Artists Archive
Alex Ian Smith is an artist, musician, and curator based in Portland, OR.
Learn moreAlex S. Vitale is Professor of Sociology and Coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. He has spent the last 30 years writing about policing and consults community based movements, human and civil rights organizations, and governments internationally. Prof. Vitale is the author of City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics and The End of Policing. His academic writings on policing have appeared in Policing and Society, Police Practice and Research, Mobilization, and Contemporary Sociology. He is also a frequent essayist, whose writings have been published in The NY Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, Vice News, Fortune, and USA Today. He has also appeared on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR, PBS, Democracy Now, and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.
Learn moreAlfredo 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 moreAlissa DeRubeis lives in Portland, where she works for 4MS and S1. A co-founder of the S1 Synth Library, Alissa enjoys teaching intro workshops, facilitating library hours, and patching pre-amps and resonant filters. Her interests include playing music, curating, collaborating, education, improvisation, sharing, and experiments.
Learn moreA.L. Steiner is a collective member of Chicks on Speed, co-curator of the project Ridykeulous, founding member of Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) and collaborates with numerous visual and performing artists. Her works have been featured internationally at such venues as P.S.1/MoMA, Tate Modern, The New Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, Centre Pompidou, The Kitchen, REDCAT, and Zacheta National Gallery of Art, among others. Her work is included in such public collections as the Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art and the Marieluise Hessel Collection. Steiner is currently based in Los Angeles and is faculty at the University of Southern California.
Selected Press
The Lowdown: A.L. Steiner, Io Tillet Wright, New York Times T Magazine, May 11, 2011.
Eve Fowler & A.L. Steiner, North Drive Press #4, 2007.
Would it be okay if I kept my sweater on?, Naomi Fry, Paper Monument.
Learn moreAmanda Lee is a queer artist located in Los Angeles, CA.Their primary mediums are media and ceramics (porcelain). In addition, they love to create hand-made flora inspired earrings.
@amandalee_faa
Learn moreAmber Boydston is a Portland born Abolitionist educator, with an Irish mother and an Ethiopian father who has been teaching and facilitating trainings around social justice and equity for 25 years since she was a young teen. Her organization Spirited Justice focuses on police abolition in addition to the abolition of all anti-Black and oppressive systems. She works with businesses interested in decolonizing the way they sustain their practice within communities, in addition to teaching inside and outside of the educational industrial complex, elementary through higher ed. Amber's work focuses largely on healing the epigenetic impacts of colonialization and combating ACE's (adverse childhood experiences) that People of the Global Majority experience through the sanctioned systems of fascism and genocide. She weaves in large amounts of breath and meditation practice with her education, supporting the journey of Liberation across the Global Majority diaspora. As a parent and lifelong learner, Amber is incredibly passionate about remaining curious, using her access to open doors, and keeping the pressure on creating the kinds of worlds in praxis that we hope to one day leave behind for the youth.
Learn moreAnna Vo is a radical educator for 8 years in over 20 countries in Inclusion, Refugee Support, Trauma-Informed Care, and Racial Justice. Editor of an internationally renowned publication for People of Color that has been going for 6 years, and a speaker, artist and musician who has exhibited and toured in Australia, Germany, The Netherlands, Croatia, Finland, Denmark, Sweden and the States. Anarchist and local festival organizer.
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 moreMs. Bane Belladonna is a Pro Ebony domina from high dez of California. Bane believes in breaking boundaries through self expression in art and BDSM.
Learn moreBarry Sanders holds a Ph.D. in Medieval Literature. He taught for over thirty years in the departments of Literature and the History of Ideas at Pitzer College of the Claremont Colleges, where he was the first to hold the Peter S. and Gloria Gold Chair. The author of fourteen books and over fifty essays and articles, he has twice been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and was twice a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. He serves as a contributing editor of North American Review, and writes frequently for Cabinet. His essay “Bang the Keys Swiftly: Type-Writers and Their Discontents” recently appeared in the New Museum catalog Ghosts in the Machine, published by Skira Rizzoli. He is Founding Co-chair of the MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research at the Pacific Northwest College of Art and the Ford Institute for Visual Education.
Learn moreThe Design Collaborative know as the Black Aesthetic Studio (BAS) is led by artist duo Cleo and Kayin Davis, in conjunction with Professor of Architecture Robert Alexander Clarke, and historian Kimberly Moreland. They will investigate policing through the lens of Oregonian historically anti-black urban politics and policies. And how these systems of policing affected Black Folks' ways of living, being, and seeing throughout time.
BAS aims to uncover how past, present, and future policing histories have imprinted African Americans' psychology and aesthetic throughout time. They will construct temporal gateways that will encapsulate specific periods which will draw the audience into black space, thus illuminating the user on how we see our histories and futures which has been policed by white authorship from the founding of our nation. These constructed visions will be critique on Oregon racist history and policies, allow one to understand how migration and oppression has transforms black identity and its expressions.
Cleo Davis started his education in architecture at the University of Oregon further changing to industrial design at San Jose State. He is an artist whose work takes a critical view of the social, political and cultural issues and through his work, he continues to reconstruct the cultural view modernizing while also highlighting traditions. Although he engages with multiple subjects and mediums his methodology remains consistent. He also has started the screw loose Studio the Mayo House project and most recently, the archives project in collaboration with Kayin.
Kayin Talton Davis started off in an artistic direction from a very young age, but later learned her love for math and science and pursued a Bachelor's in mechanical engineering at Portland State University. Her design projects were always influenced by a drive to be accessible to all. She started the soapbox theory in 2001, as a way to express herself creatively. And through these mediums, her interest is always in creating something that is positive, helpful and accessible to all but especially children from culturally underrepresented communities.
Robert Alexander Clarke is a designer, educator, and theorist practicing at the intersection of culture, identity, and architecture. His work aims to develop and canonize black aesthetics, thus authenticating it as a lens through which to practice architecture. His design office, BAS (Black Aesthetic Studio) was founded by Clarke, Cleo Davis and Kimberly Morland; their studio explores how to unearth new aesthetics that are immensely specific to African American culture, experience, and identity. Before joining as Activist in Residence at UCLA’s City Lab, Clarke held posts as a Wilson Smith III Design in Spatial Justice Fellow at the University of Oregon’s College of Design. As well as Research Fellow at Newlab under the supervision of architect and New York University Associate Professor of Practice Mitchell Joachim. Before opening his practice, Clarke worked for many years at architectural firms across the globe, including HOK, Terreform ONE, Gensler, and Archi-Union.
Kimberly 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 moreJaJa PDX is a performance art space, wood shop, ceramic studio, healing space, and a collective of creatives.
We have formed a group of diverse, like-minded individuals who come together to share ideas, learn from each other, build community, and create a new reality for artists in the Pacific Northwest to cement the bases for the future of Sustainable Arts Collectives.
Our 20,000sf warehouse is housed in the Central East Side Industrial sector of Portland. We are comprised of makers and creators of all types.
We have formed a partnership with The Haven, an incredible artist collection, who joined us and moved their community inside the walls of JaJa PDX.
Through this partnership, we are striving to build unity within the creative community of Portland. We are encouraging people to live outside of their comfort zone. JaJa PDX is rapidly morphing into a factory of peoples' dreams.
Learn moreCandace Avalos is a first-generation American “Blacktina”, daughter of Black Americans from the south and Guatemalan immigrants. Mi nombre en español es Candis Ávalos. Originally from Virginia, she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Modern Foreign Languages, with a focus on Spanish and Italian, and Master of Education degree in College Student Personnel Administration from James Madison University. Prior to her current career as a nonprofit executive leader, she started her career as an educator and worked at Portland State University for 8 years providing civic engagement education and advising support for student leaders. She lives in East Portland and is an active member of her community, previously serving as chair of the Citizen Review Committee and Charter Review Commission for the City of Portland, as well as currently on the boards of the Coalition of Communities of Color and Street Roots. Her hobbies include perfecting her Guatemalan recipes, reading social justice literature, playing kickball in her fast pitch league, and exploring Portland's parks.
Learn moreCarissa Dez: Dedicated advocate for social justice and policing reform. With a background in investigative journalism and involvement in community organizing, Carissa would like to promote accountability, equity, and transparency in law enforcement practices. As a panelist, Carissa brings a wealth of experience and insights to the discussion, aiming to drive positive change and foster safer, more equitable communities for all.
Website: https://carissadez.com/
Learn moreCarlos 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 moreCatherine Ming T'ien Duffly is an Assistant Professor in the Theatre Department at Reed College where she teaches courses on race and identity in American theatre, performance studies, and community-based performance, in addition to courses in acting and directing. Kate’s written work has appeared Theatre Journal and Theatre Annual. She is currently researching the use of food in socially engaged performance practices.
Learn moreChloe Alexandra Thompson is a Cree, Canadian interdisciplinary artist and sound designer. Thompson approaches sound as a mode of connection—embracing the kinesthetic agency of sound to compose abstract feats of spatialized audio recording and synthesis. Her work engages tactics of material minimalism to create site-specific installations that sculpt droning, maximalist experiences out of space and sound.
Learn moreChris Riser is a human, husband, father, and educator living and working on the stolen lands of the Chinook, Clackamas, Kalapuya, Kathlamet, Molalla, Multnomah, Tualatin, and other peoples who have been here since time immemorial. He works in the field of education as a means of planting the seeds for a world that does not yet exist. He currently serves as the Administrator of HOLLA School in East Portland, with a mission to change the academic narratives for Black, Brown, and Indigenous youth.
Learn moreChristi Denton is a Portland based composer and sound installation artist who works with found sounds, electronics, and homemade and modified instruments.
Learn moreChristina Najera Started her debut in the sex industry as a stripper in 2008. She has done many things and is passionate about creating true narratives of the people in the industry. She created The Stripper Project in 2016 in the basement of her home, photographing and talking to friends about their experiences in and out of the industry.
“What I love about this job, is the people I work with. I am inspired by the creative ambitious spirits that grace the dark nights and early mornings. I am inspired to create this project because I know that the workers of the sex industry are magical, and I want to help break down the stigma that is heavily piled on top of the term SEX WORKER. This industry has provided for my family. This job has allowed me to spend time doing the things that set my heart on fire and its shown me freedom. I learn from these woman, I grow with them, I cry and laugh with them. I am proud to stand with us. I am proud of the mysticism that runs through our bodies. I feel that the more united we are, the greater we become. Each event we host ties back to our foundational mission, and I consider my contributions to be my small way of helping advance our cause.”
Learn moreClaire Barliant is a writer, editor, and teacher based in Brooklyn. She writes or has written for Art in America, Artforum, Icon, Modern Painters, the New Yorker, and other places. This coming academic year, she will be teaching in the MFA program for the Visual Arts at SUNY Purchase, and in the past has been an adjunct professor or visiting critic at Parsons, the New School, NYU, and Yale. For the past several years she has regularly participated in the Writhing Society, a writing workshop based on writing with constraints, led by Wendy Walker and Thomas La Farge.
Learn moreCleo Davis started his education in architecture at the University of Oregon further changing to industrial design at San Jose State. He is an artist whose work takes a critical view of the social, political and cultural issues and through his work, he continues to reconstruct the cultural view modernizing while also highlighting traditions. Although he engages with multiple subjects and mediums his methodology remains consistent. He also has started the Screw Loose Studio, the Mayo House Project, and most recently, the archives project in collaboration with Kayin.
Learn moreDan Handelman is a co-founding member of Peace and Justice Works and its police accountability project group Portland Copwatch. In 1991 he also helped co-found Flying Focus Video Collective, which has produced a program on cable access every week on social justice topics. Dan attended nearly every police oversight meeting in the City since 1992 (PIIAC 1992-2001/Citizen Review Committee 2001-present). He was appointed to sit on four City commissions looking at the oversight system - Mayor Katz's Work Group in 2000, on stakeholder groups in 2010 and 2016, and the Police Accountability Commission in 2021-2023. He is a member of the Steering Committee of the Albina Ministerial Alliance Coalition for Justice and Police Reform.
Learn moreDaniel Granias received a BFA in Fine Arts and Teaching License in K-12 Art Education from the University of Iowa in 2009 and a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Ceramics from the Oregon College of Art and Craft in 2012. He is a working ceramics artist in Portland, Oregon and a full-time production assistant at Mudshark Studios, LLC. His work focuses on soft and hard forms, internal anatomy, touch and intimacy, and social engagement across all age levels.
Learn moreDean Daderko is Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. His first exhibition at CAMH, It is what it is. Or is it? (2012), explored how contemporary artists have recast the readymade to address a variety of social, political, and temporal concerns as this artistic form nears its 100th anniversary. Parallel Practices: Joan Jonas & Gina Pane (2013) brings together a selection of works made between 1965 and 2010 by two foundational performance artists with multidisciplinary practices working in New York and Paris respectively. His upcoming CAMH exhibitions include a solo exhibition of documentary work by LaToya Ruby Frazier, which will travel to the ICA Boston. Previously working as an independent curator based in New York, Daderko has mounted curatorial projects in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Montreal, Canada; and Vilnius, Lithuania, among other locations. He has also organized programming for Art in General, Artists’ Space, The Kitchen, and Visual AIDS in New York. Daderko has been a graduate seminar instructor at Yale University School of Art where he led the course Queer Strategies, and a visiting curator at Centro de Investigaciones Artisticas in Buenos Aires; Cooper Union School of the Arts in New York; the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris; M.I.T. in Cambridge, MA; and the University of Houston. He writes and speaks extensively in conjunction with his exhibitions, and his writing has been published in catalogues by CAMH, The Studio Museum in Harlem, El Museo del Barrio, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, The Americas’ Society, and Rutgers University.
Learn moreDee Lyrium is a performance artist and dancer whose work comments on the limits of bodily autonomy through physical pain. Their work features themes of pain, ecstasy, grief, and personal power.
Learn moreDJ Black Daria is a Portland-based DJ and selector of R&B, hip hop, funk, afro caribbean and latinx sounds. She co-hosts Everyday Mixtapes on XRAY.FM with DJ Shi Shi (Saturdays 5-6pm) and is a part of the Noche Libre collective. She draws inspiration from her Black and Latinx roots and brings a variety of bass-heavy, beat-laden sounds to the Northwest scene. She holds a residency at Dig a Pony and the 1905.
Learn moreDon’t Shoot Portland is an arts and education organization that promotes social justice and civic participation. Our year-round programming allows us to advocate for community members facing racism and discrimination by providing legal representation and direct advocacy. Since our inception in 2016, Don’t Shoot Portland has hosted its own dialogues, community forums and workshops focusing on history, archiving and social culture. The art proponent of our work acts as a communicative tool to facilitate discussions about race in America while providing educational assets to those most affected by discrimination in public policy.
As we uplift and amplify social movements around the world, your solidarity and commitment to change is the impact needed. We must continue to evolve alongside one another to extend this work. Our community action plan provides direct essential resources, legal advocacy and more to support communities that have been systemically marginalized. Our programming will remain free and low-barrier to keep our resources accessible to all.
Teressa Raiford is a community organizer, philanthropist and fourth generation Portlander. Her experiences with gun violence inspired her to demand accountability from leaders and lawmakers surrounding public safety. In 2016 Teressa established a human rights organization, Don’t Shoot Portland, focusing on civic education, art and nonviolent direct action while providing legal access to vulnerable communities.
Tai Carpenter (she/her) is a writer, gallerist and community archivist with a passion for social impact in the realms of art and civil rights. She is also the founder of Compose Yourself Magazine, an independent online publication spotlighting music, culture and social justice. She has curated political art installations, facilitated panel discussions and organized artmaking workshops centered on civic action with Portland Art Museum, University of Oregon’s Special Collections and University Archives, Society of American Archivists, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Shift Collective and Documenting the Now, among others.
Her work allows her to intersect two passions, art and civil rights, to create a more equitable and creative world by utilizing critical research to facilitate dialogues around art in relation to current social movements.
Tai is currently the Board President of Don’t Shoot Portland, a community-based advocacy nonprofit and Director of The Black Gallery. Most recently she was Gallery Coordinator for the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State University, Gallery Manager at HOLDING Contemporary and an Archives & Records Management Coordinator at the City of Portland Archives.
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 moreEdna Vazquez | Photo credit Tania Gómez-Daza
Edna Vázquez is a fearless artist and songwriter whose powerful voice and musical talent transcend the boundaries of language with songs deeply rooted in universal human emotion. She has traveled far and wide spreading her message of light, love and cultural healing.
Learn moreElliott Young is a Professor in the History Department at Lewis and Clark College. Professor Young is the author of Forever Prisoners: How the United States Made the World’s Largest Immigrant Detention System, Alien Nation: Chinese Migration in the Americas from the Coolie Era through WWII, and Catarino Garza’s Revolution on the Texas-Mexico Border, as well as co-editor of Continental Crossroads: Remapping US-Mexico Borderlands History. He is a co-founder of the Tepoztlán Institute for Transnational History of the Americas, the Migration Scholar Collaborative (MiSC), and the Migration and Asylum Lab (MAL) at Stanford University. He has also provided expert witness testimony for over 600 asylum cases and was a co-chair of the Portland Committee on Community-Engaged Policing (PCCEP).
Learn moreEm Koyama is a multi-issue social justice activist and writer synthesizing feminist, Asian, survivor, dyke, queer, sex worker, intersex, genderqueer, and crip politics, as these factors, while not a complete descriptor of who she is, all impacted her life. Emi is currently the Coordinatrix of the Coalition for Rights & Safety for People in the Sex Trade, a network of about 20 community groups in Seattle/King County area, Washington promoting rights and safety for people in the sex trade through public education and policy change.
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 moreEv Echovia is a mixed white passing queer non-binary femme artist and FSSW living in the Mojave desert on stolen Serrano/Chemehuevi land also known as Joshua Tree, CA. Their work focuses on acknowledging complexities of sex work and erotic liberation at the intersections of somatic healing, queer survival, and ancestral magic. They play and explore within mystical realms as a response to cultural grief & trauma, isolation, stigma, precarity, and to dream deeper into themes of autonomy, love and collective transformation. Their intention is to reclaim and reanimate narratives attached to bodies and lineages known and unknown and to echo a prayer of vitality and protection to whores, edgewalkers and the Earth itself across time and space. Ev is the co-creator of Tempt Fest ~ A queer erotic film fest in Southern California. They facilitate performance art and ritual centered community gatherings and they are also a Sexological Bodyworker with an interest in reproductive justice and sexual healing for all people existing on the margins.
@buttrflyshadow
Learn moreEvie Snax is a multimedia digital visual artist, curator, hustler, sex magik worker, and queer indie porn enthusiast casting spells of self-love and liberation. Her work reflects her experience as a queer mixed Chinese-American/white femme and looks and feels like it does because she is a fresh millennial slut with keyboard fingertips. Her gifs center QTBIPoC and sex workers in a vibrant contemporary fantasy free of binaries, shame, and oppression. Her work has been exhibited and screened internationally from Moore College of Art and Design to the Taiwan International Queer Film Festival. Currently she is co-producing Hot Bits, a touring sex-positive film and arts festival in its 4th year. She is also a recipient of the Leeway Transformation Award, is a CFEVA Visual Artist Fellow, and Elsewhere Exchange Fellow. Follow her on ig @snaxho_ and view her portfolio at snax.wtf/evie for more.
Learn moreForensic Architecture (FA) is a research agency, based at Goldsmiths, University of London, investigating human rights violations including violence committed by states, police forces, militaries, and corporations. FA works in partnership with institutions across civil society, from grassroots activists, to legal teams, to international NGOs and media organisations, to carry out investigations with and on behalf of communities and individuals affected by conflict, police brutality, border regimes and environmental violence.
Our investigations employ cutting-edge techniques in spatial and architectural analysis, open source investigation, digital modelling, and immersive technologies, as well as documentary research, situated interviews, and academic collaboration. Findings from our investigations have been presented in national and international courtrooms, parliamentary inquiries, and exhibitions at some of the world’s leading cultural institutions and in international media, as well as in citizen’s tribunals and community assemblies.
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 moreGrace Hwang is an artist and educator with an MS Ed. in Museum Education at Bank Street College of Education in NY and a BA in Sociology and Education at UCLA. Her areas of research and work include interpretation and visual culture, gift economies, performance, the study of games, alternative education and dance.
Often working collaboratively with artists, non-artists and students of all ages, her work in the form of teaching, performance, exhibition and experience making has been included at Portland Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Craft (OR), Open Engagement Conference (OR), Southern Exposure (SF), Center for Architecture Foundation (NY), SALT art space (NY), Museum of Modern Art Education Center (NY).
She is currently based in Portland as an MFA candidate in the Art and Social Practice Program at Portland State University.
Learn moreDr. Gregory D. S. Anderson is founder and Director of Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. Dr. Anderson has degrees in Linguistics from Harvard (AB) and University of Chicago (PhD). He is an expert in endangered languages and the structure and history of languages from across the globe. He has worked with speakers of endangered minority languages in their communities from every continent. He is the author of eleven books and more than eighty academic articles. Dr. Anderson is a National Geographic Society Fellow and was the subject of the critically acclaimed film The Linguists.
Learn moreUnder midnight street lamps and the big dipper, Hannon was raised on the Valley of the Hudson with her three sisters. She educated herself in performance studies at Sarah Lawrence College; Art History, Conservation, and Restoration of the Italian Renaissance in Florence, Italy; and Modern Art and History at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice. Graduating with a BA the spring of twenty twelve, Hannon transplanted herself to Portland, OR.
Learn moreFletcher is an artist based in Portland, Oregon. He has worked collaboratively and individually on socially engaged, interdisciplinary projects for over fifteen years. Fletcher is a Professor of Art and Social Practice at Portland State University in Portland. Selected Press 500 Words: Harrell Fletcher, Lauren O'Neill-Butler, Artforum.com, February 1, 2010 Selected Video
Learn moreHeather Donahue received her BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. Her studies and interests have included interpersonal communication, queer theory, fine arts, spiritual discourse, dance, and cognitive sciences. Donahue’s work has been included in exhibitions, programs, and residencies at the Museum of Contemporary Craft (OR), Museum of Modern Art (NY), Portland Art Museum (OR), DUMBO Studios (NY), Low Road Gallery (IN), Pinkard Gallery (MD), and Mildred’s Lane (PA).
Learn moreBecoming Mexican, Helday de la Cruz | Photo credit Carly Diaz
Heldáy de la Cruz is an artist and community organizer. Through illustration and design, his work explores the identities that are lost and found within the queer and latinx diaspora. This, alongside his undocumented status, are at the very core of his community work. Heldáy's artwork and story has been shared in Milk X Magazine (Hong Kong), The Huffington Post, AIGA Portland, She Shreds Magazine, Ecotrust, Street Roots, East Oregonian, The Oregonian, ACLU of Oregon, Design Week Portland, Brand New Podcast, Social Justice League Podcast, Talking with Ghosts Podcast, Homebase Gallery, CultureStrike, and the Define American Film Festival. He also co-leads a collective called UndocuPDX that provides resources, education, and news for the undocumented community.
Learn moreHolcombe Waller is one of America’s most distinct voices in music theater. He is a 2011 United States Artists Berresford Fellow in Music, an award which noted his mournful, folk-inflected style, and his approach to music “as total theater.” He is a Creative Capital artist, a recipient of the MAP Fund Award, and a 2013 Joan Shipley Fellow of the Regional Arts and Culture Council. Waller has been presented and commissioned by numerous theaters, arts institutions, and festivals. Holcombe Waller "Hardliners" Music Video from Two Penguins on Vimeo.
Learn moreIndira Valey (Portland, OR) is an avant garde multidisciplinary performer and a first generation Latinx Spanish speaker. Her ancient-sounding, resonant voice is a force of nature, and she utilizes looping technology, effects pedals, and a unique palette of instruments to create mesmerizing and memorable live performances that are ever-changing due to her spontaneous improvisational magic. Her debut album Recordar is a bilingual collection of oceanically soothing, powerfully healing songs about memory and finding your own inner power.
Learn moreIsla Leaver-Yap writes about and organizes projects with artists. She contributes to Afterall and Mousse, as well as other periodicals. At the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London, she co-organized Nought to Sixty, and started the ongoing Artists Film Club. She curated the 2011 exhibition season Short Stories at SculptureCenter, New York. In 2012, she was a member of Banff Centre’s 2012 visual arts faculty for LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL STOP PLEASE ALLOW FEATURES ASSUME EXPRESSION INDICATIVE OF AMUSEMENT JOY PLEASURE BENEVOLENCE ETCETERA BY DRAWING UP CORNERS OF MOUTH AND GENERALLY RELAXING FACIAL MUSCLES STOP LOVE FOR ALL STEFAN STOP; was the editor of LUX’s Live Journal; and curator for The Biennial of Moving Images. She is on the advisory council for YU Contemporary.
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 moreKate Graham is a 16-year-old artist raised in Portland, Oregon. She is currently attending boarding school in Southern California at Idyllwild Arts Academy, where she is majoring in Visual Arts. She’s an active member of the community, painting two murals for Centennial High School, Interning at OSPIRG, and volunteering on the Gresham Youth Advisory Committee for Gresham CIty Council. Much of her work is influenced by politics and current affairs, often taking a propagandistic approach. She is a huge supporter of Street Art as an opportunity for the public’s opinion to be voiced, and believes in the power of the artist.
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 moreKathleen Boudwin is a local Portland painter and illustrator. They are also a vibrant womxn, kinkster, and femme identifying queer. Boudwin's work has evolved into a celebration of femininity, sexuality, and the divine feminine. Her subject matter is an observation of the freedoms of sexuality combined with the playful effects of color. She celebrates personal sensuality and the power of femmes in much of her practice.
Learn moreKat Salas is a proud chicanx and member of the Apache Nation. Her practice seeks to explore the ways in which curating can be used to build platforms for intersectional conversations and take up space in academic or institutional settings. In her spare time, you can usually find her tattooing around Portland or collaborating on STROLL's latest project!
Learn moreKayin Talton Davis started off in an artistic direction from a very young age, but later learned her love for math and science and pursued a Bachelor's in mechanical engineering at Portland State University. Her design projects were always influenced by a drive to be accessible to all. She started the soapbox theory in 2001, as a way to express herself creatively. And through these mediums, her interest is always in creating something that is positive, helpful and accessible to all but especially children from culturally underrepresented communities.
Learn moreKeith Hennessy dances in and around performance. Born in northern Ontario, he lives in San Francisco since 1982 and tours internationally. His performances engage improvisation, ritual, collaboration, and public action as tools for investigating political realities. Practices inspired by anarchism, critical whiteness, post/Modern dance, activist art, the Bay Area, wicca, punk, contact improvisation, and queer-feminism motivate and mobilize Hennessy’s work. Keith’s 2016 collaborators include Peaches, Meg Stuart, Scott Wells, Jassem Hindi, and the collaboratives Blank Map and Turbulence. He teaches in universities, independent studios, and festivals including Ponderosa, Fresh, HZT, Movement Research, Portland State University, Sandberg Institute, and Impulstanz. Awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship, United States Artist Fellowship, a NY Bessie, multiple Isadora Duncan Awards, and a Bay Area Goldie. Keith's writings have been published in Contact Quarterly, Movement Research Journal, Performance Research (UK), Society of Dance History Scholars Journal, Dance Theatre Journal (UK), Itch, Front, and In Dance. Hennessy directs Circo Zero and was a member of Contraband with Sara Shelton Mann. He earned an MFA and PhD from UC Davis.
Learn moreHennessy is a San Francisco-based performer, choreographer, teacher, organizer, and PhD candidate in Performance Studies at UC Davis. He directs Circo Zero and co-founded 848 Community Space/CounterPULSE in San Francisco. Hennessy tours extensively including Queer Zagreb, New York Live Arts and American Realness Festival in New York, ImPulsTanz in Vienna, and YBCA in San Francisco, among others. He has received multiple Isadora Duncan Awards, a New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie), and the United States Artist Kjenner Fellowship.
Learn moreKohel Haver received his JD from the Northwestern Law School at Lewis & Clark College, and he is currently a partner at Swider Medeiros Haver LLP. Haver practices in the areas working with creative people and the arts, including a specialty in copyright and related intellectual property, technology, and business law. He has been serving the arts community for all of his professional life, including service on the boards of directors for community and arts based programs nationwide.
Selected Press
"Oregon's Volunteer Art Lawyers Level Up," Anne Adams, Oregon Arts Watch, June 27, 2013.
Learn moreLeslie Bull is a poet, video maker, and performance artist with lived experience in the street sex trades. Leslie is a veteran of two Sex Worker Art Show national tours, has published multiple zines, and made a video, On Being a Junkie Ho in Sex Worker World, with Penny Arcade and Ariel Lighteningchild.
Leslie is currently director of Aileen’s, a hospitality space and peer leadership program in south King County, WA serving women who trade sex along Pacific Hwy South. Aileen’s is dedicated to the victims of Gary Ridgeway, AKA the Green River killer, who took his victims from along Pac Hwy.
Leslie is a harm reduction specialist and addictions counselor who is pro drug user and pro drug use and advocates for the legalization of drugs, the decriminalization of sex work, and an immediate end to the government sponsored wars on drug users and the poor.
Learn moreLucy Raven was born in Tucson, Arizona in and lives in New York City and Oakland, California. Her work has been included in exhibitions and screenings internationally at Berlinale, Berlin (2013); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2012); Whitney Biennial, New York (2012); MoMA, New York (2010); and PS1, New York (2010). Raven is a contributing editor to BOMB magazine, and her writing has appeared in Artforum, BOMB, and October. She has curated projects for the Goethe Institute, New York (2010); Ballroom Marfa, Texas (2008); and was the co-creator of Bump City, a series of online documentaries for the Oakland Museum of California (2012).
Selected Press
"Lucy Raven," Jason Simon, BOMB, Fall 2012.
"Greater New Yorkers | Lucy Raven," Kevin McGarry, T Magazine, May 13, 2010.
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 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 moreMarc Handelman is a painter who has worked across media including film/video, installation and book arts. His recent projects have frequently examined the strange afterlife of the genre of landscape and conceptions of “Nature” as an ongoing “assembly of political order, without due process.” Marc Handelman has exhibited extensively throughout the United States as well as internationally in such venues as PS1 MoMA in Long Island City; The Studio Museum in Harlem; The American Academy of Arts and Letters, The Rubin Museum, (all New York, NY); The Dayton Art Institute, OH; The Orlando Museum of Art, FL; and the Royal Academy of Art in London, UK. He is a graduate critic at Columbia University’s School of the Arts and an Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at Rutgers University.
Learn moreMargaret Mathewson is a scholar, teacher and basket maker, weaving traditional styles since 1980. After graduating from UC Santa Cruz, she did graduate work at UC Berkeley focusing on contemporary issues in the maintenance of ancestral ways among native peoples in California. She also did post-doctoral work at the Smithsonian studying old basketry collections and working with tribes to revive traditions. She continues to attend Western Native weavers’ gatherings every year and works for tribes in several states on issues of land management, access to weaving materials and ancestral food plants and on cultural resources education.
In addition, she teaches at Oregon State University and the University of Victoria, Canada, including the following courses: Native Peoples of North America, Contemporary Native Issues, Ecosystem Science of Pacific Northwest Indians, Ethnobiology, Anthropology of Art, Ancestral Technologies and Fiber Arts/Basketry Technologies.
Margaret works with museums, tribal and other, to identify basketry and to create exhibits in collaboration with tribes, focusing on Native plants and ancestral technologies. A resident of Oregon, she runs the Ancient Arts Center, a retreat and school with classes in basketry, food ways, spinning, dying and felting, hide tanning, carving, pottery, stone and bone tools and many other skills from around the world.
Her own basketry work is a mix of ancient and modern and reflects her studies of the traditions of Europe and Japan as well as North America. All her work uses natural materials.
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 moreMatilda has spent half her life in the sex industry and is much more afraid of the violence of poverty than the potential violence of sex work clients. She's delighted and proud to have pulled off five years of art shows, but this show and all her work generally is only possible because of community support and a shared determination to make a better world. Thanks for being here and for sticking around five whole years!
Learn moreMatt Keegan is a visual artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. At the root of his varied practice is a strong interest in language--as it relates to cognition as well as its centrality for communication and exchange. Keegan has employed familiar phrases in recent sculpture to highlight the materiality of language and translate open-ended phrases into iconic signage. An ardent archivist and amateur social historian, Keegan has recently begun making short documentary videos that are significant components of his exhibitions. Foundational to his archival interests, Keegan was the co-founding editor of North Drive Press, an annual art publication published between 2004-2010. Last spring, he edited ==, an art edition featuring commissioned texts, interviews and multiples, published by mfc michéle didier.
Most recently, Keegan had a solo exhibition at Galeria Pedro Cera in Lisbon, and a two-person exhibition, with Eileen Quinlan, at The Kitchen, New York. Over the last two years, his work has been featured at the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, FOAM Fotografiemuseum, Amsterdam, The Art Institute of Chicago, SculptureCenter, NY, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Aspen Art Museum. Keegan will have a two person show with James Richards at the Rogaland Kunstsenter in Stavanger, Norway, in early 2014.
Learn morePortland, Oregon based artist Mona Superhero’s work is comprised entirely of duct tape and masking tape. Each piece of duct tape art is crafted from layers of duct tape and masking tape, hand-carved to reveal captivating, often provocative Pop Art inspired imagery with eye-catching color and attitude.
Superhero spends her days creating new art for gallery shows, client work and for her line of prints and post cards.
Learn moreMyles de Bastion develops technology and art installations that enable sound to be experienced as light and vibration. His work has appeared in the Oregon Museum of Science & Industry, Portland Art Museum, and on the Jimmy Kimmel Live! Show. He has built large format installations for music festivals and Grammy-award winning jazz artist Esperanza Spalding.
Myles is the founder of CymaSpace, a non-profit that facilitates cultural events inclusive of the Deaf & Hard-of-Hearing; and Audiolux Devices, which produces products featuring light and sound synergy. 2018 Director of the first Northwest Deaf Arts Festival. Myles mentors Deaf & Hard-of-Hearing youth, has developed curriculum, and taught workshops in music and sound for Deaf schools, camps, and communities.
A current project, The Ikigai Machine, is a multimedia visual narrative with interactive installations and live performances that he is developing into a feature-length, touring production for disability hubs and art institutions. Myles has received support from Regional Arts & Culture Council, Oregon Arts Commission, Oregon Cultural Trust, Oregon Cultural Foundation and Randall Charitable Trust.
Learn moreNick Hallett is a composer and cultural producer who works between the worlds of music and art. Whispering Pines 10, an opera collaboration with artist Shana Moulton, was staged at PICA for TBA:11 in addition to The Kitchen, New Museum of Contemporary Art, SFMOMA, The Warhol Museum, and Carolina Performing Arts. A new cycle of the project is currently being funded by Creative Capital. He is the Music Director and producer of the Joshua Light Show—a team of live cinema artists with roots in the 1960s psychedelia movement—which appears worldwide, and more recently has performed to Hallett’s original soundscores at the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium and at the Papalote Digital Dome in Mexico City, for the Mutek festival. He has staged a diverse body of work in New York and abroad, from masterpieces of John Cage, Anthony Braxton, Pauline Oliveros, and Karlheinz Stockhausen (as co-director of the Darmstadt series) to music and live cinema at The Kitchen, to his own "ever-compelling" (Time Out) media rituals of music and light, always involving the human voice, at the New Museum of Contemporary Art and PERFORMA, among others.
Selected Press
The Object Whisperer: Shana Moulton's Whispering Pines, Brian Droitcour, Rhizome, April 14, 2010.
Learn moreAs a dance artist, Noelle Stiles is interested in how and where experience is held in the body. This interest provides a framework for extracting the corporeal language that both intimately connects and individuates us. Stiles has a BFA in dance from Cornish College of the Arts and completed her graduate studies in dance at The Ohio State University. She has performed and presented work at venues such as the PICA's Time-Based Art Festival (2010), On The Boards, PWNW, Dance New Amsterdam, and Links Hall. Stiles' interest in teaching has taken her to places such as The Ohio State University, the Governor’s School of North Carolina and she co-founded the community focused dance class series Heavy Rotation with Kathleen Keogh of Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner. Her work has been supported by Caldera's Artist Residency program, PICA's Resource Room Residency, the Regional Arts and Culture Council, the ACA Associate Artist Residency program and was selected by PICA and the NDP to travel to the Dublin Dance Festival as part of a pilot international exchange program. In 2010, Stiles merged her work as a graphic designer with her work in dance to co-create a dance publication entitled FRONT. Based out of Portland, Oregon, FRONT is Tahni Holt, Danielle Ross, Noelle Stiles, and Robert Tyree. FRONT utilizes the old-school tactics of the broadsheet newspaper to explore the new, current, future energy of dance theory and practices in the field.
Learn moreBorn in Israel, Meromi currently lives and works in New York City, where he is represented by Harris Lieberman Gallery. Meromi graduated from Bezalel Academy in 1992 and went on to receive his MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts in 2003. He has exhibited at venues including The Israel Museum, Tel Aviv; Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel; the 2nd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art; the Lyon Biennial, France; Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin; Magasin 3, Stockholm; De Appel Museum, Amsterdam; Sculpture Center, New York; PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; and Art in General, New York. He has received numerous scholarships and awards, including a Percent for Art commission (2009), the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2008) Grants to Artists Award, the Fund for Video and experimental film (2004), I.C. Excellence Foundation (2003), and the Nathan Gottesdiener Foundation Israeli ArtPrize (1998).
Selected Press
Ohad Meromi - 500 Words, Dawn Chan, Artforum.com, December 18, 2010.
Studio Visit - Ohad Meromi, Andrea Bellini, Flash Art Online.
Re: Diaspora - Yael Bartana, Elad Lassry, Ohad Meromi and Daniel Silver in Correspondance - Israel, Nicola Trezzi, Flash Art, October 2009.
Peripheries
Kurt Schwitters: Reconstructions of the Merzbau, Karin Orchard, Tate Papers, Autumn, 2007.
Learn moreOne of My Kind (OOMK) is a collaborative publishing practice led by Rose Nordin, Sofia Niazi and Heiba Lamara. Working together since 2013, they design, publish and distribute books and printed works which arise from self-initiated projects. OOMK functions as an annual publication centreing women, creative practice and activism. OOMK also commission new works by artists and co-curate DIY Cultures, one of the UK’s largest annual independent publishing fairs. Together OOMK founded and run community Risograph printing studio, Rabbits Road Press.
Learn morePallace is a healing artist based in Seattle. She is director of Queer Astrology Club and teaches at Portland School of Astrology. QAC channel can be found on youtube for free lectures on ancient astrological techniques. She moonlights as a rope bondage specialist and hypnotist who crushes men psychologically and then cackles maniacally and writes poetry about it.
Learn moreBorn and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, Peter Falanga decided to attend school in New Orleans, Louisiana to study music at Loyola University New Orleans. Upon volunteering at the 2009 New Orleans Film Festival, he switched his major from music to film and digital media, and added a minor in philosophy. Immediately upon earning his BA, he decided to pursue a master’s degree that would align with his interests in philosophy, film theory, community outreach, and video making.
Peter moved to Portland, Oregon last August to become a member of the MA Critical Theory and Creative Research program’s inaugural cohort at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. Currently, he is working on his master’s thesis, which is an extensive study of sincerity and its expression in the works of David Foster Wallace, the films of the New Sincerity, and in the 1977 Woody Allen film Annie Hall.
Learn morePhilip Edward King lives in Portland, Oregon, USA. Their interdisciplinary work deals with questions surrounding the loosely defined term "human nature" juxtaposed with themes of crisis unique to the 20th and 21st centuries.
Learn moreRaised by wolves in parts unknown. Classicly trained in Europe, art has been a part of her life and provided a therapeutic output for years of untrained trauma. Black lives matter. Believe victims. Find beauty in our collective ugliness.
Learn moreRabbits Road Press is a community Risograph print studio and publishing press founded and run by OOMK. The project was commissioned by Create London and is based at Old Manor Park former Carnegie Library. The small-scale publishing press provides printing and book binding services for artists and community groups in Newham in East London and beyond. A responsive programme of workshops and events explore a contemporary model for community publishing, bringing together artists, designers, writers and neighbours.
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 moreRian Dundon (b. 1980) is a photographer in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of the books Protest City (2023), Fan (2015), and Changsha (2012), and the recipient of a 2020 Magnum Foundation fellowship. Dundon is a contributing photographer at the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. He teaches photography at Clark College in Vancouver, WA.
Website: https://riandundon.com/
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 moreRose Nordin is an artist and graphic designer based in London with a focus on print and publishing as social practice. She is a co founder and graphic designer for OOMK zine and art publishing collective. Rose co runs Rabbits Road Press a Risograph community press in East London focused on producing small press publications through collaboration. Rose is currently an Artist in Residence at Somerset House Studios and Serpentine Galleries. Recent publishing design projects include The Place is Here — The Work of Black Artists in 1980s Britain (Sternberg Press), Still I Rise: Feminism, Gender and Residence (Nottingham Contemporary) and Shy Radicals (Book Works)
One of My Kind (OOMK) is a collaborative publishing practice led by Rose Nordin, Sofia Niazi and Heiba Lamara. Working together since 2013, they design, publish and distribute books and printed works which arise from self-initiated projects. OOMK functions as an annual publication centreing women, creative practice and activism. OOMK also commission new works by artists and co-curate DIY Cultures, one of the UK’s largest annual independent publishing fairs. Together OOMK founded and run community Risograph printing studio, Rabbits Road Press.
Rabbits Road Press is a community Risograph print studio and publishing press founded and run by OOMK. The project was commissioned by Create London and is based at Old Manor Park former Carnegie Library. The small-scale publishing press provides printing and book binding services for artists and community groups in Newham in East London and beyond. A responsive programme of workshops and events explore a contemporary model for community publishing, bringing together artists, designers, writers and neighbours.
www.rosenord.in instagram.com/oomkzine instagram.com/rabbitsroadpress
Learn moreSandy Rodriguez (b. 1975, National City, CA) is a Los Angeles-based Chicana artist and researcher. Her ongoing series Codex Rodriguez-Mondragón is a collection of maps and paintings about the intersections of history, social memory, contemporary politics, and cultural production. Her works are in the permanent collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, AR; Amon Carter Museum, TX; The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Garden, CA; Denver Art Museum, CO. She was awarded the 2023 Jacob Lawrence Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, 2023 Hermitage Greenfield Prize, Caltech-Huntington Art + Research Residency, Creative Capital Award, and Migrations Initiative from Mellon Foundation’s Just Futures Initiative and Global Cornell. Rodriguez and her work have been featured in BBC News: In The Studio, Hyperallergic, LA Weekly, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Spectrum News 1, and others.
Check out a behind-the-scenes video of Sandy Rodriguez's work in Policing Justice.
Learn moreSarah T. Hamid (she/her/no preference) is an immigrant, Muslim, and abolitionist working at the intersection of technology and global/domestic warfare. Currently the PDX Lead Organizer for Freedom to Thrive, she co-founded and helps advise the Carceral Tech Resistance Network, an archiving and knowledge-sharing network for organizers building community defense against the design, roll-out, and experimentation of carceral technologies, and serves on the coordinating team for the inside/outside research collaboration, the Prison Tech Research Group. Sarah also sits on the board of the Lucy Parsons Lab in Chicago, and helped create the #8toAbolition campaign: a police and prison abolition resource built during the 2020 uprisings against state violence.
Learn moreSathya is a Bay Area-based artist with a particular focus on the somatic ripple effects of trauma & social alienation. He is an Indian gay trans man with a history of FSSW.
@transfxgsneverdie
Learn moreSatya Byock is a psychotherapist in Portland. Her clinical and academic work is rooted in the scholarship of Carl Jung, which emphasizes the reality of the unconscious and its impact on human experience, identity, and relationships. Through studying the language of dreams, mythology, and history, Satya seeks to better understand what propels us towards acts of creation and destruction. Prior to working as a clinician, Satya studied and worked in a variety of settings internationally including with prisoners in Colombia, with students and Buddhist monks in central Sri Lanka, and with farmers in post-tsunami South Asia. She has also worked with tech start-ups, non-profits, and foundations in Portland and California. She holds a B.A. in History from Lewis & Clark College and a Masters in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. She has a private practice in downtown Portland.
Learn moresean chamberlain is a queer artist currently living in Portland, OR.
Their practice largely focuses on identity production, the ethics of the second self, and the construction of our IRL/URL worlds. This work predominantly manifests through video, installation, publication, and performance, as well as being engaged through curatorial work, event production, and writing. chamberlain has exhibited at b10, Composition, GAK Space, First Brick, One Grand Gallery, and has performed in various nightclubs, both above and below ground.
@seanchamberlain
Learn moreShannon Funchess is an activist and self-taught, interdisciplinary queer performance artist. The founder, vocalist, producer of internationally revered, electronic music project LIGHT ASYLUM founded in Brooklyn, New York in 2007, she has engaged audiences in performance at DIY art spaces, museums, galleries, music festivals and nightclubs in the U.K., North America, Europe, South America, Scandinavia, Japan, Russia, Mexico, Australia and Canada. Her musical journey began in a gospel choir of a southern baptist church in Spokane, Washington at the age of nine. With an ethos rooted in community and a passion for collaboration, she has joined forces with artistic peers and allies globally. From recording studio vocal features, creating sound design and remix productions for performance artists The Knife, LEECH, Yves Tumor, TR/ST, Chris Garneau and Justin Kennedy among others to lending vocals and appearing as an actor in video installation works of Elysia Crampton Chuquimia, Michelle Handelman, Gloria Maximo, Wu Tsang, Tony Ousler, A.K. Burns and A.L. Steiner. She has regularly been invited on stages as a guest performer / musician with artists the likes of The Knife, LCD Sound System, TV on the Radio, electronic music pioneer Laurie Anderson, Coco Rosie and Christeene. Funchess has established herself as a force across her community and is lauded for her cathartic performances as well as a DJ at established art institutions, clubs and underground events. She’s at home in all stages of her creative exploration and continues to produce music and art within her community in Portland, Oregon.
Learn moreFresh out of the backwoods of sunny Tampa, Florida, S. Loper was educated in "The Greatest City in America," Baltimore, Maryland at the Maryland Institute College of Art. In 2010, degree in hand, Sloper stepped into the professional arena, pioneering as a toy expert and acting as a videographer, and sole animator for one of Tampa's finest cinematic enterprises. In result of a high-stakes bet, Sloper made the move to Portland, Oregon where all sorts of charm and adventure seem to follow in tow.
Learn moreSterling Cunio, is an award winning author, playwright and poet. An Oregon Literary Arts Fellow, Pen America Arts for Social justice Fellow, and a World Yes Jammer whose work has been published in The Marshall Project, L.A. Book review and performed by various artist including Grammy award winning musician Antino Sanchez. Sterling sits on the board of Directors of Oregon's Transformative Justice Community and acts as lead facilitator for Regroup, a support and empowerment network of Returning Citizens that played an instrumental role in abolishing the authorization of slavery from Oregon's constitution. Along with currently working for Church at The Park in Salem serving its houseless community, Sterling also works as a lead consultant on the Ubuntu Climate Initiative, a global climate resilience movement focusing on Reuniting people and planet through joy, art and sustainability.
Learn moreSTROLL is the amoeba baby of a loose and shifting collaboration of sex workers committed to organising for justice and equity. Founded in 2015 as a street outreach project with a side publication, over the years STROLL has provided hot meals, clothing, legal referrals, workshops, references and resume help, home HIV test kits, and a bad date list to sex workers and houseless workers in the PNW.
Learn more at strollpdx.org
Learn moreNatya Leela's Founder & Artistic Director Subashini Ganesan choreographs to express the universal emotional depths present in her form, Bharathanatyam (South Indian Classical Dance). Two time recipient of the Regional Arts & Culture Council Individual Projects Grant, her works have been showcased at local & regional festivals including Ten Tiny Dances, NW Folk Life Festival, & the Salem Library's "World of Music." As the Director of Studio 2@Zoomtopia, in SE Portland, she founded N.E.W. (New Expressive Works), an Artist in Residency Program. Ganesan also serves on RACC's Right Brain Initiative Board (Operating Committee).
Learn more