The Next Installment of...
The Last Supper Party
An Evening of Music, Performance and Poetry with Josiah Luis Alderete, Maya Nell and Tongo Eisen-Martin
Curated by Kimi Sugioka
Open Microphone to Follow
Date(s) & Time(s): Sat. March 4, 6:00pm
Duration: 120 minutes w/out intermission
Location: 1222 Sutter Street SF 94109
Ticket Information
Entry Free - Donations accepted.
Reservations Mandatory.
RSVP HERE
Inaugural Last Supper Party
Full Interview with Fe Bongolan
The Last Supper Party is a spoken word and performance series inspired by Fe Bongolan’s landmark painting of the same name; a 200 sq. ft. canvas that defines our Sutter Street office and live arts venue.
The Last Supper Party presents the voices of diverse artists and writers who call out the myriad injustices and impacts of corruption, unchecked power and greed.
We invite our audience to share ideas and bread and find inspiration in the thoughts and words of artists whose perspectives are drawn from a kaleidoscope of cultures. But who are united by compassion and a common desire to seek justice, equity and truth.
The Story of The Last Supper Party Painting
“1985. Ronald Reagan was still President. The global movement to end apartheid and free Nelson Mandela from Robben Island Prison was underway. In San Francisco homelessness was ramping up. The AIDS pandemic was taking down swaths of our city’s population: friends, family, and co-workers. Yet a whole other world of class and wealth did nothing while the rest of our world was in trouble. Sitting in my studio in an Inverness cabin, I stayed with my paints and let something happen. It was there that I found my artist’s voice to not attack directly, but to let the exposure of that apathy – bred by a society that embraced greed over humanity—do the work.
Thirty six years later, with all that has changed and not changed, it is painfully unsurprising that this painting still shouts.”
~ Fe Bongolan
About the Artists
Josiah Luis Alderete
Josiah Luis Alderete is a full blooded Pocho, spanglish speaking poeta who first learned how to write poesia in the kitchen of his Mama’s Mexican restaurant. He was one of the founding member of Bay Area outspoken word group The Molotov Mouths and is the curator and host of the long running monthly Chicano/Latinx reading series, Speaking Axolotl. This year he had the honor of being one of the recipients of the 2021 San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Award and also had his first book of poems Baby Axolotls & Old Pochos published by Black Freighter Press.
Tongo Eisen Martin
San Francisco native, Tongo Eisen-Martin is a poet, movement worker, and educator. His latest curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. His book titled, Someone's Dead Already was nominated for a California Bookstore Award. His book Heaven Is All Goodbyes was published by the City Lights Pocket Poets series, was shortlisted for the Griffins Poetry Prize and won a California Book Award and an American Book Award. His latest book Blood On The Fog was released this fall in the City Lights Pocket Poets series and named one of the New York Times poetry books of the year. In 2020, he co-founded Black Freighter Press to publish revolutionary works. He is San Francisco’s eighth poet laureate.
Maya Nell
"Maya Nell” is the current stage name and creative outlet for Mutooro and Southern artist, Abwoli Maya Nell Murungi Kairumba Burke. Through instrumentation, prose, lyricism, and vulnerable storytelling, their work contributes to expansive conversations about sexuality, grief & loss, queer & trans kinship, gender identity, racialized identities, interracial relationships, decolonizing praxis, ecological collapse, and tangible solidarity with Indigenous sovereignty and Black liberation movements. Their introduction to music was through traditional Ugandan music, through listening to Billie Holiday on Sunday mornings cleaning with their mother, and humming to John Prine late at night with their father. Maya grew up with a mother who is proud of Tooro culture, and within a community in Kentucky that is passionate about Old Time Mountain music.
Kimi Sugioka (Curator)
Kimi Sugioka is a poet, songwriter, and educator. She is the current Poet Laureate for the City of Alameda, a post that includes creating platforms for the presentation of a diverse variety of poets and spoken-word artists. Kimi also performs her own work frequently throughout the Bay Area. Born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and raised in Berkeley, California, Kimi has worked in public education for decades, and earned her BA from San Francisco State University and MFA from the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
Fe Bongolan is a Bay Area visual and performing artist. She is an alumnae of San Francisco State University with a Bachelor’s degree in Crafts and Design. She found theater arts in her last year at SFSU, and to this day it consumes her life. After working as an actress with Asian American Theater Company and Teatro Campesino, in 1992 she began work with the Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women, immediately involved as an artist from the community working alongside Rhodessa Jones in helping women inmates from San Francisco County Jail write their stories for performance. In 28 years with the Medea Project, Fe developed as actor, writer, dramaturge and assistant director to Rhodessa, helping inmates and ex-offenders find their voice and develop their writing for performance in jail, the community and main stage.