IlluminAsia | Asia After Dark - Words in All Forms

Registration in advance recommended but not required. Some activities have a limited capacity, with entry on a first come, first served basis. All activities will take place in the Freer Gallery of Art.

Join us for an afterhours style program as part of NMAA’s annual IlluminAsia festival in celebration of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month!

Gather and unwind from the long work week with spoken word, poetry, DJ sets, comedy, activations, and a performance.

• 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. – DJ set
• 6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. – Poetry/Spoken Word
• 7:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. – DJ set
• 8:30 p.m. - 9:15 p.m. – Wrizzards performance

PERFORMERS

Regie Cabico (Emcee/Poet/Storyteller) is the first Asian American to win the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam and is a three-time National Poetry Slam Finalist. He is the lead spoken word poetry educator at The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Television credits include The Poet Speaks, HBO's Def Poetry Jam, NPR's Snap Judgement, and TEDx Talk. He's received several fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Ford Foundation, and the DC Commission for the Arts. He is a former NYU Asian Pacific Studies Arts in Residence and is the recipient of a New York Innovative Theater Award. He is the author of A Rabbit in Search of a Rolex (Day Eight, 2023).

Thu Anh Nguyen is a Vietnamese writer, artist, activist, and educator whose work centers around equity and justice. Thu is currently on the National Staff of SEED (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity). The National SEED Project partners with communities, institutions, and schools to develop leaders who guide their peers in conversational communities to drive personal, institutional, and societal change toward social justice.

Thu has taught English, Creative Writing, and History for almost twenty years, most recently at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC. Thu Anh has led workshops and writes essays about cultural competence and literacy. She is also a published poet. Her writing has been published in Literacy Today, the Southern Humanities Review, the Cider Press Review, and the Crab Orchard Review. She has been honored with a Writing Residency from the InnerLoop Writers Series in Washington, DC. When she is not teaching or writing, Thu Anh is also a watercolor painter and calligrapher who paints large-scale floral powers for social justice movements such as Black Lives Matter and Say Her Name.

Sunu P. Chandy (she/her) is a social justice activist, including through her work as a poet and a civil rights attorney. She is the daughter of immigrants from Kerala, India, and currently lives in DC with her family. Her award-winning collection of poems, My Dear Comrades, was published by Regal House. Sunu is currently a Senior Advisor with Democracy Forward, and on the board of the Transgender Law Center. Sunu has been included as one of the Washington Blade’s Queer Women of Washington.

Ishanee Chanda is a prose writer and poet from Dallas, Texas. She is the author of two poetry books titled "Oh, these walls, they crumble" and "The Overflow." Additionally, she has been published in the Eckleberg Project, Stoked Words: A Queer Anthology, Z Publishing House’s Emerging Texas Writers, Flypaper Magazine, OutWrite Journal, the ASP Bulletin, and Apricity Press. Ishanee currently resides in Washington, D.C., where she works full-time in the field of humanitarian aid and refugee response. She enjoys playing badminton in the summer, singing loudly to Taylor Swift, and spending time in Brookland with her little family.

Nico Penaranda is a Filipino-American writer and musician from Washington, D.C. He currently teaches at Howard University. He graduated from AU’s MFA in Creative Writing Program in 2022. Recent publications appear in Day Eight, Brigid Gate Publishing, Mistake House Publishing, Gardy Loo, The Keezel Review, and Z Publishing.

Swetha Ramesh began performing comedy in 2023 to stop stress-baking weekly pans of shortbread. A graduate of Grassroots Comedy’s stand-up incubator program, they now deliver tongue-in-cheek punchlines at some of the city’s best-known stages, including Union Stage, DC Comedy Loft, Busboys & Poets, DC Public Library and As You Are. Outside of stand-up, you can find them performing hairbrush karaoke, consuming way too many bagels, and dreaming of a better tax bracket.

Joe Yuke is a DC-based comedian who began his stand-up career while attending college in southern California. He has opened for several headlining comedians from the LA area as a member of his campus’s comedy club and has since performed on shows all over the West Coast and the DMV area. On stage, Joe leverages his analytical personality and unique perspective to tell a blend of personal stories and witty observations about life, love, and silly internet trends.

Washington Rizzards (also known as WRIZZARDS) are a Filipino multi-genre musical collective of independent artists consisting of members: J Matty, Bema Tadey, LEIF, and Tina Carzon - all based in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia region. They've opened for major Filipino artists such as Billy Crawford, Jay R, Kris Lawrence, Ben&Ben, Silent Sanctuary, Moira Dela Torre, HappySlip, and more. They were also featured on notable platforms such as Billboard PH, NYLON Manila, Wish Bus, Washington Post, Washington City Paper, and MYX Global.

Join us for the rest of the month to continue celebrating the IlluminAsia festival!
Bank of America is the Founding Sponsor of the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art “IlluminAsia” Arts and Culture Festival.

Host or Publisher Freer and Sackler Galleries