Artists Archive
R
Adee Roberson is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is a meditation on symbolism and texture. Synthesizing performance and installation, her work melds vibration and technicolor visions through paintings, video, and melodic compositions. These works offer a refracted timeline of black diasporic movement, weaving sonic and familial archives, with landscape, rhythm, and spirit.
They have exhibited and performed at numerous venues including, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Antenna Gallery, Project Row Houses, Palm Springs Art Museum, Human Resources , UTA Artist Space, NADA Miami, Contemporary Art Center New Orleans, MOCA Los Angeles, and Art Gallery of Ontario. Adee has been an Artist-In-Residence at Echo Park Film Center, Treehouse Lagos, and ACRE. She is a recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Cutting Edge Grant and the 2021 Los Angeles Artadia Award. She is based in Los Angeles, California.
Learn moreRotaru is a poet and journalist, and the author of two collections of poetry, including In a bed under a white sheet and Southern Lands. She has received numerous awards, including the Mihai Eminescu National Poetry Prize and The Bucharest Writer's Association Prize. Rotaru’s poetry frequently intersects with other artists and practices: she has participated in live poetry performances with jazz musicians and in train stations her first collection of poems dealt with the legacy of Frida Kahlo, and her current explorations involve collaborations with local dancers.
Learn moreAngel Robinson is a woman who wears many hats and is deeply passionate about impacting others through sport and life. A former WNBA and international professional basketball player, she carries the lessons of discipline, resilience, and teamwork into everything she does today.
Outside of her professional role, Angel co-owns a basketball training program where she develops young athletes—teaching not just skills, but confidence, work ethic, and character. She is also involved in her community through coaching, officiating, and mentoring, with a special focus on empowering young girls to find their voice and thrive in sports.
Grounded in faith, family, and purpose, Angel is committed to inspiring the next generation and creating meaningful impact both on and off the court.
Learn moreGray and Paulsen are artists who live and work collaboratively. Their idea-based practice fuses history, fiction, autobiography, and artistic commentary into a wide variety of material works. Their work has been shown and published internationally. They live and work in Portland, where they are represented by PDX Contemporary Art.
Selected Press
Anna Gray & Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Nat Andreini, Shift.jp, June, 2011.
Review: Anna Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen at PDX Gallery, DK Row, The Oregonian, July 15, 2010.
Learn moreAnthony Hudson is a Grand Ronde/Siletz artist and writer also known as Carla Rossi, Portland's premier drag clown. Hudson’s performance work—from his award-winning solo show Looking for Tiger Lily to Queer Horror at the Hollywood Theatre—have earned him national fellowships, international engagements including the US Pavilion’s drag clown in residence at the 2024 Venice Biennale, features in Hyperallergic and Art in America, and sainthood from the Portland Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. A 2023 FSG Writer’s Fellowship finalist and 2024 Tin House resident, Hudson’s writing has appeared in American Theatre, BOMB Magazine, and Arts and International Affairs. Hudson is currently adapting Looking for Tiger Lily into a book.
Learn moreCombining spontaneous off the cuff wit and well-written punches to the gut, Anthony's comedy can best be described as Chuck D and Flavor Flav in one person. Beginning stand up in Kansas City, MO at 21, he left the Midwest to further pursue comedy and hasn't looked back since.
Worked with comedians like Ty Barnett, Aparna Nancherla, Rory Scovel, Amy Miller, Aamer Rahman, Baron Vaughn, Curtis Cook, Neel Nanda, JohnRoy, just to name a few.
Credits include Bumpershoot, NW Comedy Festival, Seattle International Competition, NBC Stand Up for Diversity
Learn moreBrian Rogers is a theater and film director, video and sound artist, and performing arts curator. Since 1997, Rogers has created films, performances, albums, and other time-based projects including Small Songs (2023-2024); Screamers (2018); Hot Box (2012, co-presented with FIAF’s Crossing The Line Festival, PS122’s COIL Festival, Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center and supported by a MAP Fund grant); and the Bessie-nominated Selective Memory (2010). Rogers composed the soundtrack for Shaun Iron & Lauren Petty’s film Standing By: Gatz Backstage and has collaborated as a sound and video artist with numerous experimental dance and theater artists in New York and elsewhere. Rogers is a MacDowell Fellow and has had residencies at Yaddo and Mount Tremper Arts.
Rogers is the Co-Founder and Artistic Executive Director of The Chocolate Factory Theater, an internationally recognized venue for experimental dance, theater, and interdisciplinary performance based in Queens, NY. Now in its twenty-second year, Rogers serves as chief curator of The Chocolate Factory Theater’s artistic programming and leads its artistic and administrative operations.
Rogers has taught at Kenyon College, University of Michigan, University of Colorado, The School at The Art Institute of Chicago, St. Johns University, Carnegie Mellon University, Sarah Lawrence College, The New School, New York University, Princeton University, and others. He has served as a panelist/recommender for New York State Council on the Arts, Queens Council on the Arts, Fresh Tracks, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Creative Capital, Pew Charitable Trust, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, Yaddo, Macdowell, MacArthur Foundation, Guggenheim, and others. Rogers is a graduate of Bennington College.
Learn moreBorn in Cannes, Christian Rizzo took his first steps as an artist in Toulouse, where he started a rock band and created a line of clothing before studying visual arts at the Villa Arson in Nice. In the ’90s, he performed with and created costumes and soundtracks for choreographers including Mathilde Monnier, Hervé Robbe, Mark Tompkins, Georges Appaix, Vera Mantero, Catherine Contour, Emmanuelle Huynh, and Rachid Ouramdane. Since founding “l’association fragile” in 1996, he has created over 30 performances and dance pieces, alternating with other projects or commissions for fashion and visual arts. He was an artist-in-residence at l’Opéra de Lille, and has performed his works around the world at the Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon, the Nouveau Festival du Centre Pompidou, deSingel, the Festival d’Avignon, and On the Boards.
On January 1, 2015, Christian Rizzo took over as the Director of the Centre Choréographique National de Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillion-Midi-Pyrénées, which has been renamed ICI (International Choreographic Institute).
Learn moreDez Ramirez is a writer, filmmaker, artist and DJ. Known as DJ La Cosmica, Dez has been a member of the Noche Libre DJ Collective since 2018, and has hosted, recorded and produced episodes of Radio Noche Libre! on XRAY FM. Currently living between the Mojave Desert, Los Angeles, and Portland - La Cosmica's style and musical curation ranges widely as she draws from the influences of dramatic wilderness, urban vibrancy, and the pulse of collective and radical liberation in the communities in which she lives and creates. Recent flavors consist of electrocumbia, electronica, house, synth, R&B, bass, reggaeton, norteno, salsa, and disco.
Find her at:
@silver_mother
Learn moreEast Rodeo has recently become popular in the European experimental sound scene under the leadership of the Sinkauz brothers—Alen and Nenad—who were born in Pula and formed the band while studying musicology in Italy. Since the release of their third album, Morning Cluster, they have been noticed by important critics, and have gained the affections of their audiences. At the same time, the brothers Sinkauz also work in the theater, but all too rarely.
Learn moreFounded in 1991 by Artistic Director John Collins, Elevator Repair Service creates original works with an ongoing ensemble.
ERS’s theater pieces are built around a broad range of subject matter and literary forms; they combine elements of slapstick comedy, hi-tech and lo-tech design, both literary and found text, and the group’s own highly developed style of choreography.
ERS creates its performances through extended periods of collaboration. A typical development cycle includes 4-6 intensive work periods within a 2 year period, which conclude with work-in-progress showings. Time off between development is filled with touring and presentations of finished works. Following completion, the piece is presented in NYC for an extended run and is toured throughout the US and abroad.
Learn moreReeves is a New York-based filmmaker, who has shown at the Berlin, New York, Vancouver, London, Sundance, and Seoul Film Festivals, as well as at the Whitney Biennial, Princeton University, and the Museum of Modern Art. She has made 20+ film works since 1990, pushing the boundaries of film through optical-printing, film stock “misuse,” and direct-on-film techniques including hand-painting film frames.
Selected Press
When It Was Blue, Michael Sicinski, Cinema Scope, 2008.
Outward Bound, Ed Halter, artforum, October 27, 2008.
Learn moreLeyya Mona Tawil (Lime Rickey International) is an artist working with sound, performance, and hybrid transmissions. Tawil is a Syrian, Palestinian, American engaged in the world as such. Tawil uses voice, transactive choreography, interactive surfaces, and electronics to build hybrid performances and sound compositions. Her work has been presented in over 40 cities throughout the states, Europe, and the Arab region. She was nominated for a Bessie Award in Music for Lime Rickey International’s Future Faith, commissioned by Abrons Arts Center (NYC) and KONE Foundation (Helsinki). Recent residencies and exhibitions include Wysing Art Centre/British Council (UK), Arab American National Museum/JAM3A Festival 2021, FUSEBOX Festival 2022, and the Tarek Atoui Sound Residency at Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE). As a curator/producer, Tawil is on the team of Live In America Festival, Southern Exposure Gallery, TAC (Temescal Art Center), and was also the 2020 ISSUE Project Room Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow for her NOMADIC SIGNALS series, which continues into 2022. She is the founding director of Arab.AMP.
Learn moreFounded in 1993, Mammalian Diving Reflex is a research-art atelier dedicated to investigating the social sphere, always on the lookout for contradictions to whip into aesthetically scintillating experiences. Mammalian creates site and social-specific performance events, theatre-based productions, gallery-based participatory installations, video products, art objects and theoretical texts. They create work that recognizes the social responsibility of art, fostering a dialogue between audience members, between the audience and the material, and between the performers and the audience. It is their mission to bring people from across the planet together in new and unusual ways to create ideal entertainment for the end of the world. For greater context and a more in-depth exploration of Mammalian Diving Reflex's projects and philosophy, click here to view a PDF of collected reviews, interviews, articles and links. A great resource for those who really want to dive into the Festival!
Learn moreMarbles Jumbo Radio is a dancer and movement thinker who works within performance, video, and discussion based platforms that engage experiences of social marginality with politics of place, belonging, land, and identity.
Learn moreReinsch is a multidisciplinary artist based in Portland, Oregon, where he earned his MFA in Visual Studies from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2009. His work incorporates performance and activated sculptural props to explore human connection and disconnection, often through themes of celebration and melancholy.
Learn morePatrick Rock is a conceptual artist who has shown internationally, most recently with the collective AMERICAN MEAT LLC., and with the post-punk trio PISS in the Sequences Live Art Festival in Reykjavik. He is the director of ROCKSBOXCONTEMPORARYFINEART, a short-term artist residency and exhibition space in Portland, as well as the director of the Portland State University Art Department galleries, where he also teaches as an adjunct instructor of its Art Department.
Learn moreRachid Ouramdane is a French choreographer of Algerian descent at the forefront of Europe’s conceptual dance thinkers. His projects reassess the definitions of “performer” and “choreographer” and question modes of producing and circulating artwork. Prior to founding L’A. in 2007, Ouramdane collaborated with artists such as Emmanuelle Huynh, Meg Stuart, Christian Rizzo, Alain Buffard, and choreographer Julie Nioche, with whom he co-founded Fin Novembre in 1996. Ouramdane has worked with institutions also focused on visual art, including FRAC Champagne/Ardennes, Manège de Reims, and the Ménagerie de Verre in Paris. Besides choreography, Ouramdane regularly leads artistic workshops and moderates international encounters with artists.
Peripheries
The Purple Shall Govern, Daniel Fernández Pascual, deconcrete, June 8, 2011. Learn moreEducated at the Institut supérieur d'art dramatique (ISAD) of Tunis, choreographer Radhouane El Meddeb was rewarded as 'young hope of the Tunisian theatre' in 1996 by the Tunisian section of the International Theatre Institute. Subsequently, he was selected to participate in the education and research courses at the Théâtre National de Toulouse under the direction of Jacques Rosner.In Tunisia he worked with key artists of the Arab world such as Fadhel Jaïbi, Taoufik Jebali and Mohamed Driss. In France he collaborated with theatre directors Jacques Rosner, Lotfi Achour and Catherine Boskowitz, and with authors such as Adel Hakim and Natacha de Pontcharra. He performed in two films by Férid Boughedir (Un été à la Goulette et Halfaouine, l’enfant des terrasses) and took dance classes with Jean-Laurent Sasportès and Lisa Nelson.
In 2005 he created his first dance solo, performing himself, Pour en finir avec MOI, followed by a creation for Montpellier Danse in 2006, Huwa, ce lui. In 2007, Radhouane performed in Héla Fattoumi and Eric Lamoureux' 1000 Departures of Muscles. In 2008 he created Quelqu’un van danser…, commissioned by the festival Rencontres Chorégraphiques de Seine-Saint-Denis. That same year, invited by choreographer Salia Sanou, he conceived a culinary dance performance for the event “Sonorités et corps d’Afrique”, entitled Je danse et je vous en donne à bouffer. It premiered at Centre National de la Danse and is still a highly demanded piece. In 2010 he created his first group piece, Ce que nous sommes, premiering as well at the Centre National de la Danse. Other works since: Chant d’amour (2011), Aletroit (2011), Tunis, 14 janvier 2011 (2011), Sous leurs pieds, le paradis (2012), and Nos Limites (2012, a piece for two young circus performers, produced by the 104-Centquatre in Paris). In spring 2014 followed Au temps où les Arabes dansaient… (2014) premiered at CDC Toulouse. In April 2015, Radhouane will present a prelude to his new creation, Heroes, with ten performers, at the Paris Panthéon, premiering within the framework of the festival Séquence Danse of the 104-Centquatre, where Radhouane has been associate artist since 2011.
Learn moreElisa Harkins, Hanako Hoshimi-Caines, and Zoë Poluch came together in 2019 to create Radio III / ᎦᏬᏂᏍᎩ ᏦᎢ. The work was borne in part from a common interest in minimalism in art and music, which led to a wish to create a first work together. Elisa Harkins is a Native American (Cherokee/Muscogee) artist and composer based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her work is concerned with translation, language preservation, and Indigenous musicology. Hanako Hoshimi-Caines is a mother, dancer, performance-maker, writer, questioner, enthusiast, and organizer born and based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. Her work plays with the pleasure and the haunt of the familiar as strategies of resistance and transformation. Zoë Poluch’s artistic practice puts into motion different mediums and takes shape in different rooms. Her relationship with the “contemporary dance” scene is based on a long-term and practice-based interest in the politics and poetics of moving and sensing. She is based in Stockholm, Sweden.
Learn moreRadoslaw Rychcik is a young director living and working in Poland. He began his career as an assistant to renowned director Krystian Lupa on Factory 2 and later worked on Stanislaw Wyspianski's drama Protesilas and Laodamia. In 2008, Rychcik directed Dictator, a performance based on Charlie Chaplin’s film, for the Wybrzeze Sztuki Festival in Gdansk. Most recently, Rychcik has presented A Lover's Discourse: Fragments by Roland Barthes at the Drama Theatre in Warsaw and an adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s Versus: In the Jungle of Cities at the New Theatre in Krakow and the Under the Radar Festival in New York.
Selected Press
Rychcik burns actors (Solitude of Cotton Fields), Beata Frysztacka, e-splot.pl, December 20, 2009 (Translated from Polish).
Loneliness is Discovered, Agata Piecuch, e-teatr.pl, January 6, 2010 (Translated from Polish).
Learn moreInspired to perform by Pier Paolo Pasolini’s injunction to "Throw your body into the fight," Hoghe was born in Wuppertal, Germany, and began his career as a writer. Until 1990, he worked as dramaturge for Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal. In 1994, he produced his first solo for himself, Meinwärts, which together with the subsequent Chambre séparée (1997) and Another Dream (2000) made up a trilogy on the 20th century. Since 2002, Hoghe has choreographed group productions or duos that reinterpret classic dance pieces, including Swan Lake, 4 Acts (2005); Sacre — The Rite of the Spring (2004), with Lorenzo De Brabandere; Boléro Variations (2007) and L'Après-midi with Emmanuel Eggermont (2008).
Learn moreConceived in 2002 by Nick Jones and Raja Azar, the group began with a song, Pyrate Love, performed while they were working for the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, and the two set out to create a massive live musical pirate puppet sea saga. Four years, six “episodes,” and hours of bizarre musical material later, Jollyship the Whiz-Bang have toured the US, Canada, Ireland, and have recently finished a residency in Bangkok for the Hoontown Puppet Festival. In 2005, they released their first album, Songs to Drown By, and recorded a DVD (forthcoming) adapting Crabquistador, the latest episode of their saga.
Learn moreRaja Feather Kelly is a choreographer, a director, and the artistic director of the feath3r theory. He is a three-time Princess Grace Award winner (2017, 2018, 2019), two-time Lucille Lortel Award nominee (2019, 2020), and 2019 Chita Rivera Award nominee. In 2020 he was the Obie Award winner and Outer Critics Circle Award honoree for choreography for the Pulitzer-winning musical A Strange Loop. In 2019 he was an SDCF Joe A. Callaway Award finalist for both A Strange Loop and the Pulitzer-winning play Fairview. Raja is also the 2019–2020 Randjelović/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist at New York Live Arts, an inaugural Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, and a 2019 Creative Capital award recipient. He is a current fellow of HERE Arts, the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU, and a Creative Associate at The Juilliard School. Over the past decade, Kelly has created fifteen evening-length premieres with his company the feath3r theory as well as directing and choreographing extensively for Off-Broadway theatre in New York City. His choreography has also garnered a 2018 Breakout Award from the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (SDCF) and the Solange MacArthur Award for New Choreography (2016), and he was Dance Magazine's inaugural Harkness Promise Award (2018). He was born in Fort Hood, Texas and holds a B.A. in Dance and English from Connecticut College.
Learn moreWith a career spanning over 25 years, Rakesh has captivated audiences worldwide as a versatile performer, choreographer, teacher, and producer. His journey through the realms of artistry began in Bollywood dance, where he lent his talents to numerous films in South India. Evolving his craft, Rakesh found a new passion in Contemporary movement art, drawing inspiration from his family's lineage of yoga and disciplines like Kalarippayattu and other Indian dance forms.
For the past 15 years, he has traversed the globe, immersing himself in diverse cultures and artistic landscapes, shaping his unique perspective and vision. Experience the culmination of Rakesh's passion, dedication, and global influences in every performance and creation.
Learn moreRaquel André was born in Caneças, Portugal in 1986. Her artistic path began early on. In 2009, her first performance was created out her the discovery of a box full of handwritten letters from the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. André has since cultivated an interest in collecting—particularly in the performing arts—and in 2016, she completed her master’s thesis at University Federal of Rio de Janeiro on the subject.
In 2011, she moved to Rio de Janeiro, where a five-month artistic residency in Companhia dos Atores turned into five years. There, she began working with director and actress Bel Garcia on several theater productions. André also worked with actor, curator, and director César Augusto in Galpão Gamboa, where she co-programmed and produced theater, dance and music. André studied in the Theater and Film School of Lisbon, and worked with several Portuguese artists from different artistic languages. Her work has been shown on television, and in Portugal, Spain, Poland, Cuba, Argentina, and Brazil.
Learn moreRaven Chacon is a composer, performer, and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. As a solo artist, collaborator, or with Postcommodity, Chacon has exhibited or performed at the Whitney Biennial, documenta 14, REDCAT, Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Chaco Canyon, Ende Tymes Festival, 18th Biennale of Sydney, and The Kennedy Center. Every year, he teaches 20 students to write string quartets for the Native American Composer Apprenticeship Project (NACAP). He is the recipient of a United States Artists fellowship in music, a Creative Capital award in visual arts, the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation artist fellowship, and the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition. He lives in Albuquerque, NM.
Learn moreArtist, musician, engineer, teacher, mentor... Reese is an accomplished, multi-disciplinary designer with nearly two decades of experience designing, testing, and building products for the technology industry. His personal work has been exhibited in Portland at galleries like PDX Contemporary and Disjecta, and he has been performing across genres in electronic music at multiple venues across the city (S1, Holocene, Disjecta, Ace Hotel, KEX, the NW Film Center...).
His various works, prototypes, writings, and music performances are showcased at reesebowes.com.
Learn moreReuben Tomás Roqueñi is a Program Officer in the Performing Arts Program at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in San Francisco making grants to sustain artistic expression and encourage public engagement in the arts. These grants embrace a wide range of artistic disciplines, aesthetics, and cultural traditions in the areas of dance, media, music, and theater that engage people across diverse communities.
Prior to Hewlett, Reuben served 5 years as Program Director at the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, a national arts philanthropic organization, located in the Portland, Oregon area and serving Native American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian artists, organizations, and programs. The grantmaking strategies included artist fellowships that focusing on innovation in contemporary arts practices; project support investing in social change and community development through the arts; and operating support working in partnership with Native arts service organizations to leverage broader support for the field. Previously, Reuben served as Grants Manager at a public agency, the Tucson Pima Arts Council in Tucson, Arizona, directing all grantmaking processes and program administration, supporting the region’s nonprofit arts organizations and individual artists.
Reuben currently serves on the board of Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA) whose annual Time Based Art Festival (TBA) supports the experiments of innovative contemporary performing artists. He serves on the board of The Association of American Cultures (TAAC), whose bi-annual Open Dialogue conference provides leadership in achieving equal participation in policymaking, equitable funding for all cultural institutions, and an elevation in multicultural leadership that impact cultural policies. He is also on the Grantmakers in the Arts (GIA) national Thought Leader Forum on Racial Equity in Grantmaking. Previously he served on the Board of Directors at Access Tucson (public television) and was a founding Board member of the Tucson Musicians and Artists Health Alliance (TAMHA). He is a graduate of the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture’s (NALAC) Leadership Training Institute and the first NALAC Arts Advocacy Institute in DC. Reuben has served on grants review panels, national to local, for the National Endowment for the Arts, ArtPlace, NALAC Fund for the Arts, Rasmuson Foundation, Artist Trust, Arizona Commission on the Arts, Regional Arts and Culture Council (Portland), Community Foundation for Southern Arizona, and Pro-Neighborhoods Tucson.
Reuben is of mixed ancestry (Yaqui/Mexican). He began his career in arts administration at the afterschool arts and business program, Old Pascua Youth Artists (OPYA), serving Yaqui youth and as an artist educator in the public school system. He spent 6 years in the private sector with American Airlines and has lived in Seattle, St Croix, New Orleans, and San Antonio. He was raised in California, received his BFA from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, and is a multi-media visual artist.
Learn moreReuben Tomás Roqueñi
Director of National Artists Fellowships
Native Arts and Cultures Foundation
Reuben is a nationally respected arts administrator with over 15 years in progressive program development, management, artist-centric support systems and grantmaking experience. He is currently Director of National Artists Fellowships at Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, serving Native American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian artists, organizations, and programs across the US. Previously, Reuben was Program Officer in the Performing Arts Program at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in the San Francisco Bay Area, one the nation’s largest arts and culture funders. Formerly, Reuben served as Grants Program Director at the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona. Reuben is a board member at MAP Fund in NYC and a former a board member at PICA. Reuben is of mixed Yaqui/Mayo/Chicanx ancestry and is currently living in Portland, Oregon.
Learn moreThe multi-talented Rinde Eckert is an acclaimed performer, director, writer, composer, librettist, and musician whose virtuosic command of gesture, language, and song takes this total theatre artist beyond the traditional boundaries of what a ‘play,’ a ‘dance piece,’ an ‘opera,’ or a ‘musical’ might be. Eckert creates solo work, chamber pieces and through-composed operas with larger casts in collaborations with choreographers, composers, directors, and new music ensembles. His Opera/New Music Theatre productions have toured throughout the U.S. and to major European and Asian festivals. Current theater and music projects in which he performs include My Lai with the Kronos Quartet; The Aging Magician with Paola Prestini and Beth Morrison Productions; and Five Beasts with composer/performer Ned Rothenberg and beat box artist Adam Matta. Among his many awards, Rinde Eckert was the 2007 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.
Learn morerise x fall is an in-progress multimedia collaboration between rubén garcía marrufo, maximiliano, and Jaleesa Johnston. Conjured from liminal space, this work considers the rise and fall of an empire, and the possibilities between stability and instability. Taking inspiration from the ocean’s crashing waves against the earth, rise x fall simultaneously inhabits the space between the pain and fear of death, as well as the hope and growth of rebirth.
ARTISTS' BIOS
mononymously named, maximiliano, is a conceptual artist working in BLKwvv, a generative multimedia mythos: a Black reclamation rococo aesthetic and agenda based in exploring and expanding the multiplicity and fluidity of the Black self through pleasure, desirability, innocence, and imagination as performance, video, GIF, sculpture, thought, and publications.
rubén garcía marrufo is a border artist.
https://rubengarciamarrufo.com/
Jaleesa Johnston is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and arts administrator currently living and working in the Pacific Northwest. She holds a BA from Vassar College and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She has been the recipient of the AICAD Post-Graduate Teaching Fellowship, Centrum’s Emerging Artist Residency, and Open Signal’s New Media Fellowship. She has exhibited her work in cities along the West Coast, including San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle, and she occasionally facilitates workshops and classes in new media and performance art. Jaleesa also organizes public programs as Programs Lead in the Learning and Community Partnerships Department at the Portland Art Museum.
Learn moreRobbie Wing is a sound artist and musician from Tulsa, OK. He is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation. His practice focuses on acoustic geographies, ecological sound art, installation, and composition. He is a multi-instrumentalist, field recordist & researcher. He has an undergraduate degree in Environmental Sustainability and a master's degree in Urban Design from the University of Oklahoma.
Learn morerobbinschilds (Layla Childs and Sonya Robbins) have presented choreographed and video works since 2003, in venues including P.S. 122, Marfa Ballroom, The New Museum, and Autumn Skatebowl. Most recently, robbinschilds was commissioned to create original choreography for David Byrne and premiered a new work, Sonya and Layla Go Camping, at The Kitchen.
Learn moreBoyd's work has been exhibited at venues such as the Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong (2009); P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, NY (2008); Sundance Film Festival, Park City, UT (2008); Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev (2008); Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA (2008); The Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, Indianapolis (2007); 303 Gallery, NY (2007); PKM Gallery, Beijing (2006); Kunst-Werke, Berlin (2006); and Participant Inc, NY (2006). His work is included in several public collections, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la Création in Paris.
Learn moreRobert Tyree is a dance artist, writer and educator. He has trained in dance at the University of Washington, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Montréal's after-hours clubs, and Vienna's danceWEB (2011). Tyree has enjoyed working with choreographers Lucy Yim, Kaj-anne Pepper and Meshi Chavez, but maintains a longstanding practice with Tahni Holt since 2008. Tyree's performance writings have been published via several art blogs as well as in FRONT, a Portland-based dance newspaper that he co-publishes.
Learn moreRobin Deacon (born 1973 Eastbourne, England) is a British artist, writer and filmmaker currently based in the USA. Active from the 1990’s, his work explores questions of memory, absence and fiction in performance, through a constant reconfiguration of his role as an artist - as journalist and biographer, operator and technician, imposter and stooge. His recent research projects have explored histories of video documentation and outmoded media formats, and the practice and ethics of performance re-enactment. His live and screen based work has been commissioned and programmed throughout Europe, the US, and Asia. A MacDowell Fellow, he has been a recipient of a variety of awards and fellowships from organizations such as the Delfina Foundation, British Arts Council, Live Art Development Agency and Franklin Furnace Inc.
Learn moreRoland Dahwen Wu is a filmmaker whose work explores migration, race and memory. His films and installations have been shown at CalArts, Portland Art Museum, Time Based Art Festival, Northwest Film Center, and numerous galleries. His films span nonfiction, experimental, and narrative genres, and are commonly marked by poetry: from his first documentary about the whistling language of the Canary Islands (There are no birds in the nests of yesterday) to his recent short film about 20th century Asian migration (Haft-Seen).
Learn moreBass is a visual artist and musician who lives and works in New York City. He has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally at institutions and galleries including P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (New York), The New Museum of Contemporary Art (New York), The Kitchen (New York), James Cohen Gallery (New York), The Henry Art Gallery (Seattle), The Centre for Contemporary Arts (Glasgow, Scotland), and The Contemporary Art Center of Tel Aviv (Israel). Musical compositions include the score for Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Hugo Boss Prize Exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in London. Bass is currently producing a hip-hop album intended for release in 2012.
Selected Press
500 Words: Ronnie Bass, Miriam Katz, Artforum.com, December 9, 2009.
2009, A Space Odyssey-Ronnie Bass at Marginal Utility, Libby Rosof, The Artblog, November 8, 2009.
Art in Review: Ronnie Bass, Ken Johnson, New York Times, October 17, 2008.
Selected Videos
Learn moreRoyal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble (ROKE) has performed rituals at the Guggenheim Museum, Under the Radar Festival, FringeArts, Under the Radar’s Incoming! Series, Gibney Dance Center, Kate Werble Gallery, Special Effects Festival at Participant Inc., Prelude Festival, AUNTS Arts@Renaissance, and JACK. ROKE received a 2016 Creative Capital award for The Art of Luv series, and has been awarded a Franklin Furnace Fund grant (2013) and a BAX Space Grant (2014). They were part of the Public Theater’s Devised Theater Working Group and PS122’s RAMP residency program. They spent the summer of 2014 at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and were 2015 CUNY Hunter Artists-in-Residence in ceramics. The Art of Luv (Part 1): Elliot is created with support from The Public Theater’s Devised Theater Working Group, Gibney Dance Center, The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and a residency at CUNY City Tech. Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble is supported by Immediate Medium’s AGENCY program, which provides financial, administrative, and equipment support to emerging artists. The Art of Luv is a project of Creative Capital.
Learn moreRoy Pérez teaches and writes about gender, sex and race in contemporary literature, art, and performance. He is an associate professor of English, American Ethnic Studies, and Women's and Gender Studies at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. His poems and essays have appeared in Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility (MIT Press, 2017), Narrative, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States (OSUP, 2017), Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, the Best of Panic! poetry anthology, Bully Bloggers, and FENCE Magazine, and he is co-editor with Kadji Amin and Amber Musser of "Queer Form," a special issue of ASAP/Journal. He is writing a book titled Proximities: Queer Configurations of Race in Latinx Literature and Performance.
Learn morerubén garcía marrufo is a border artist and ⅓ of rise x fall.
Learn moreCurrently based in Brooklyn, New York, Stiler received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from Yale University. Her work has been shown internationally at galleries including Nicelle Beauchene (New York), Sandroni Rey (Los Angeles), and Annarumma 404 (Naples, Italy). Recent and upcoming exhibitions include solo projects at Callicoon Fine Arts (New York), The Suburban (Chicago) as well as the Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition at Socrates Sculpture Park (New York). Stiler has been featured in BOMBlog, Artforum.com, and Flash Art Italia and is represented by Nicelle Beauchene Gallery in New York.
Selected Press
Ruby Sky Stiler, Christopher Howard, Artforum, May 2009.
Ruby Sky Stiler, Rebekah Drysdale, Daily Serving, May 16, 2009.
In Words: Ruby Sky Stiler, Kelly Devine Thomas, BOMBlog May 25, 2009.
That's What He Said, Ian Cooper, The Highlights, October 2009.
Learn moreSince 1995, Rude Mechs has created a mercurial slate of 23 theatrical productions that represent a genre-defying cocktail of big ideas, cheap laughs, and dizzying spectacle. What these works hold in common is the use of play to make performance, the use of theaters as meeting places for audiences and artists, and the use of humor as a tool for intellectual investigation. The company tours these performances nationally and abroad; maintains The Off Center, a performance venue in Austin for arts groups of every discipline; and operates a year-round arts mentoring program for teenage girls.
Selected Press
The Rude Mechs' "The Method Gun" at DTW, Jeremy M. Barker, Culturebot, March 3, 2011.
Many Methods to Collaborative Madness, Joan Anderman, The New York Times, February 22, 2011.
Learn moreThe son of folk singers Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle, Rufus Wainwright has achieved success by carving out his own singular sound in the worlds of rock, opera, theater, dance and film. He has released seven albums and three DVDs, as well as collaborating with artists including Elton John, David Byrne, and Burt Bacharach. Wainwright was nominated for a Grammy for the live recording from his Judy Garland tribute concert, Rufus Does Judy At Carnegie Hall. His opera, Prima Donna, premiered at the 2009 Manchester International Festival, and has been presented as part of Toronto's Luminato Festival and at London’s Sadler’s Wells.
Selected Press
A flair for the popular, Andrew Clark, Financial Times, July 13, 2009.
How We Met: Janis Kelly & Rufus Wainwright, Rhiannon Harries, The Independent, March 21, 2010.
Learn moreThe original YouTube cover band, Portland-based Rush-N-Disco reappropriates found media into an absurdly entertaining assault on the senses. Like a postmodern Elaine May and Mike Nichols, Greg Arden and Alicia McDaid commit fully to their invocations of failed pop stars, celebutante breakdowns, amateur pet videos, and exercise gurus. Acting as oral historians of our information-overloaded age, they flow each vignette into the next, creating an arc that takes the audience through an incantation, a birthing, a love story, a descent into betrayal and death, resurrection, therapy, insanity, religious zealotry, and finally, redemption—depending on the show.
Though material is mostly inspired by Youtube, Arden and McDaid create characters and situations that stand alone, regardless of one's familiarity with the 'Tube. While some audiences might recognize everything from "Talking Cats" to "Britney On Drugs," those who have not seen any of the source material are still consistently engaged and drawn into the performances. From the brink of cable access stardom to the edge of sanity, Rush-N-Disco are the carnies of this hilarious yet poignant roller coaster ride of song, dance, and stairway-to-stardom castaways.
Learn moreRichard Bishop, guitarist and founding member of the band Sun City Girls (1981-2007), released his first solo record (Salvador Kali) in 1998 on John Fahey’s esteemed Revenant label under the moniker Sir Richard Bishop. Since then he has released albums on a variety of labels: Improvika, Elektronika Demonika, and While My Guitar Violently Bleeds (Locust Music); Fingering the Devil (Southern Records, UK); Hypostasis: A Work in Three Parts (VDSQ); Intermezzo (Editions Mego); The Unrock Tapes and Road to Siam (Unrock); and Polytheistic Fragments, The Freak of Araby, Tangier Sessions, and Oneiric Formulary (Drag City).
“Sir Richard Bishop forces one to alter that hoary cliche ‘jack of all trades’, to master of…damn near all. Renowned for his mercurial guitar-playing for 26 years with Seattle ethno-delic legends Sun City Girls, Bishop has wrought a distinguished solo canon as well. He combines soulfulness and advanced technique with a panache that’s nearly unrivaled among today’s guitarists. Bishop strums spiritual with incantatory ragas, free-folk excursions, crystalline flamenco flourishes, ruddy Appalachian folk, Middle Eastern-tinged fantasias and gypsy arabesques. This is eclecticism done with respect and third-eye-dilating filigree; his compositions attain a sepia-toned wistfulness and a psychedelic complexity.” - Dave Segal (OC Weekly)
Learn moreBorn and raised in Asheville, NC; bred and perfected in the cities of Las Vegas, Atlanta and Portland, The Real Hyjinx is an infusion of music and comedy that has made him a fast-rising all around entertainer. He has appeared on AMC's Showville (Summer '13) as a finalist and was voted Fan Favorite. He is a well known performer and has hosted many events throughout the Pacific Northwest. He also co-produces a weekly open mic (The Real Comedy Spot) and a monthly showcase (The House of Hyjinx) and co-founder of the NW Black Comedy Festival. The Real Hyjinx has shared the stage with Rodney Perry (The Monique Show), Honest John (The Wash), the late great Ricky Harris (Everybody Hates Chris), Ralph Porter (BET's CommicView), Tony Roberts & Easu McGraw (Lil Yellow Bus Tour), Nate Jackson (Wild' N Out), Eric Blake (P. Diddy Presents Bad Boys of Comedy) to name a few. He also co-hosted a radio show on 99.1 FM Portland Radio Project titled Soulfull Saturdays. He can currently be seen hosting and performing in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.
Learn moreTim Reid makes theater, writes, teaches, performs. He takes analytic thought to absurd ends, looking for rupture and frames. The work is about love and trouble. He has made and directed pieces at PAM Residencies, Machine Project, and Highways, and performed at Pieter, REDCAT, Night Gallery, USC Visions and Voices, the Hammer Museum, and Links Hall, among others. He is a co-curator at PAM Residencies, a co-editor at Riting.org, was an ensemble member of The Neo-Futurists in Chicago and an original member of Wet The Hippo in Los Angeles. Most recently, he has researched and written on both melodrama and clown. He has a BA from the University of Chicago and an MFA from CalArts in Critical Studies.
Learn moreAlthough the Magnolia Housing Projects have long been demolished, a light post still stands at the corner where youth like Vockah Redu (Javocca Davis) gathered to rap and create beats. The light post marks one of the birthplaces of Bounce music, a genre of rap specific to New Orleans that has invigorated crowds throughout the South. Vockah Redu and the Cru animate the stage with their dynamic revival of dance, music, and art from the street corner to the club. More than your typical hip-hop act, this theatrical performance sets the stage for a sweaty, hands-down, booty-up good time, transforming any party, bar, or dance floor in your neighborhood.
The original Cru formed in 1997 and was composed of the Ave Girls: Joi Jadah (Joi Denise Sessions), Teedy Booh (Tasha Marie Butler), Ninny (Shanita Davis), and Grahonda Pooh (Madonna Melissa Oliver). Currently the Cru is composed of Shortee Whop (Glendell Weir), Energyzah (Clarence Mosley), and Taveion Rodeo (Donte Brown). The Cru dominates the stage with electrifying choreography, costumes, skits, and superb street style.
Learn moreWhite Rainbow is Portland, OR electronic music producer Adam Forkner. With a storied past in the experimental/psychedelic/electronic underground, White Rainbow explores the full spectrum of psychedelic sound production.
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 more