I grew up on the border of Harlem and Washington Heights, as well as in Ecuador and the Dominican Republic. I come from a poor and extraordinary family, who taught me how to laugh through any tears. We lived our tragedies out loud and suffered the consequences. We are dreamers and spirit-workers of the most everyday kind, and devoted believers that anything is possible, always.

I am both young and old, retired and emerging, fearless and terrified. I create poems, essays, stories, altars, photographs. I create new ways of perceiving. I create opportunities for the unwavering reverence of the self and the sincere respect for others. I know what it's like to have a numb body, a psychic mind, and a yearning heart. Yo soy mestiza, indigena, una bruja, una puta— an intellectual. I am looking for a space in the world where I can be all of these things and I am inspired to create this space in my art.

I am a two-time VONA Voices Fellow, the recipient of a Poets 11 Award, and the creator of a chapbook of poetry by people in the sex trade titled, Places of Eclipse. I have been published in LIES: A Journal of Materialist Feminism, as well as the blog The Body Is Not An Apology, and have completed a writing residency at Hedgebrook.

My photography and altar installations, have been on exhibit at SOMArts in San Francisco and Lucas Lucas in Brooklyn, as well as at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in Manhattan. Most recently my work was displayed at the 2020 Sex Worker’s Pop-up exhibition in Manhattan. 

While my art explores many themes, it is the contentious messy reality of being a woman that keeps my creative interest.

Siempre hay una nueva oportunidad

I long for the possibility of a better us.

Artist Resume

Pluma Sumaq is an emerging writer, photographer and installation artist. She currently lives in California and is working on her first memoir. 

Publications 

2016 Online Article, Uprooting Whorephobia: Why We Must Change the Stigma of Sex Work, The Body Is Not An Apology

2015 Print Essay, A Disgrace Reserved for Prostitutes: Complicity & the Beloved Community, LIES Vol II, AK Press

Exhibitions 

2020 Group exhibition, Sex Workers’ Pop-Up, The Atrium, New York, NY

2019 Group, exhibition, On Our Backs: The Revolutionary Art of Queer Sex Work Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York, NY

2017 Group exhibition, El Derecho, We’re Still Working: The Art of Sex Work, SOMArts, San Francisco, CA

2011 Co-curated, INTERSECTION: Stories through art by sex workers of color, Galería de la Raza, San Francisco, CA

Awards & Residencies 

2018 Writing Residency, Hedgebrook, Whidbey Island, WA

2010 Poets 11 Award, San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco, CA

Writing Workshops 

2017 VONA Voices, Philadelphia, PA

2017 Hedgebrook Vortex, Whidbey Island, WA

2017 Las Dos Brujas, San Francisco, CA

2016 VONA Voices, Miami, FL

2016 Interdisciplinary Writers Lab, San Francisco, CA

Studied writing under: 

Elmaz Abinader

Kiese Laymon

Regina Louise 

Brynn Saito

Ronaldo Wilson

Xochiquetzal Candelaria 

Studied photography under: 

Michael Kawano