Artists Archive
vanessa german is a self-taught citizen artist working across sculpture, performance, communal rituals, immersive installation, and photography, in order to repair and reshape disrupted systems, spaces, and connections. The artist’s practice proposes new models for social healing, utilizing creativity and tenderness as vital forces to reckon with the historical and ongoing catastrophes of structural racism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, resource extraction, and misogynoir.
A visual storyteller, german utilizes assemblage and mixed media, combining locally found objects to build protective ritualistic structures known as her power figures or tar babies. Modeled on Congolese Nkisi sculptures and drawing on folk art practices, they are embellished with materials including beading, glass, fabric, and sculpted wood, and come into existence at the axis on which Black power, spirituality, mysticism and feminism converge.
Based in Homewood, Pittsburgh, german’s artistic practice is intertwined with and inextricable from her dedicated role in activism and community leadership. In 2011, german founded the Love Front Porch, an arts initiative for the women, children, and families of the local neighborhood that began after she moved her studio practice onto the front steps of her home. Three years later, in 2014, german opened the ARThouse, which combines a community studio, a large garden, an outdoor theatre, and an artist residency.
Upholding artmaking as an act of restorative justice, german confronts and begins to dismantle the emotional and spiritual weight imposed by the multi-generational oppression of African American communities. As a queer Black woman living in the United States, german has described this as a deeply necessary process of adventuring into the wild freedom that the inhabitation of such identities demands. This activist instinct emerges in german’s work to postulate powerful narratives of freedom and love.
german has been awarded the 2015 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant, the 2017 Jacob Lawrence Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2018 United States Artist Grant and, most recently, the 2018 Don Tyson Prize from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Her work is held in private and public collections including the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the West Virginia University Museum, Everson Museum of Art, Figge Art Museum, Flint Institute of Arts, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, David C. Driskell Center, Snite Museum of Art, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, and Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College. german’s fine art work has been exhibited widely, most recently at the Figge Art Museum, The Union for Contemporary Art, The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia, Flint Institute of Arts, Mattress Factory, Everson Museum of Art, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Studio Museum, Ringling Museum of Art and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Learn moreVivian Phillips is Director of Marketing and Communications for Seattle Theatre Group, the largest performing arts organization in the Puget Sound Region, where she serves as chief spokesperson and oversees all marketing and communication functions for more than 750 annual events presented by STG. Vivian chairs the Seattle Arts Commission and previously served as Director of Communications to Seattle Mayor Paul Schell, overseeing citywide public information and emergency operations communications functions including WTO.
As a seasoned broadcast professional, Vivian produces and hosts award-winning arts programming for King County television, and previously hosted public affairs programs for the ABC and PBS affiliates in Seattle. She regularly hosts/moderates live conversations, most recently moderating a conversation with best-selling author Ta-Nehisi Coates for a sold out crowd of 2900. Other noted interviews/conversations, live and for television, include: Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee, Sherman Alexie, Magic Johnson, Charles Johnson, Alex Rodriquez, Mechell Ndegeocello, Dan Savage, Terry McMillan, Jesmyn Ward, Gloria Steinem, Eve Ensler, Congressman John Lewis, among others.
Vivian has represented the Seattle Theatre Group to the Africa Consortium for 11 years.
Learn moreWa Na Wari is committed to the ideas of Black artists from all over the diaspora and partnering with TBA in 2021 offers us the opportunity to work even more closely with Black femme artists who are lifting up Black joy, Black resistance, and Black power.
TBA has long been the reason Seattlietes have traveled down the I-5 corridor to experience performance art from all over the world. This year is no different. Our work together will be to hold space for intense conversations about Black land and autonomy, Black bodies and historical erasure, all while combating the physiological and psychological effects of gentrification on Black people all over the Northwest
Learn moreWendy Red Star was born in Billings, Montana just outside of the Crow Indian reservation where she was raised. She grew up in a multi-cultural family. Her mother is of Irish decent, her father a full blood Crow Indian and her older sister is Korean. Wendy left the Crow Indian reservation when she was eighteen to attend Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana where she studied sculpture. She then went on to earn her MFA in sculpture at UCLA. Wendy has worked as an adjunct professor of fine art at Portland State University for five and a half years. In 2012 to 2013 Wendy was the manger of Chief Plenty Coups State Park located within the Crow Indian Reservation in south-central Montana. The park preserves the log home, sacred spring, museum, and farmstead of Chief Plenty Coups and is a National Historic Landmark. Wendy is currently the Program Associate for the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation.
Wendy Red Star’s work explores the intersection between life on the Crow Indian reservation and the world outside of that environment. She thinks of herself as a Crow Indian cultural archivist speaking sincerely about the experience of being a Crow Indian in contemporary society.
Her work has been shown at the Missoula Museum of the Arts, Missoula, MT, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City, UT, Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, MN, Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis, IN, Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM, The Fondation Cartier L’Art Contemporain, Paris, France, The CSULB gallery, Long Beach, CA, Research & Development, Chicago, IL, The Museum Tower at MOCA, Los Angeles, CA, And/Or gallery, Dallas, TX, The UCLA New Wight gallery, Los Angeles, CA, The L.A. Municipal Art gallery, Los Angeles, CA, The Domaine De Kerguehennc, Brittany, France, The Hudson D. Walker gallery, Provincetown, MA, The Plush Gallery, Dallas TX, The Laura Bartlett Gallery, London, England, The Luckman gallery, Los Angeles, CA,The Volitant gallery, Austin, Texas, Eiteljorg Museum of Native American & Western Fine Art, Yellowstone Art Museum, and Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. Studio Visit with Wendy Red Star in Portland Oregon from Amelia winger-bearskin on Vimeo.
Learn moreWill Rawls is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses choreography, dance, video, sculpture, works on paper, and installation. Rawls is best known for his choreographic work that employs repetition to explore the limits of language and gesture as tools for staging performances of black presence and becoming. Rawls has created a solo exhibition for Adams + Ollman Gallery (2022) and a multi-part installation at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, Everlasting Stranger (2021), as well as presenting work at the Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum, Performa 15, Danspace Project, The Chocolate Factory Theater, High Line Art, REDCAT, the 10th Berlin Biennale, and the Hessel Museum at Bard College. He has received fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, The Alpert Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Mellon Foundation, United States Artists, the Rauschenberg Foundation, Creative Capital, New England Foundation for the Arts, National Performance Network, MAP Fund, the MacDowell Colony, Headlands Center for the Arts, and Movement Research. Rawls recently joined UCLA’s Department of World Arts and cultures/Dance as an Associate Professor of Choreography. In 2016, Rawls co-curated Lost and Found—six weeks of performances at Danspace Project that addressed the intergenerational impact of HIV/AIDS. His writing has been published by the Hammer Museum, MoMA, Museu de Arte de São Paolo, Dancing While Black Journal, Brooklyn Rail, and Artforum.
Learn more at will-rawls.com
Learn moreYemenwed is a collaborative project series, which brings together an expansive cast of artists from varied disciplines. Through video, performance, sculpture, and musical instrumentation, Yemenwed explores abstracted concepts of displacement and detachment, fluid identity, domesticity, and the peripheral. Yemenwed has participated in exhibitions and performances at MoMA P.S.1, Performa 09, Fake Estate Gallery, 179 Canal, John Connelly Presents, and Gavin Brown's Passerby. Their publications have been distributed by Ooga Booga (Los Angeles), Printed Matter (New York), Quimby's (Chicago), United Bamboo (Tokyo), and Midway Contemporary Art (Minnesota).
Selected Press
Yemenwed's Fantasy Architecture, Michael Bullock, Interview Magazine, December 1, 2008.
Art Collective Yemenwed Visits Mars, Emma Pearse, New York Magazine, November 25, 2008.
Learn moreYosimar Reyes is a nationally-acclaimed Poet and Public Speaker. Born in Guerrero, Mexico, and raised in Eastside San Jose, Reyes explores the themes of migration and sexuality in his work. The Advocate named Reyes one of “13 LGBT Latinos Changing the World” and Remezcla included Reyes on their list of “10 Up And Coming Latinx Poets You Need To Know.”
His first collection of poetry, For Colored Boys Who Speak Softly… was self-published after a collaboration with the legendary Carlos Santana. His work has also been published in various online journals and books including Mariposas: An Anthology of Queer Modern Latino Poetry (Floricanto Press), Queer in Aztlán: Chicano Male Recollections of Consciousness and Coming Out (Cognella Press), and the forthcoming Joto: An Anthology of Queer Xicano & Chicano Poetry (Kórima Press). Reyes was featured in the Documentary, “2nd Verse: The Rebirth of Poetry.”
He is a LAMBDA Literary Fellow as well as the recipient of the Undocupoets Fellowship. Reyes previously served as Artist-in-Residence at the media and culture organization, Define American.
Reyes has toured and presented at university campuses across the United States. He is currently working on his one-man show, “Prieto,” to premiere in the near future. Reyes holds a B.A in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University.
Learn moreYOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES is yhchang.com. It is also Young-hae Chang and Marc Voge. They have made work in 17 languages and presented much of it in major art institutions, including Tate London; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the New Museum, New York. Selected Press "DISTANCE, HOMELESSNESS, ANONYMITY, AND INSIGNIFICANCE": AN INTERVIEW WITH YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES", Thom Swiss, The Iowa Review, December 15, 2002. Interview with Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Hyun-Joo Yoo, dichtung-digital, February, 2005. Selected Video
Learn moreYOUNG JEAN LEE (Artistic Director) is an OBIE award-winning playwright and director who has been called “the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation” by the New York Times and “one of the best experimental playwrights in America” by Time Out New York. She has written and directed nine shows in New York with Young Jean Lee's Theater Company and toured her work to over twenty cities around the world. Her plays have been published by Theatre Communications Group (Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven and Other Plays, The Shipment and Lear) and by Samuel French (Three Plays by Young Jean Lee). She is currently under commission from Plan B/Paramount Pictures, Lincoln Center Theater, Playwrights Horizons, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She is a member of New Dramatists and 13P and has an MFA from Mac Wellman's playwriting program at Brooklyn College. She has received grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Creative Capital, NYFA, NEA, NYSCA, the Jerome Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, and the Rockefeller MAP Foundation. She is also the recipient of two OBIE awards, the Festival Prize of the Zuercher Theater Spektakel, a 2010 Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2012 Doris Duke Artist Award.
Learn moreZoe Scofield (she/her) is a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow and a dance and visual artist based in Seattle, WA, and Los Angeles, CA. Zoe is the co-artistic director and founder with Juniper Shuey of zoe | juniper, a dance and visual art company since 2005. Her work has been commissioned and presented by Jacob’s Pillow, New York Live Arts, Portland Institute for Contemporary Arts, On the Boards, RedCat, MASS MoCA, The Frye Art Museum, The Joyce Theater, PS 122, Carolina Performing Arts, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. Zoe works in performance, video installation, photography, opera, and film. She has received funding from the Mellon Foundation, the Princess Grace Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the National Performance Network, and more. Zoe’s current piece, Tell the truth and shame the devil, is a live dance and music collaboration with Xiu Xiu. Zoe has an MFA in Dance from the University of the Arts.
Learn moreZvonimir Dobrovic is the founder and artistic director of Domino, one of the major independent art NGOs in Croatia. In that capacity he is responsible for curating several festivals in Croatia and internationally – most notably Perforations – week of live art and Queer Zagreb. Through different platforms he curates over 100 performances annually, staged all over the world, many of them commissions and produced specifically for these and other festivals. He has served on numerous panels and boards, juries and committees in the field of performing arts and film. Zvonimir has also edited dozens of books, magazines and written articles on performance. He regularly holds lectures and workshops on curating and art management.
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