Artists Archive
M
Carlos Motta | Photo by Cory Rice
Carlos Motta’s (b. 1978, Colombia) multi-disciplinary art practice documents the social conditions and political struggles of sexual, gender, and ethnic minority communities in order to challenge dominant and normative discourses through visibility and self-representation. His work manifests in a variety of mediums including video, installation, sculpture, drawing, web-based projects, performance, and symposia.
Motta's work was the subject of the survey exhibitions Carlos Motta: Formas de libertad at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín (MAMM), Colombia (2017) that traveled to Matucana 100, Santiago, Chile (2018); and Carlos Motta: For Democracy There Must Be Love, Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden (2015). His solo exhibitions at international museums include, The Crossing (2017), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Histories for the Future (2016), Pérez Art Museum (PAMM), Miami; Réquiem (2016), Museo de Arte Latinoamericano the Buenos Aires (MALBA) (2016); Patriots, Citizens, Lovers (2015), PinchukArtCentre, Kiev; Gender Talents (2013), Tate Modern, London; La forma de la libertad (2013), Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, Mexico; We Who Feel Differently (2012), New Museum, New York; Brief History (2009), MoMA/PS1, New York; and The Good Life (2008), Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Philadelphia; among others.
In 2020, Motta will participate in the 11th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art and the Yerevan Biennial, and he will have solo exhibitions at Mary Porter Sesnon Gallery—University of California Santa Cruz, and at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA).
Carlos Motta’s first 20-year career monograph, Carlos Motta: History’s Back Rooms was published by SKIRA in June 2020. He won the Vilcek Foundation’s Prize for Creative Promise (2017); the PinchukArtCentre’s Future Generation Art Prize (2014); and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2008).
Motta received grants from Art Matters (2008), NYSCA (2010), Creative Capital, and the Kindle Project (2012).He was appointed tenure-track Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Practice at Pratt Institute’s Fine Arts Department in 2019.
Learn moreConsidered one of the most influential contemporary American artists, Carrie Mae Weems has investigated family relationships, cultural identity, sexism, class, political systems, and the consequences of power. Determined as ever to enter the picture—both literally and metaphorically—Weems has sustained an on-going dialogue within contemporary discourse for over thirty years. During this time, Carrie Mae Weems has developed a complex body of art employing photographs, text, fabric, audio, digital images, installation, and video.
In a New York Times review of her retrospective, Holland Cotter wrote, “Ms. Weems is what she has always been, a superb image maker and a moral force, focused and irrepressible."
Weems has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions at major national and international museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Frist Center for Visual Art, Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Seville, Spain.
Weems has received numerous awards, grants, and fellowships, including the prestigious Prix de Roma, The National Endowment of the Arts, The Alpert, The Anonymous was a Woman, and The Tiffany Awards. In 2012, Weems was presented with one of the first US Department of State’s Medals of Arts in recognition for her commitment to the State Department’s Art in Embassies program.
In 2013 Weems received the MacArthur “Genius” grant as well as the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award. She has also received the BET Honors Visual Artist award, the Lucie Award for Fine Art photography, was one of four artists honored at the Guggenheim’s 2014 International Gala, a recipient of the ICP Spotlights Award from the International Center of Photography, The WEB Dubois Award from Harvard University, as well as Honorary Degrees from: California College of the Arts, Colgate University, Bowdoin College, the School of Visual Arts and Syracuse University.
She is represented in public and private collections around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museum of Modern Art, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and The Tate Modern, London.
Weems has been represented by Jack Shainman Gallery since 2008, and is currently Artist in Residence at the Park Avenue Armory. She lives in Syracuse, New York, with her husband Jeffrey Hoone who is Executive Director of Light Work.
Learn moreDorothée Munyaneza (Marseille, France) is a singer, writer and choreographer who spent her childhood in Rwanda. Her style of creating and performing on stage is directly inspired by what life has so intensely given her. Her artistic research draws from the diversity of her cultural heritage but more so by her appetite for encounters. In all her projects, the human dimension is especially of great importance. Her artistic curiosity and interest for a dialogue between music and other modes of expression blossomed through her participation in François Verret’s shows. In 2013, she created Compagnie Kadidi to start developing her own work, including “Samedi Détente,” her first work as a choreographer which has been presented 100 times touring all over Europe and in the USA.
Learn moreKatherine McDowell has practiced law in Portland since 1988. She started a women-owned law firm in 2006, McDowell Rackner Gibson PC, focusing on energy and environmental law. For the last 30 years, Katherine has volunteered as a civil rights lawyer and community advocate. In 2016, after the National Lawyers Guild trained her as a legal observer, Katherine started the ACLU of Oregon’s legal observer program. Based on her personal experiences as a legal observer, she co-authored comments on Portland Police Crowd Control Directives and advised on police reform legislation. In July 2021, Katherine was appointed to the Police Accountability Board, charged with implementing Measure 26-217. She served as one of the PAC’s rotating co-chairs and helped present the PAC’s recommendations in September 2023. Katherine is committed to advancing racial justice, disability rights, and community safety through robust police oversight and accountability.
Learn moreKimberly Stowers Moreland, MBA, MURP, is wife of Michael L. Moreland and the mother of four amazing young adults: Katherine, Mike Jr., Kristen, and Karina. She owns Moreland Resource Consulting and has over 25+ years of experience in the public sector, urban and historic preservation, community development, and urban planning in Portland, Tacoma, and Salem.
Moreland serves as the President of the Oregon Black Pioneers, and their mission is to preserve the history of Black Oregonians. On behalf of the Oregon Black Pioneers, she authored Images of America: African Americans of Portland (Arcadia Publisher). She is the Vice-Chair of the Portland Historic Landmark Commission and a member of the Portland Landmark Commission.
As a community historian, Kimberly began documenting Portland's Black history for over 30+ years. As a city planner with the City of Portland, she worked with the community advisory committee and local historians to produce the History of Portland's African-American History (1805 to the Present). She was on the project team that produced Cornerstones of Community: The Buildings of Portland's African American History, published in 1995. She was subsequently involved in the Multiple Property Documentation (MPD) history project, which builds on the Cornerstones research to produce African American Resources in Portland, Oregon, from 1851 to 1973. This research brings attention to sites related to Portland's Black history so they can be listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
As owner of Moreland Resource Consulting, Moreland worked with the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) and Home Forward, former the Housing Authority of Portland (HAP), to better understand how their past policies unjustly impacted African Americans. Since, 2021, she has teamed with the City of Portland and Architectural Resource Group (ARG) on successfully approval of four National Historic Landmark Register nominations significant to Portland's Black history, including Dean's Beauty and Barbershop, Mt. Olivet Baptist Church, Golden West Hotel, and Dr. John D. Marshall Building. In 2023, with Constructing Hope, Moreland co-authored Building Legacy: BIPOC Construction Trailblazers in Oregon, which highlighted twenty-three construction trade pioneers.
In 2023, she partnered with Robert Clark and Cleo Davis to establish Black Aesthetics Studio LLC (BAS). The firm explored how to unearth new aesthetics specific to African-American culture, experience, and identity.
Learn moreMac Smiff is a longtime journalist focused on Northwest culture for outlets such as The Oregonian, Portland Mercury, Vortex Music Magazine, and his own vehicle, We Out Here Magazine. Well known for holding police and government entities accountable, as well as his call to Defund The Police, his social justice activism has been chronicled by the New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, The Intercept, NPR, Rolling Stone, and others.
A professional problem solver, his hobbies include gardening and raising children who understand basketball analogies.
Learn moremadison moore is an artist, cultural critic, dj and performance-maker based in London and Berlin. His work touches pop culture, queer studies, nightlife, sound, media, visual culture and contemporary art. madison holds a ph.d. in american studies from yale university and is currently an ERC funded researcher in 'Modern Moves' in the Department of English at King's College London, where he is also the Director of the Queer@King's research centre.
madison's scholarly and popular writing has been published by The Creators Project, Splice Today, Thought Catalog, Out, Aperture, Interview, Art in America, Theater, The Journal of Popular Music Studies, Dancecult: the Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture and The Cambridge Companion to the Singer-songwriter. He has given invited lectures, held residencies and performed at universities, art galleries and nightclubs around the world, including King's College London, the University of Oxford, Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of St. Andrews, University College London, Reed College, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, CUNY Graduate Center, the Barbican, East Bloc (london), Elektrowerkz (London) and Performance Space Sydney. His first book, The Theory of the Fabulous Class: Creativity at the Margins, will be published by Yale University Press in 2018. He is currently working on a new project on club culture and creativity as well as an EP.
Learn moreMarc Bamuthi Joseph is an inaugural recipient of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship, the winner of the 2011 Alpert Award in Theater, and an inaugural recipient of the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award. He is the founding Program Director of the exemplary non-profit Youth Speaks, and is a co-founder of Life is Living, a national series of one day festivals designed to activate under-resourced parks through hip hop arts and focused environmental action. Mr. Joseph recently premiered the Creative Time commission “Black Joy in the Hour of Chaos” in New York’s Central Park, and is currently completing new works for the Chautauqua Symphony, the Philadelphia Opera and South Coast Repertory Theater while serving as Chief of Program and Pedagogy at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. His evening length piece “/peh-LO-tah/” has been commissioned by the Kennedy Center and will premiere at YBCA in the Fall of 2016.
Learn moreMaster Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr. is Black, Italian, Queer, Non-Binary, Neurodyvergent, and practices primarily in america. Their collaborative approach results in artwork by and for the people.
Stevenson’s practice has been dedicated to supporting young people ages 4 to 18 in developing the necessary skills to encourage advanced imaginative thinking and self-confident expression. In 2019 they developed the Afro Contemporary Art Class at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School which has had many forms since, including Afro Futurist February, and three years of Fred Hampton Summer Camp. Supporting community efforts as well, taking the shape of support for the effort to Save Dr. Martin Luther King School from being displaced by the expansion of Interstate 5 which has triggered the need to move Harriet Tubman Middle School. Stevenson is currently working in the Albina community to develop a Living Archive at Jefferson High School with students, community, and the architectural design team. Stevenson also has a robust portfolio of artist projects centering food and gathering around it, projects involving sculpture, drawing, and photography, and new work in collaboration with currently and formerly incarcerated folks. These include Tin Can Phone, a podcast all about life in and outside of prison, and Gallery Blue, a curation and exhibition project both of which are owned and operated by formerly incarcerated individuals. Stevenson pursues these professional and creative goals passionately because they believe that empowered and open-minded young people and communities are the best and most direct way toward ensuring a sustainable and prosperous future for all.
Learn moreMath Bass (Los Angeles, CA) received her MFA from UCLA. Recent solo exhibitions have been presented at PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, NY (2015); and Overduin & Co., Los Angeles (2014). Exhibitions of Bass’s work have been presented by Cooper Union, New York, NY (2015); Tanya Leighton, Berlin, Germany (2015); The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2014); White Flag Projects, Saint Louis, MO (2014); Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, NY (2014); Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm, Sweden (2014); and Silberkuppe, Berlin, Germany (2014).
Learn moreMaya Mikdashi (TBA:16 Guest Scholar) is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She received her PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University. Her current research/manuscript focuses on law, citizenship, secularity, religious conversion, sexual difference, and the war on terror. She has been a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow from 2014-2016 at Rutgers University, and a Faculty Fellow/Director of Graduate Studies, Center for Near Eastern Studies, New York University (2012-2014). She has published widely in journals including International Journal of Middle East Studies, Comparative Study of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, Gay and Lesbian Quarterly, and the American Indian Culture and Research Journal. She is a co-founding editor of Jadaliyya.com, co-director of the feature length documentary About Baghdad (2004) and co- founding member of filmmaking cooperative Quilting Point Productions. A film she co-conceptualized and co-wrote with Carlos Motta, Deseos, is screening at the 2016 TBA Festival.
Learn moreBorn in Johannesburg, South Africa, Moya trained in ballet under the direction of Dianne Sparks. She studied contemporary and African dance at the Tswhane University, and P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels. In 2003, she was nominated for a best dancer award at the “ITS” festival, and was awarded the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for dance at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, South Africa. In 2005, Moya became a member of the ROSAS Dance company. Moya has worked on commissions in India, China, Germany, South Africa, and Austria. Her latest work includes “Darling,” in collaboration with Igor Shyshko which premiered at Stuk Leuven, and “A_part” which premiered in Sommerszene Salzburg in 2015. She currently lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.
Learn moreRobert Mackey is an investigative journalist who joined Forensic Architecture in 2023. Before that, he was a senior writer at The Intercept and a reporter for The New York Times. His visual investigation of how Fox News and the Trump White House used deceptively edited video of Black Lives Matter protests to smear racial justice protesters won a Mirror Award in 2022.
Learn moreRoza Moshtaghi (Tehran/Iran) lives and works in Oslo. Her works are situated within the performing arts field as a choreographer and performer. Questions of how she, buildings, streets, nature, events, bodies, and objects in general react or adapt to structures have been crucial to most of her work. Roza holds an MA in choreography from Oslo National Academy of the Arts. She presents her works internationally and continues to develop projects with other artists, both as a collaborator and as a performer. Her most recent projects are Only Forever (2018), Flonch (2017), The Smell of Its Shirt (2016), Water Graffiti (2016).
Learn moreTiona Nekkia McClodden is a visual artist, filmmaker, and curator whose practice explores and critiques issues at the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. McClodden has exhibited and screened her work at many institutions and galleries, including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; The Museum of Modern Art; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and more recently, Performance Space New York. The recipient of many awards and fellowships, she most recently awarded the 2018-2019 Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism and won the 2017 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. McClodden also curated the exhibitions A Recollection. + Predicated. featured within Julius Eastman: That Which Is Fundamental, presented in collaboration with Bowerbird in Philadelphia in 2017 and The Kitchen in New York earlier this year.
Learn more