Artists Archive
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Alfredo Jaar is an artist, architect, and filmmaker who lives and works in New York. His work has been shown extensively around the world. He has participated in the Biennales of Venice (1986, 2007, 2009, 2013), Sao Paulo (1987, 1989, 2010, 2021), as well as, Documenta in Kassel (1987, 2002).
Important individual exhibitions include The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (1992); Whitechapel, London (1992); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1994); The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1995); and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome (2005). Major recent surveys of his work have taken place at Musée des Beaux Arts, Lausanne (2007); Hangar Bicocca, Milan (2008); Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlinische Galerie and Neue Gesellschaft fur bildende Kunst e.V., Berlin (2012); Rencontres d’Arles (2013); KIASMA, Helsinki (2014); Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK (2017), Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, South Africa (2020) and SESC Pompeia, Sao Paulo (2021).
The artist has realized more than seventy public interventions around the world. Over sixty monographic publications have been published about his work. He became a Guggenheim Fellow in 1985 and a MacArthur Fellow in 2000. He received the Hiroshima Art Prize in 2018 and the Hasselblad Award in 2020.
His work can be found in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim Museum, New York; Art Institute of Chicago and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; MOCA and LACMA, Los Angeles; MASP, Museu de Arte de São Paulo; TATE, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Centro Reina Sofia, Madrid; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; MAXXI and MACRO, Rome; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlaebeck; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art and Tokushima Modern Art Museum, Japan; M+, Hong Kong; and dozens of institutions and private collections worldwide. Learn moreI make artwork that uses conversation as a medium and as a subjective research method. My work explores experiences of interdependence and disconnection, questions my own idealistic beliefs, and investigates how people make culture and culture makes people.
My work often takes place in public space and struggles with questions about who we are to each other in our society and what it means to be in public, or to be part of a public. These projects are usually participatory, sometimes collaborative, and range in scale from intimate interpersonal situations to large group activities. They have been exhibited as both live events and as photographic, written, recorded, electronically transmitted, and handmade documentation.
I am deeply committed to art having a fundamental role in society beyond the professional confines of the discipline. I therefore aim to make work to be discussed and circulated outside the art world's paths of distribution and dialogue, yet remain articulate and relevant in art discourse. For me, the question "who is art for?" continues to be inspiring and interesting, however often it is asked.
I see my art practice as embodied research and an experiential testing zone for cultural, political and philosophical possibilities. My work inherits the long history of attempts to merge art and life but acknowledges that it is in the acute and delicate distances art offers us from the everyday that we are able to notice and reconsider how we live.
Ariana holds an MFA in Art & Social Practice from Portland State University. She has exhibited work and organized events at apexart and Smack Mellon in New York City, Betonsalon in Paris, France, The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s Time Based Arts Festival, The Portland Art Museum, and Gallery Homeland in Portland, OR, Southern Exposure, in San Francisco, CA; and in many public places.
Her work has been included in the NW Biennial at the Tacoma Art Museum, Disjecta’s Portland 2012 Biennial, The Open Engagement Conference and the Discourse and Discord Symposium at the Walker Art Center. Learn moreDr. Simonis has a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Cornell University and is the Owner & Lead Scientist of DAPPER Stats, a Portland, OR-based quantitative ecology consulting company. They are also the Founder & Director of the Chemical Weapons Research Center, a research, education, and activism organization focused on understanding the impact of chemical weapons on people, communities, and the environment.
When not working, Dr. Simonis plays competitive roller derby, and is a current member of the four-time, currently defending world champion and #1 ranked Rose City Rollers Wheels of Justice. Alongside competing, Juniper has been recognized for their activism and advocacy for inclusion of transgender athletes.
Website: https://www.juniperlsimonis.com/
Learn moreEmily Johnson is an artist who makes body-based work. Originally from Alaska, she is currently based in Minneapolis. Since 1998 she has created work that considers the experience of sensing and seeing performance. Her dances function as installations, engaging audiences within and through a space and environment—interacting with a place's architecture, history, and role in community. Her work is currently supported by Creative Capital, Map Fund, a Joyce Award and The Doris Duke Residency to Build Demand for the Arts. Emily is a 2013 Institute for Advanced Study Fellow at the University of Minnesota, a 2012 Headlands Center for the Arts and MacDowell Artist in Residence, a Native Arts and Cultures Fellow (2011), a MANCC Choreographer Fellow (2009/2010/2012), a MAP Fund Grant recipient (2009/2010/2012/2013), and McKnight Fellow (2009). She received a 2012 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Performance for her work, The Thank-you Bar, at New York Live Arts. Her current work, Niicugni, is touring to Florida State University/MANCC/Seven Days of Opening Nights, Coil Festival/PS122/Baryshnikov Arts Center (NYC), Redfern Arts Center at Keene State (NH), Arizona State University, Tigertail (Miami), Northrop Auditorium (MN), PICA (Portland, OR) and Bunnell Street Gallery (AK).
Selected Press
"Shedding Light on the Last Frontier," Gia Kourlas, The New York Times, January 4, 2013.
"Emily Johnson in Conversation with Ain Gordon," Movement Research Critical Correspondance, January 9, 2013.
Call & Response: Spandex and Basketballs, Emily Johnson, Mental Contagion, July/August 2008.
Learn more“Singulum – the melancholy of empty urban streets at night, dirtied by litter, and cleansed by rain. It sounds like a piece of club music, slowed down, and with the beats removed – the hazy memory of the night before..”
– Martin P.
Singulum, LINE_075
Musique Machine, UK (January 2017)France Jobin is a sound / installation / artist, composer and curator residing in Montreal, Canada. Her audio art can be qualified as “sound-sculpture”, revealing a minimalist approach to complex sound environments where analog and digital intersect. Her installations express a parallel path, incorporating both musical and visual elements inspired by the architecture of physical spaces. Her works can be “experienced” in a variety of unconventional spaces and new technology festivals across Canada, the United States, South America, South Africa, Europe and Japan.
Jobin has created solo recordings for popmuzik records (JP), bake/staalplaat (NL), ROOM40 (AU), nvo (AT), DER (US), ATAK (JP), murmur records (JP), Baskaru (FR) and the prestigious LINE label (US). Jobin’s sound art is also part of countless compilation albums, notably on the ATAK (JP), bremsstrahlung (US), Mutek (CA), murmur records (JP), and/oar (US), tsuku boshi (FR), everest records (CH), and Contour Editions (US) labels. She is also featured in the influential book and recording, Extract, Portraits of Soundartists (book + 2 cd), released on the nonvisualobjects label (AT). The collaborative album ligne, created with sound artist Tomas Phillips, was released on the ATAK label (JP).
Her installations and screenings have been shown internationally at museums and festivals. Her work P Orbital released on LINE (Valence, LINE054) was presented in the context of ESCUCHAS, a first sound art exhibit for the Museum of Modern Art in Medellin, Colombia. P Orbital was also presented at CONTEXT-ing / Listening as CONTEXT at the Miami Art Fair in Florida, Call & Response, London Uk as well as at the Haunted formalism exhibit in LA curated by Volume. An invitation to the AIR Artist-In-Residence program in Krems, Austria enabled her to create und transit, a sound installation set in the MinoritenKirche cloister in Stein (AT). Her two ongoing collaborations with visual artist Cédrick Eymenier (FR) have resulted in EVENT HORIZON, an audio/video piece, and The Answer, a movie, with the soundtrack by France Jobin and Stephan Mathieu. EVENT HORIZON was screened in Paris (2010), at the Venezuela Biennale in Merida state (2010) and was performed live at the Torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles (2010) and ISEA RUHR 2010 (DE). The Answer was screened at IAC, Villeurbanne, France in March – May 2016. In 2011, Jobin was one of five international artists selected to present her sound installation, Entre-Deux, in the new media exhibit Data/Fields, curated by Richard Chartier at Artisphere in the Washington, DC area, along with Ryoji Ikeda, Mark Fell, Caleb Coppock, and Andy Graydon. Her proposition received critical acclaim from the national press. Entre-Deux has recently been presented at N38E13 in Palermo, Sicily (2017). Her latest audio visual collaboration: “Mirror Neurons” with sound artist Fabio Perletta (IT) and xx+xy visuals (IT) was screened as a world premiere at A x S / ak-sis / FESTIVAL 2014 | CURIOSITY as part of the Synergetica Screening in Los Angeles in September 2014. In October 2015, France was invited to take part in an artist residency at EMPAC (Troy,NY) which resulted in the creation of a new light sound work entitled 4.35 – R0 – 413, a collaboration with Alena Samoray, lighting designer. Her latests installations, ‘Inter/sperse’ and ‘Entre/temps’ both premiered in Italy. ‘Inter/sperse’ is a site specific installation created in the context of an international residency organized by Museolaboratorio, LUX and farmacia901. It opened May 27 2017 at Museolaboratorio, Città Sant’Angelo Italy. ‘Entre/temps’ is a site specific installation commissioned by Enzo De Leonibus, artistic director of the EaRrEtMeI festival which opened in Palena, Itally, June 4 2017.
She has also participated in numerous music and new technology festivals such as Mutek (Montreal, 2001, 2004 – 2009, 2014, 2017), EM15 (Montreal 2014), EMPAC (US 2011, 2015), roBOT 8 (Italy 2015) Angelica Festival (Italy 2016), Portobeseno (Italy 2014), Interferenze – Liminaria (Italy 2014), Flussi Media Arts Festival (Italy 2014), FIMAV, SEND + RECEIVE (Winnipeg, 2003, 2005), Club Transmediale (Berlin, 2004), Shut up and Listen (Vienna, 2009), ISEA RUHR 2010 (Germany), the surface tension tour (Japan, 2012) and the Symétrie tour (Japan 2016).
“immersound” is a concert event/philosophy concept initiated by Jobin, which proposes the creation of a dedicated listening environment by focusing on the physical comfort of the audience within a specifically designed space. The premise of “immersound” is to seek out/explore new perceptions in and experiences of the listening process by pushing the notion of “immersion” to its possible limits.
She created and produced “immersound” from 2011 to 2015 at Oboro in Montreal.
She was a finalist at the Sonic Arts Awards 2014 (IT) in the Sonic Research category. In January 2013, the Conseil québécois de la musique (CQM) awarded the prestigious Opus Prize for Concert of the year to France Jobin for her concert at AKOUSMA 8.
Jobin’s work continues to evolve as technologies enable her to create new environments.
France Jobin is published by Touch Music/Fairwood Music UK Ltd
Learn moreJacqueline Shea Murphy teaches courses in critical dance studies in University of California Riverside's Dance department. She is author of The People Have Never Stopped Dancing: Native American Modern Dance Histories (University of Minnesota Press, 2007), awarded the 2008 de la Torre Bueno Prize for Outstanding Book of the Uear in Dance Studies by the Society of Dance History Scholars (SDHS), co-editor of the collection Bodies of the Text: Dance as Theory, Literature as Dance (Rutgers University Press, 1995), and has published in journals including Discourses in Dance, American Literary History, Theatre Research International, Interventions, and several anthologies. She was the 2009 recipient of a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award to Aotearoa New Zealand, and is writing a new book about ways that contemporary Indigenous choreographers in the U.S., Canada, and Aotearoa are inhabiting Indigenous epistemologies and thereby reframing colonizing institutions in their dancing and dance making.
Professor Shea Murphy regularly teaches courses such as "Dance: Cultures and Contexts," "Introduction to Dance Studies," "Dance, Gender, Sexualities," "Yoga for Dancers," and "Rhetorical Approaches to Dance Studies." She holds a Ph.D. in English from UC Berkeley, a Master's in fiction writing from The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars Program, and a BA from Barnard College of Columbia University. She has previously taught at San Francisco State University (American Indian Studies) and Mills College (English). She has a background in modern dance, and is a longtime practitioner and certified instructor of Iyengar yoga.
Learn moreJamondria Harris is a poet & multimedia artist based in Portland. They use words, sounds, wires, instruments, textiles & what falls into their hands to engage with blackness, desire, decolonization, religion, spirituality, fairy tales, queerness, femme supremacy, & body horror. They are a VONA Workshop Fellow, among other things. Their music can be found at soundcloud.com/meroitic.
Learn moreJ. Ashlee Albies has been practicing civil rights and employee-side employment law for almost 20 years. She has devoted her legal career to advocating for clients who have been harmed by discrimination, retaliation, or unfair treatment by an employer or by the government. Ashlee has a long history of civil rights advocacy — working to use the legal system and her legal knowledge to advance human rights. She has provided legal support to many mass demonstrations in Portland and nationally, and represents community groups and individuals seeking to hold police accountable. She also helped organize legal seminars for prisoners and the Life Without Parole Storytelling Project at Oregon State Penitentiary in 2019. She regularly offers community education and continuing legal education seminars on the First Amendment, free speech, creative uses of the law, trial advocacy, and civil rights litigation.
Website: http://www.albiesstark.com/
Learn moreJo Ann Hardesty is a veteran and civil rights leader whose compassionate vision brings Portland together. As the first Black woman elected to city council, Commissioner Hardesty championed the Portland Street Response, relieving the burden on police to respond to mental health crises. She helped build the coalition that set the national standard for local climate action, and at the height of the George Floyd demonstrations, she crafted a police reform measure that 82% of voters approved. She is a former state representative serving North/Northeast Portland and former President of the Portland NAACP.
Learn moreJoel B. Tan is an award-winning writer/performer and an internationally recognized trailblazer in connecting arts with social justice, public health, and community development. Tan has published three volumes of poetry, edited three fiction anthologies, and his various poems, plays, essays, and short fiction on race, power and identity have appeared in numerous academic and commercial venues. Since 2004, Tan has served as the Director of Community Engagement at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, where his work in the field of arts leadership has been recognized globally. Prior, he worked in Public Health for 16+ years, co-founding LA’s Asian Pacific AIDS Intervention Team Health Center. Tan is also Sister Baba Ganesh of the San Francisco Mother House of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. As Baba, he is the creator of the widely walked “Sistoric” Castro Procession, an historical audio walking tour produced with Queer DJ collective and Honey SoundSystem. He is also the producer of Project Nunway, a fashion fundraiser that pairs Sisters with designers to create a look from recycled materials based on a theme. Nunway is currently in its 6th year in San Francisco and is now replicated in 6 other Sister cities and growing strong.
Learn moreDownload The Web app for iPhone, iPod, or iPad.
The Web app was developed for the Kessler's 2013 show The Web, an immersive video installation that invites the viewers to participate in the work by taking pictures on their hand held devices. Their photos get displayed on monitors throughout the exhibition as well as archived for future use.
Presented as part of Anna Craycroft's C'mon Language project and the TBA:13 Festival. For more details on weekly events, visiting artists and scholars, and other related events, please visit the C'mon Language event page below.
Jon Kessler was born in Yonkers, New York in 1957. His first exhibition was at Artist’s Space in 1983. Since that time he has exhibited widely in galleries and museums in the United States, Europe and Asia. A retrospective of his work Jon Kessler’s Asia was mounted at the Kestner-Gesselshaft in Hannover, Germany in 1994 and traveled to the Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum, in Graz, Austria. His exhibition, The Palace at 4 AM, began at MoMA PS1 Contemporary Art Center in 2005 and travelled to the Phoenix Kulturstiftung / Sammlung Falckenberg in Hamburg, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen and ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe. His works are in many public collections including The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art and MOCA. He is a Professor in the Visual Arts Division of Columbia University’s School of the Arts where he has taught since 1994. He plays guitar for the rock band Barbara Sukowa and the X-Patsys.
Learn moreI am a visual storyteller exclusively creating work in the south to highlight the beauty of queer, black, indegenious, people of color often overshadowed by white supremacy. I utilize performance art, film and music as ways to reflect the lives of my community. I am co-founder of Studio LaLaLa, a black and trans DIY mixed media production company that utilizes collaboration to centralize resources so that marginalized folks can gain access to the tools needed to actualize their artistic visions and make our voices heard. This access to truth is what drives my work and spirit forward.
My Practice depicts the complexity of blackness by shifting through the remnants and emerging landscapes of the diaspora. Rooted in the reality of black existence and flagrantly ignoring the white gaze, I use the lenses of scifi, fantasy and horror to create alternate realities for the black community to forge an epicenter for transforming trauma into love. The result is an exquisite mirage that stems from impossibility but parallels our present universe. We can uniquely walk between worlds on a path not littered with the bodies of our black ancestors but embedded with their spirit, allowing us to connect to the depths of our conscious and heal.
Learn moreJulia Arredondo is an Artist Entrepreneur currently living in Chicago. Originally from Corpus Christi, Texas; Julia is pursuing her MFA at Columbia College Chicago. Julia's latest art business venture currently explores the crossroads of Avon and botánica culture, titled Botánica Avon. Julia founded independent publishing entities, Vice Versa Press and Curandera Press; and continues to explore the intersections between art and business.
Learn moreJulio Salgado | Photo credit Wil Prada
Julio Salgado is the co-founder of DreamersAdrift and the Migrant Storytelling Manager for The Center for Cultural Power. His status as an undocumented, queer artivist has fueled the contents of his visual art, which depict key individuals and moments of the DREAM Act and the migrant rights movement. Undocumented students, organizers, and allies across the country have used Salgado’s artwork to call attention to the migrant rights movement. Salgado is the co-creator of The Disruptors Fellowship, an inaugural fellowship for emerging television writers of color who identify as trans/and or non-binary, disabled, undocumented, and/or formerly undocumented immigrants. His work has been displayed at the Oakland Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. You can find his work at juliosalgadoart.com.
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.
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