EARTH DIVING FOR PEARLS

Chinatown Soup is delighted to present earth diving for pearls, an exhibition of metal and ceramic art objects by resident artist alumni Zoe Schwartz and Lilian Wu, with words by Pooja Desai. Please join us for an opening reception on Thursday, March 18th from 6 - 8pm to coincide with LES ‘Third Thursdays’ Gallery Night. 

At the dusk of the first day of the spoken word

A siren longed for the touch of earth—

rings of dust and matter in entropy pulled towards her limbs

Liminal and loose

She sighs at the edge of a wet thread

Caught between the sea and the salt

Luminescent and longing to be woven into the stars

Drawn north

A celestial thread         spoolen and spun 

Toward holy                  Mercury

Toward holiest              Venus

Up she climbs, 

     eight legs on 

     eight rings of the 

     eight illusions

Beyond the eight pillars of home

Before the six pillars they found

In the sixth sanctum of the cave of wonders

Deep within the sea and hidden beneath the earth 

To the sound of a spindle whirring a web she drew form 

and learned to sew her breath into pattern

Between this earth and the next she ties and crosses 

knots in a loom made of tongues and hair—

She disguises herself, 

     That her shadow may be cut from her tale and the herd 

follow a shapeless silhouette into the moonlight

    That her golden thread fate failed to foil and fringe 

would tear lovers apart in her ire

   That her arms would weave a web at the foot 

of the enemy and wedge a shield into the 

brush of the trees below:

A pearl

Alone and alive

Lost in the pages of myth

A pearl

Sacred and select

Found in a coiling net

Zoe Schwartz is an emerging artist based in NYC.  She is currently taking a year of absence from her Sculpture MFA candidacy at RISD to rest, reflect and rejuvenate. Zoe manipulates metal using a multitude of techniques in order to explore the layers of feminine identity and femme fantasy. 

Lilian Wu Finckel is a ceramic artist, photographer, and teacher based in Brooklyn. She makes vessels and clay objects as a means of further exploring an archival practice that engages with personal identity, history, and memory. She teaches pottery at Clayhouse in Cobble Hill, and has worked with Pooja as curator of Soup’s Zine Wall since 2017. 

Pooja Desai is a poet, educator, and producer living on Lenapehoking land (Brooklyn). In her writing, she is drawn to exploring nontraditional storytelling forms and themes of identity, archive, movement, and the celestial. She has programmed for and curated Soup’s Zine Wall with Lilian since 2017.

This whirlwind show was brought together in 4 weeks: an epic love story between friends and artists.