various media, he tends to focus on painting and drawing. Nick loves to play with perspective and color, finding inspiration in the Surrealists. In 2009, Nick curated a 3-month exhibition titled "Under A Full Moon: 30 years of Perpetual Indulgence" exploring the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence as both artists and subjects.

Laleh Khadivi is the award winning author of The Age of Orphans. She was born in Esfahan, Iran in 1977. Her family left the country at the onset of the Islamic Revolution in 1977, arriving in the United States three years later. She was awarded the Carl Djerassi Fiction Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, the 2007-2009 Fiction Fellow at Emory University, the Whiting Writers Award and the Barnes and Noble Discover New Writers Award. She is currently at work on the second book of a trilogy concerning themes of human migration, nationalism and identity. She is a professor of Creative Writing at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara California.

Official Website: http://www.somarts.org/