Artists Archive
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C Davida Ingram is an award-winning artist who is passionate about beauty and social justice. Her primary subjects are race, gender, and social relationships. Ingram’s impulse is to imagine tactics to get free—not further prescribing Otherness. With this in mind, she uses unorthodox mediums—Craigslist ads, hypnosis, drones, cell phone videos among other things to reshape what is possible in her own identification with being a black queer woman. Her art has been shown at the Frye Art Museum, Northwest African American Museum, Evergreen College, Bridge Productions, Intiman Theater, Town Hall and more. Her writings have been included in Monday, Arcade, Ms blog, James Franco Review and The Stranger. Ingram received the 2014 Stranger Genius Award in Visual Arts. She is a 2016 Neddy art award finalist. She is a former 2016 Kennedy Center Citizen Artist fellow and was recently voted both one of the “20 most talented and most influential people in Seattle” by Seattle Magazine. She is recent Jacob Lawrence fellow at the University of Washington and the winner of the Museum of Northwest Luminary Award in Innovative media.
Learn moreEileen Isagon Skyers has worked with contemporary art and nonprofit arts organizations including the Whitney Museum, David Zwirner, Rhizome, the New Museum, Frame Contemporary Art Finland, PICA, and the Digital Museum of Digital Art (DiMoDA). Her first book, Vanishing Acts, was published by LINK Editions (Brescia, Italy) in 2015, and her writing has been published in the New Museum Catalogue Trigger: Gender as a Tool and Weapon, NATASHA, Wreath, Glass Press of the Future, Web Safe 2k16, Printed Web, and New World UNLTD, among others. Her moving image work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in the U.S., U.K., France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Mexico. Skyers holds a BA in philosophy and a BFA in studio art from the University of South Florida (Tampa, FL) and an MA in critical studies from Pacific Northwest College of Art (Portland, OR).
Learn moreExplode into Colors is a band from Portland that won’t do it unless it’s fun. Heather Treadway, Claudia Meza, and Lisa Schonberg play heavy rhythms, pulsing bass, and melodic echo that has been described as “gritty dance-punk,” “the late-night love child of Fela Kuti and ESG,” and “completely unclassifiable.” Whether performing in basements, living rooms, galleries, or stages, their intention is to positively affect their audience with music that will make them dance. They are fond of celebrations and collaborations with talented local artists that have inspired them. They are also known to make clothes, videos, pictures of all kinds, and studies of insects.
Learn moreGarrick Imatani is an artist who uses performance, functional objects, or interaction to draw attention to one’s embodied subjectivity. Working across sculpture, photography, video, and installation, recent projects focus on reimagining racialized historical erasures into more believable and inspired futures. Past works have included collaborating with illegally-surveilled activists to readjust city archives, re-enacting labor on the transcontinental railroad, and working with the Grand Ronde tribe to replicate their sacred meteorite held at the American Museum of Natural History.
Learn moreIbrahim was born in Dallas, Texas and lived there for 11 years before moving to Oregon. His parents immigrated from Sudan a few months before he was born. He is a student at the Oregon Islamic academy and is involved in several local organizations. He started an initiative in which ethnic minority students in a Portland public school were given disposable cameras to express their cultures and identities through photography, and started a photography pen pal program with a local non-profit, Yo Ghana!. He is the coordinator of GPSEN's (Greater Portland Sustainability Education Network) Youth Network, initiating local efforts to promote sustainability, including economic sustainability. Late in 2016 he presented on this Youth Network in Indonesia at the Global RCE Conference, a United Nations University initiative on Sustainable Development. He is also a youth adviser for the Young Leaders in Action of the World Affairs Council. Ibrahim has a passion for language learning and is fluent in Arabic.
Learn moreMisevičiūtė is a performing artist and curator, she has performed in such venues as The Kitchen, New York; dOCUMENTA(13), Kassel; de Appel art center, Amsterdam; Center Pompidou, Paris; Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius; and Performa 09 at Swiss Institute, New York.
Selected Press
"Dream Catcher," Kate Sutton, Artforum, September 1, 2012
Learn moreIlana Harris-Babou's (New York, NY) work is interdisciplinary, spanning sculpture and installation, but grounded in video. She speaks the aspirational language of consumer culture, mimicking cooking shows, music videos, and home improvement television, among others. She has exhibited work throughout the US and Europe. She holds an MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University, and a BA in Art from Yale University. Illana Harris Babou Website
Learn moreIntisar Abioto is an artist working across photography, dance, and writing. Moving from the visionary and embodied root of Blackgirl Southern cross-temporal cross-modal storytelling ways, her works refer to the living breath/breadth of people of African descent against the expanse of their storied, geographic, and imaginative landscapes.
Learn moreIsabella Saavedra lives and works in Portland, OR. She originally hails from rural Northern California. Saavedra received her BS in Studio Art from Southern Oregon University in 2020 and began her MFA in Visual Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Fall 2025. Saavedra received a 2024 Career Opportunity Grant from Oregon Arts Commission, as well as consecutive Arts3C Grants from Regional Arts and Culture Council in 2023 and 2024. She has attended residencies at ATNSC: Center for Healing & Creative Leadership in Cleveland, OH, and p:ear in Portland, OR. Her exhibition record includes the Newport Visual Arts Center and Portland Center Stage. Most recently, she completed Understory, a permanent large-scale public art installation commissioned by the City of Portland’s Percent for Art in Public Places Program at the Mt. Scott Community Center.
Learn moreConsistently delivering a jaw-dropping performance experience, ISAIAH ESQUIRE is intensely emotive, athletic, and explosive, exhibiting an impressive and unique array of disciplines. He is most known for his mastery of face, character, intricate lip-sync, and absolute connection. A seasoned dancer/instructor/choreographer/creative director and internationally acclaimed entertainer, ISAIAH has over 13 years of professional experience. From studios to classrooms, universities to international festivals, ISAIAH instructs classes ranging from Hip-Hop to Jazz, African to Ballroom, Twerking to Heel-o-graphy, and more. The one consistent aspect to any Isaiah Esquire class is the confidence and self-awareness/acceptance that he inspires in his students.
Over the past year, in addition to joining the cast of the Super-Star Divas Megashow @ CC Slaughters, this powerhouse entertainer has been touring the country with Portland’s own gender fluid cabaret troupe, the Caravan of Glam, referred to by America’s Got Talent scouts as one of the top 10 traveling queer performance groups in the country. ISAIAH has been featured in multiple music videos (including “9inch Heels” By DJ Beyonda Doubt, “Quicksand” by Acoustic Minds, and “Put Em Up” By Priory). He has also appeared in film documentaries, magazines, websites, and even comic books.
You can catch ISAIAH and his partner, JOHNNY NURIEL, on stage and in life, headlining as their duo IZOHNNY every first Thursday for the mostly male spectacular: BOYeurism @ the Star Theater, a show created and produced by Isaiah himself.
ISAIAH continues to break down barriers of gender, sexuality, culture, and age. As a teacher he invites you to join in this movement and witness the magic as he shows you limitlessness self-expression through fearless art.
Learn moreJamie Isenstein was born in Portland, Oregon in 1975, and lives and works in New York City.. She has presented her work in exhibitions including It is what it is. Or is it?, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX (2012); MakeUp, A Palazzo Gallery, Brescia, Italy (2012); Liverpool Biennial: Touched, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, UK (2010); Marina Abramovic Presents, Manchester International Festival, Manchester, UK (2009); One Minute More, The Kitchen, New York (2009); Hammer Projects: Jamie Isenstein: This Way to The Egress, The Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles (2007); Greater New York 2005, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2005). Her work is represented by Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York and Meyer Riegger in Berlin/Karlsruhe, Germany.
Selected Press
"The Lady Vanishes," Robin Tovey, Reed Magazine, March 2012.
Learn moreMia Imani is an international interdisciplinary artivist (art + activist) and arts writer based in Berlin, Germany. She creates and curates liminal spaces that invite Black and Brown communities to heal individual and communal trauma through conscious (daydreaming, visualization) and subconscious (lucid, REM sleep) dreaming. These works aim to center the agency of marginalized communities and use dreams as a portal to manifest alternative past(s), present(s), and future(s). She received her BA in media communications studies from the University of Washington and is completing her master’s degree in North American Culture and Literature studies at Freie Universität in Berlin, Germany.
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
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