Artists Archive

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Ahamefule J. Oluo: 4 Events; Ahamefule J. Oluo (they/them) is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, writer, comedian, and creator of live performance. They were a founding member of the award-winning experimental jazz quartet Industrial Revelation and is a Mellon Foundation Creative Research Fellow, a Creative Capital awardee, an Artist Trust Arts Innovator awardee, and a semifinalist in NBC’s Stand Up for Diversity comedy competition. Oluo co-produced comedian Hari Kondabolu’s albums Waiting for 2042 and Mainstream American Comic for Kill Rock Stars, and the album Who the Hell is Dwayne Kennedy? by the eponymous standup legend. They have premiered two autobiographical, music-based performances at The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival: Now I’m Fine, 2016, which was described by The New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley as “a New Orleans funeral march orchestrated by Arnold Schoenberg,” and by Time Out New York as "A day later, it's as though I grabbed a live wire; I can still feel the electricity in my skin;" and Susan, 2020, which Brantley called “virtuosic” and “crackerjack.” Oluo has written for television, including the stop motion animated comedy Santa Inc. on HBO Max, starring Sarah Silverman and Seth Rogen. Now I’m Fine was adapted into the feature film Thin Skin, which Oluo wrote, scored, and starred in. Thin Skin won Best Director at the 2020 Harlem Film Festival and is now available on streaming services. They have appeared on This American Life. Oluo has been commissioned, presented, invited, or supported by Under the Radar, On the Boards, PICA, Meany Center, Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Seattle Theatre Group, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Intiman Theatre, REDCAT, MacDowell, Yaddo, Wa Na Wari, Langston, and more.
Akela Jaffi: 4 Events; Akela Jaffi is a writer and dancer living in Portland, OR. A graduate of Jefferson High school, she is the founder of Black Artists Summer Showcase. Dance has been her method of expression and healing, and her greatest contribution to the Portland art world. She is grateful for her role in building community, and the dedication of others seeking equality and change.
Andrew J. Brown/Sister James: 1 Event; TBA Guest Scholar and Asst. Professor of Performance Art, Fairhaven College Western Washington University.
Ariana Jacob: 3 Events; I 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.
Arnold J. Kemp: 2 Events; Arnold J. Kemp is an American artist who has been critically and professionally engaged with making, exhibiting and publishing in cities such as San Francisco, New York, Portland, and Chicago. He has also worked internationally in Stockholm, Paris, Vienna, Berlin and Nassau, Bahamas. His works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, The Tacoma Art Museum, The Schneider Museum of Art and the Fine Arts Collection at the University of California, Davis. He is a 2012 Guggenheim Fellow and has also received awards and fellowships from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Art Matters Inc., Printed Matter, Inc., and Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. He holds an MFA from Stanford University. He is Dean of Graduate Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been exhibited in Chicago at Iceberg Projects.
Bill Jenkins: 3 Events; A continuation of Jenkins’ experiments with light and architecture, this installation work is constructed and composed using a system of tarps and ducts to effect and capture the light. The installation evokes mass infrastructures but is made of readily available materials and deployed in contradictory spaces. They raise questions of individual agency in relation to the complex historical, financial, and social structures that form spaces for living and working.
burke jam: 1 Event; burke jam is an artist, composer, curator and educator. His recent work in performance, installation and recorded media explores sound as intervention–questioning and subverting perceptual coherence and relationships with physical place. His research engages the intersection of field recording, composition, acoustic ecology and the Anthropocene. Following the completion of his MFA in 2013 at the University of Montana, Jam received a Fulbright Grant to Iceland researching environmental sound and methods of listening. Jam performs and exhibits internationally, and works as the Director of Digital Facilities and Instructor of Music and Art in the College of the Arts at Portland State University.
Eisa Jocson: 5 Events; Eisa Jocson is a contemporary choreographer and dancer from the Philippines. Trained as a visual artist, with a background in ballet, she won her first pole-dancing competition in Manila in 2010, and also started pole ‘tagging,’ and other public interventions in Manhattan and various cities. Under successive residencies in Belgium, Eisa developed an artistic praxis that probes the stereotype and context of the female pole dancer. Her Death of the Pole Dancer solo toured Berlin, Brussels, Zurich, Vienna and Ljubljana. Eisa then trained in ‘macho dancing,’ a popular night-club entertainment form, and premiered the solo Macho Dancer in spring 2013 which then toured 4 important European summer festivals: Impulstanz, Noorderzon, Tanz im August, and Theater Spektakel in Zurich where she won the Zürcher Kantonalbank Acknowledgement Prize.
Selected Press
"Macho Macho Woman: Interview with Eisa Jocson," ArtAsiaPacific, April 23, 2014
For greater context and a more in-depth exploration of Eisa Jocson and her work, 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!
Elisheba Johnson: 1 Event; Elisheba Johnson is a curator, public artist, and administrator. Johnson, who has a BFA from Cornish College of the Arts, was the owner of Faire Gallery Café, a multi-use art space that held art exhibitions, music shows, poetry readings, and creative gatherings. For six years, Johnson worked at the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture on capacity-building initiatives and racial equity in public art. Johnson is currently a member of the Americans for the Arts Emerging Leaders Network advisory council and has won four Americans for the Arts Public Art Year in Review Awards for her work. She currently co-manages Wa Na Wari, a Black art center in Seattle’s Central District that uses the arts to build community and resist displacement.
www.wanawari.org/
Emily Johnson / Catalyst: 7 Events; Emily 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.
Emily Jones: 3 Events; Emily Jones (she/they) is a dancer and choreographer based in Portland, OR. Emily’s choreography materializes from sensitivity and intuition, and they are curious about the tensions that exist between social power dynamics and unnamed personal needs. In recent years Emily has been collaborating with Hannah Krafcik. Their performances together are shaped by consent, emphasizing relationality over virtuosity. Emily and Hannah’s performances have included self-made components such as sound scores and video and audio descriptions — they seek to broaden accessibility through the use of multiple mediums. Emily and Hannah’s work has been presented at New Expressive Works (Portland, OR), Art Klub NOLA (New Orleans, LA), Pieter Performance Space (Los Angeles, CA), Performance Works NW, and Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (Portland, OR). Emily has also performed in others’ works in Portland and the Bay Area. Additionally Emily facilitates movement practices and is a bodyworker.
Emily Jones and Hannah Krafcik: 3 Events; Emily Jones and Hannah Krafcik make performances and facilitate movement practices together. They are white settlers residing on the unceded lands of the Cowlitz, Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, Clackamas, and many other Tribes, also known today as Portland, OR. Hannah (they/them) is a neurodivergent dancer and writer. Emily (she/they) is a dancer, movement educator, and bodyworker. The artists’ long-standing collaboration is driven by considering how power dynamics impact their body/minds and behaviors.
hannahkrafcik.com + emilyannejones.com
Geumhyung Jeong: 1 Event; Geumhyung Jeong is a South Korea-based choreographer, dancer and performer. Jeong studied Acting at Hoseo University in Asan, Korea, Dance and Performance at the Korean National University of Arts in Seoul, and Animation Film at the Korean Academy of Film Arts in Seoul. Her works have been presented by the New Museum, New York, Zürcher Theater Spektakel, Switzerland; Malta Festival, Poznań, Poland; Brigittines International Festival, Brussels; SPIEL ART Festival, Munich; ImpulsTanz Festival, Vienna; iDans Festival, Istanbul; Contemporary Art Museum of Ujazdowski, Warsaw; Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Germany; PACT Zollverein, Essen, Germany; and many others.
Ishmael Houston Jones: 1 Event; Ishmael Houston-Jones is an award winning choreographer, author, performer, teacher, and curator. His improvised dance and text work has been performed in New York, across the US, and in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Latin America. Drawn to collaborations as a way to move beyond boundaries and the known, Houston-Jones celebrates the political aspect of cooperation.
Houston-Jones and Fred Holland shared a 1984 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Cowboys, Dreams and Ladders, which reintroduced the erased narrative of the Black cowboy back into the mythology of the American west. He was awarded his second “Bessie” Award for the 2010 revival of THEM, his 1985/86 collaboration with writer Dennis Cooper and composer Chris Cochrane. In 2017 he received a third “Bessie” for Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes from a Life and other Works by John Bernd. In 2020 he recieved a fourth "Bessie" for Service to the Field of Dance. Houston-Jones is the DraftWork curator for works-in-progress at Danspace Project in New York. He has curated Platform 2012: Parallels which focused on choreographers from the African diaspora and postmodernism and co-curated with Will Rawls Platform 2016: Lost & Found, Dance, New York, HIV/AIDS, Then and Now both at Danspace Project.
jaamil olawale kosoko: 6 Events; jaamil olawale kosoko (they/he/she/jlov) is a multi-spirited Nigerian American author, performance artist, and curator of Yoruba and Natchez descent originally from Detroit, MI. jaamil’s work in performance is rooted in embodied ritual practice, poetics, Black critical studies, and queer theories of the body as a means to conjure and craft perpetual modes of freedom, healing, and care when/where/however possible.
jaamil is the recipient of awards including the 2022 Slamdance Jury Prize for Best Experimental Short Film, 2021/22 MacDowell Fellowship, 2020 Pew Fellowship in the Arts, 2020 NCCAkron Creative Administrative Fellowship, 2019 NPN Creation & Development Fund award, 2019 Red Bull Arts Fellowship, 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Choreography, 2017-2019 Princeton Arts Fellowship, 2018 NEFA National Dance Project Award, 2018-20 New York Live Arts Live Feed Residency, 2017 Cave Canem Poetry Fellowship, and consecutive 2016-2020 USArtists International awards from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation.
Blending poetry and memoir, conversation and performance theory, their book, Black Body Amnesia: Poems and Other Speech Acts, was published in spring 2022.
Premiering in 2022, Black Body Amnesia (the performance reading) examines the shapeshifting, illegible, and fugitive realities of Black diasporan people negotiating the psychic lifeworlds of living inside the American context. It is performed with an alternating ensemble of performers including jaamil olawale kosoko, Raymond Pinto, mayfield brooks, and DJ Maij, with sound accompaniment by Everett Saunders. In this new work, Kosoko uses complexity theory—which they define as the study of adaptive survivalist strategies inside complex networks or environments—as a performance device. From this artistic vantage point, the artist explores how minoritarianized communities record and affirm their existence through collaborative actions and protests, and how they then archive these personal freedom narratives to subvert culturally charged fields of systemic oppression, loss, and erasure.
Their 2020 work Chameleon is a multimedia living digital art work, film, and audio transmission project that explores the fugitive realities and shapeshifting demands of surviving at the intersection of Blackness, gender fluidity, and queerness in a pirated virtual space. Chameleon is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by EMPAC / Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY; the New York Live Arts Live Feed Residency program; and the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University, in partnership with Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) and Tanz im August/HAU Hebbel am Ufer. Additional development support for Chameleon was made possible, in part, with commissioning support from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, through the Movement Research Artist-in-Residence Program.
Their 2017 work, Séancers, premiered at Abrons Arts Center in December 2017 and has toured nationally and internationally to critical acclaim. Recent highlights include Mousonturm (Frankfurt, DE), FringeArts (Philadelphia, PA), Sophiensaele (Berlin, DE), the Wexner Center (Columbus, OH), Fusebox Festival (Austin, TX), and Montréal Arts Interculturels (Montréal, CA), among others.
jaamil’s previous work #negrophobia (premiered September 2015, Gibney Dance Center) was nominated for a 2016 Bessie Award and toured throughout Europe appearing in major festivals including Moving in November (Finland), Take Me Somewhere (UK), SICK! (UK), Tanz im August (Berlin), Oslo Internasjonale Teaterfestival (Norway), zurich moves! (Switzerland), Beursschouwburg (Belgium) and Spielart Festival (Munich).
They are a Co-Curator of the 2015 Movement Research Spring Festival and the 2015 Dancing While Black performance series at BAAD in the Bronx; a contributing correspondent for Dance Journal (PHL), the Broad Street Review (PHL), and Critical Correspondence (NYC); a 2012 Live Arts Brewery Fellow as a part of the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival; a 2011 fellow as a part of the DeVos Institute of Art Management at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; and an inaugural graduate member of the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) at Wesleyan University where they earned their MA in Curatorial Studies.
As a performer, jaamil has created original roles in the performance works of Nick Cave, Pig Iron Theatre Company, Keely Garfield Dance, Miguel Gutierrez and The Powerful People, and Headlong Dance Theater, among others. In addition, creative consultant and/or performer credits include: Terry Creach, Lisa Kraus, Kate Watson-Wallace/anonymous bodies, Leah Stein Dance Company, Emergent Improvisation Ensemble, and Faustin Linyekula and Les Studios Kabako (The Democratic Republic of Congo).
In 2009, they published the chapbook Animal in Cyberspace. In 2011, jaamil published the collection Notes on an Urban Kill-Floor: Poems for Detroit (Old City Publishing). Other publications include the American Poetry Review, the Dunes Review, the Interlochen Review, the Broad Street Review, Silo Literary and Visual Arts Magazine.
jaamil has served on numerous curatorial and funding panels including the Foundation for Contemporary Art, the Brooklyn Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, MAP Fund, Movement Research at the Judson Church, the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, and the Baker Artists Awards, among others. From 2014 to 2020, jaamil served as a trustee on the Board of Directors for Dance/USA, the national service organization for dance professionals. jaamil is also a founding advisory board member for the Coalition for Diasporan Scholars Moving, and currently serves as an artistic advisory member of The Field Center in Vermont.
jaamil has held producing and curatorial positions at New York Live Arts, 651 Arts, and The Watermill Center among others, and has taught and lectured at various educational institutions across the world. In Fall of 2020, jaamil was appointed the 3rd annual Alma Hawkins Visiting Chair at UCLA World Arts & Cultures/Dance Department. Additionally, they lecture regularly at Princeton University, The University of the Arts Stockholm, and Exerce Master at ICI-CCN in Montpellier, France.
Jack Ferver: 3 Events; “Ferver’s performances are so extreme that they sometimes look and feel like exorcisms.” —The New Yorker
Jack Ferver has been creating full-length works since 2007. He has been presented at The French Institute Alliance Francaise (NYC), The Kitchen (NYC), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA), PS 122 (NYC), The New Museum (NYC), The Museum of Arts and Design (NYC), Diverse Works (Houston, TX), Danspace Project (NYC), Abrons Arts Center (NYC), Dixon Place (NYC), and Théâtre de Vanves in France. Shorter and solo works have been presented at MoMA/PS1, Andrew Edlin Gallery, Dance New Amsterdam, LaMaMa E.T.C., The Culture Project, and NP Gallery (all NYC). His work has been written about in The New York Times, The Financial Times, The New Yorker, ArtForum, Modern Painters, TimeOut New York, The New York Post, The Boston Globe, and Dance Magazine. As an actor, credits include the film Gayby, Strangers With Candy (Comedy Central), and numerous other film and theatre projects. His writing has been published in the magazine Novembre. He has curated for Danspace Project, Center for Performance Research, and Dance New Amsterdam. He also teaches at NYU, Bard College, has guest taught at SUNY Purchase, and has set choreography at The Juilliard School.
Selected Press
"Laughing and Crying at Ghosts, Fictive and Real," The New York Times, December 11, 2010
For greater context and a more in-depth exploration of Jack Ferver and his work, 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!
Jacob Wren: 1 Event; Jacob Wren makes literature, performances and exhibitions. His books include: Families Are Formed Through Copulation, Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed and Polyamorous Love Song, a finalist for the 2013 Fence Modern Prize in Prose and one of The Globe and Mail’s 100 best books of 2014. As co-artistic director of Montreal-based interdisciplinary group PME-ART he has co-created the performances: En français comme en anglais, it's easy to criticize, Individualism Was A Mistake, The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information and Every Song I’ve Ever Written. He travels internationally with alarming frequency and frequently writes about contemporary art.
Jaleesa Johnston: 3 Events; Jaleesa Johnston; ⅓ of rise x fall
Jaleesa Johnston is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and arts administrator currently living and working in the Pacific Northwest. She holds a BA from Vassar College and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She has been the recipient of the AICAD Post-Graduate Teaching Fellowship, Centrum’s Emerging Artist Residency, and Open Signal’s New Media Fellowship. She has exhibited her work in cities along the West Coast, including San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle, and she occasionally facilitates workshops and classes in new media and performance art. Jaleesa also organizes public programs as Programs Lead in the Learning and Community Partnerships Department at the Portland Art Museum.
James Benning: 2 Events; Born in a German working-class community in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during World War II, Benning studied mathematics on a basketball scholarship at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; worked with migrant workers in Colorado; and started a commodity food program in the Ozarks. He received his MFA from the University of Wisconsin, and has taught filmmaking at Northwestern University, University of Wisconsin, University of Oklahoma, UC San Diego, and California Institute for the Arts. Over the past 25 years, Benning has completed 14 feature-length films that have shown across the world. His attentive, long-take aesthetic has categorized his work as minimalistic, but inherent in his films is a career-long, deeply political awareness, informed by his life.
Selected Press
Digital Watch, Michael Ned Holte, Artforum, January 6, 2010.
Talking About Seeing: A Conversation with James Benning, Danni Zuvela, Senses of Cinema, Issue 33 2004.
James Mapes: 1 Event; James Mapes is a lighting designer, writer, and board game creator who's lived in Portland, OR all his life. Working primarily in dance, he's toured all over the world with companies like BodyVox, Éowyn Emerald and Dancers, and Mammalian Diving Reflex. At home, he's the Festival Director for Risk/Reward and works a whole bunch of places. He has a family, who is great, and a library, which is secret.
James Tigger! Ferguson: 2 Events; This Actor/Dancer/Stripperformance Artist (primarily known for live work) has performed in New York & abroad since 1988. A Pioneer in the 1990s burlesque revival, Tigger! has been "acting like a stripper" since 1992 & remains a leading influence in the world burlesque scene. He won the first ever "King of Boylesque" title at Burlesque Hall of Fame in Las Vegas as well as several Golden Pastie Awards, including "Most Likely to Get Shut Down by the Law" & "Most Unpredictable Performer." He was ranked the #4 Burlesque Performer of 2010 (the only solo male) in an international online poll. Called "the Boylesque King...a heart-pounding climax" by LA Weekly, "hysterical and acrobatic" and "wickedly arch" by The New York Times, "disturbing, funny and oddly riveting all at once" by Vancouver Sun, "delightful...simultaneously hilarious and titillating" by TheaterMania, "the taboo-defying dynamo" by NEXT Magazine. He has acted in Shakespeare, Apollinaire, Wedekind, Horváth, Tennessee Williams and numerous original works with Taylor Mac, Julie Atlas Muz and other genius friends. He has recently performed in: Italy, Denmark, Cyprus, England, Hungary, Netherlands, Sweden, Portugal, France, Mexico, Canada, and all around the U.S.
James Yarker: 2 Events; James Yarker studied theatre at Lancaster University, England. In 1991 he co-founded Stan’s Cafe, one of the UK’s foremost independent theatre companies, and has been artistic director of all of its productions. Stan’s Cafe tours regularly, encompassing a broad variety of media including theatre, radio, and site specific performances requiring extensive audience participation. Some of their recent work includes It’s Your Film, Be proud of Me, and The Black Maze.
Jamie Isenstein: 3 Events; Jamie Isenstein was born in Portland, Oregon in 1975, and lives and works in New York City.. She has presented her work in exhibitions including It is what it is. Or is it?, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX (2012); MakeUp, A Palazzo Gallery, Brescia, Italy (2012); Liverpool Biennial: Touched, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, UK (2010); Marina Abramovic Presents, Manchester International Festival, Manchester, UK (2009); One Minute More, The Kitchen, New York (2009); Hammer Projects: Jamie Isenstein: This Way to The Egress, The Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles (2007); Greater New York 2005, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2005). Her work is represented by Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York and Meyer Riegger in Berlin/Karlsruhe, Germany.
Selected Press
"The Lady Vanishes," Robin Tovey, Reed Magazine, March 2012.
Jan Dabrowski: 1 Event; People are universally intrigued by mystery and delighted by discovery and understanding. This is the essence of science and it is why we all spend at least the first 10 years of our lives exploring the unknown universe just as scientists do. But at that age, we call it play.
With good fortune, I have been able to continue the work of my inner 10 year old and to share the mystery, discovery and understanding with my students. The delight I have in teaching comes every term when I get to see the universe through their eyes and perspectives. And in reminding everyone to tap into that 10 year old scientist that lives within.
My career in science began at age 5 with a visit to the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. It almost ended when I was 12 when I set fire to the basement of my house with a chemistry set! But I survived that test (and my parents never knew!). That’s when I knew I had a future in science!
My formal education includes a B.A. in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Pittsburgh.
I started teaching astronomy and physics in 1975 at various universities and have served as director of three planetariums, including OMSI’s Kendall Planetarium. At OMSI I moved into the exhibit design and development phase of my career and totally reinforced my commitment to hands-on, discovery-based learning. That is the philosophy I use in my classes at Marylhurst University where I teach now.
I have also worked for two other Portland-based science exhibit companies, Levy Design and Promotion Products, Inc. Exhibits that I have developed are here in Portland, and museums in California, Ohio, Alaska, New Jersey, Boston, Saudi Arabia and Israel, among other places.
Janet Pants: 2 Events; Jane Paik took her first dance class when she was 17 years old – ballet. And loved it. She spent 2 1/2 years studying modern at the age of 19 - Martha Graham. Old school, but solid. Since then, she has continued to be mainly self-taught, though she has had the chance to take class with some excellent teachers including Stefan Wenta, Augusta Moore, Ryan Heffington, Kitty MacNamae, and Oliver Steele.
In conjunction with her entrance into the world of dance, Jane found herself as a founding member of the San Francisco theater troupe Sassymouth. Helmed by writer/director John Fisher, the troupe earned a cult following in San Francisco with its cutting-edge examinations of gender, sex, and politics. She wore many hats with the troupe including Producer, Choreographer, Dancer, and Actor and was recognized for her various roles including Joy of Gay Sex (Best Ensemble), Combat! (Mark Goodman award for Distinguishment in Acting) , and Medea, the Musical. (HBO Aspen Comedy Festival - Pick of the Festival, GLAAD choice awards - Best Play, LA Weekly, Best Play, BATCC Awards -Best Choreography, Best Ensemble Cast)
She has appeared in a handful of independent shorts and films seen in various festivals including Outfest, Ladyfest, and the South by Southwest Film Festival.
She began producing works under the name Janet Pants in 1997 and Founded the Janet Pants Dans Theeatre (later Leg and Pants Dans Theeatre) in 2001. Often hailed as a pioneer in bringing experimental modern dance to the underground music scene - in a style that has been described as "punk rock in dance form" - she continues to mash together her take on dance/film/music in various performances, videos, and sounds.
Japanther: 2 Events; Part Screamers intensity, part Misfits anthem, part RZA samples/beats and part Lightning Bolt art/freakshow, Japanther is quite likely the most unapologetically artsy punk-related band since the early days of Sonic Youth. Utilizing microphones made out of old-fashioned telephone handsets, electronic hardware, cassette decks, a three-stringed bass guitar and a drumkit, Japanther is a more playful and even more self-conscious update on the late-'70s no-wave scene, though deep roots in the skatepunk scene keep things from getting too precious. For the past seven years Japanther has baffled unsuspecting audiences and steadily grown a cult following. They've lived out of a van all over Europe, Australia, Mexico, Canada and the US, while working in museums on all types of "Art Projects." Recent projects include a collaboration with Dan Graham for Beyond — his first American retrospective — and Japanther in 3-D, a book and film companion to the band’s interactive rock opera, commissioned for PERFORMA 07 at P.S. 122 (New York). Synchronized swimmers, illegal performances, marionettes and giant puppets have all been employed in Japanther shows — all in an attempt to redefine what bands, groups and gangs can do.
Jasmine Elizabeth Johnson: 1 Event; Jasmine Elizabeth Johnson is a scholar-practitioner and Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work explores the politics of Black movement including dance, diasporic travel, and gentrification. Johnson’s work has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and elsewhere.
Jasmine Mahmoud: 1 Event; Jasmine Mahmoud is the Donald E. Petersen Endowed Professor and Assistant Professor of Theatre History and Performance Studies in the School of Drama at the University of Washington, with appointments in Art History and Comparative History of Ideas. Mahmoud’s research engages experimental performance, critical race studies, public policy, and geography, including relationships between theater and gentrification.
https://drama.washington.edu/people/jasmine-mahmoud
Jasmine Orpilla: 1 Event; Jasmine Orpilla is a multipliced Ilokana/x-American vocal performance artist and operatic composer of experimental theatrical sound installations, in which she activates her lifelong practices of folk ritual dance, combat systems, and music of the Philippine diaspora, against the contemporary American framing of the first generation, imperialist military culture of her own childhood. Unlimited by “soprano” nor so-called classical beauty, her unfiltered voice-in-motion exorcizes eurocentric performance structures from her muscle memory, while remaining accountable to the oral legacies and languages of the Indigenous Pilipino musical systems she, her family, and community remains indebted to. With decades embodying center with her energetically intensive solo practice as a multi-instrumental and multilingual writer/performer, Orpilla’s work serves to humanize and honor the intersectionality of the Filipina/x-American body in agency, despite ongoing minimization of colonial history’s revisionist narratives.
Orpilla’s performance installations are intentionally embedded with materials from her own family archives, such as portraiture, heirloom jewelry, clay pottery, rare handwoven cloth, uniforms, medallions, defunct weaponry, soil, bone, gold, copper, hand-forged musical instruments and handwritten letters. As fragile materials that have survived wartime, she creates with them a kinetic, movement- and sound- sensitive space in which to re-visit, elevate, or question the inter-generationally impacted stories preserved in each object, while marking their decay over time in correlation to her voice and body.
Following intensive experience with world-renowned theater and opera directors such as Ariane Mnouchkine at Théâtre du Soleil, Paris, and Peter Sellars, over the past ten years Orpilla has taken space, internationally performing in genre-defying voices at REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA; CAP UCLA, Los Angeles, CA; LACMA, Los Angeles, CA; Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles, CA; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, CA; Kampnagel, Hamburg, Germany; Théâtre Paris-Villette, Paris, France; HAU Hebbel Berlin, Germany; and more. Jasmine Orpilla’s solo and collaborative work has been supported by Creative Capital, United Artists, California Arts Council, Alliance for California Traditional Arts, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Durfee Foundation, Mairie de Paris, and more.
Jason N. Le: 1 Event; Jason N. Le (they/them) is an arts writer, critic, and cultural worker currently based in Northwest Arkansas, where they work in exhibitions planning at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and The Momentary. Their academic and artistic research primarily explores queer artistic navigations of human-object relationships at the intersection of performance and sculpture. They have written for BOMB Magazine, Critical Conversations (The Ford Family Foundation & University of Oregon’s Center for Art Research), Portland Monthly Magazine, Oregon ArtsWatch, and more.
Jason Traeger: 2 Events; Jason Traeger has released music on Kill Rock Stars and K Records, performed with the art collective Oregon Painting Society at Portland 2010: Biennial of Contemporary Art, TBA:09, Tate Modern and he has shared the stage with some of the biggest names in stand-up comedy. He resides in Portland, OR.
Jennie MaryTai Liu: 3 Events; Jennie MaryTai Liu is an artist working across performance, choreography, video, and writing. She has worked in institutions and artist-run spaces including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Human Resources, The Mistake Room, The Bushwick Starr, HERE Arts Center, Dance Theater Workshop, and Incubator Arts Center. She has been a resident artist at Headlands Center for the Arts, PICA, Bogliasco Foundation, Yaddo, EMPAC, and Brooklyn Arts Exchange, and has received grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Art Emergency Grant, MAP Fund, Jerome Foundation, and Center for Cultural Innovation. She co-founded and edited Riting, an experiment in writing that engages with performance being made now in LA. She is currently organizing a 2022 performance exhibition funded by the Mike Kelley Foundation engaging LA dance artists to respond to modern dance activity in early twentieth-century LA. Jennie frequently collaborates as a performer in the work of Big Dance Theater, Adam Linder, and Poor Dog Group.
https://www.jennieliu.com/
Jennifer Monson: 3 Events; Jennifer Monson is an American dancer and choreographer. She has been actively creating dance work since the 1980s. She works with dance improvisation and creates choreography that is at times improvised or devised through scores, as well as collaborating with other dancers, visual artists, architects and scientists.
Jennifer Reeves: 2 Events; Reeves is a New York-based filmmaker, who has shown at the Berlin, New York, Vancouver, London, Sundance, and Seoul Film Festivals, as well as at the Whitney Biennial, Princeton University, and the Museum of Modern Art. She has made 20+ film works since 1990, pushing the boundaries of film through optical-printing, film stock “misuse,” and direct-on-film techniques including hand-painting film frames.
Selected Press
When It Was Blue, Michael Sicinski, Cinema Scope, 2008.
Outward Bound, Ed Halter, artforum, October 27, 2008.
Jennifer West: 5 Events; Jennifer West was born in Topanga, California and lives and works in Los Angeles. Significant commissions and special projects include High Line Art, New York (2012), 5th Biennial of the Moving Image, Mechelen, Belgium (2011); The Aspen Art Museum (2010); the Turbine hall at TATE Modern (2009) and she was Artist in Residence at the MIT List Visual Arts Center in 2011. Solo exhibitions include Focal Point Gallery, Essex, England and Vdrome.org (2014); High Line Art, NY and S1 Artspace, Sheffield, England (2012); Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; Western Bridge, Seattle and Kunstverein Nuremberg, Nuremberg, Germany (2010); Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland (2008); White Columns, NY (2007). West has been included in numerous exhibitions internationally including Nottingham Contemporary, England; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Kunstlerhaus Graz, Austria; Henry Moore Foundation, Leeds, UK; Saatchi Gallery, London; White Columns, New York; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Drawing Center, New York; Leubsdorf Gallery, Hunter College, New York; Tel Aviv Museum of Art ; CAPC Musee d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux, France; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; ZKM Museum for New Media, Karlsruhe, Germany and Tate St. Ives, England. West has published 12 Zines that she gives away at her exhibitions. West was shortlisted for the 2012 3rd Annual Nam June Paik Center Award in Korea. She is an Asst. Professor of Fine Arts Practice at USC’s Roski School of Art and Design, Los Angeles.
Jenny Yang: 2 Events; Jenny Yang is a Los Angeles-based writer and stand up comedian who produces the first-ever (mostly) female, Asian American standup comedy tour, Dis/orient/ed Comedy and has been a writer and performer on the viral Buzzfeed videos "If Asians Said the Stuff White People Say" (over 8 million views), "What if Adults had Tantrums Like Toddlers?" and the "Ask An Asian" video series. Jenny was dubbed one of Los Angeles' "most fascinating people" of 2015 in LA Weekly's annual "People" issue. She was also a featured standup comic on Joan Rivers' 2013 Showtime documentary Why We Laugh: Funny Women.
Jen Rosenblit: 1 Event; Jen Rosenblit makes performance engaging bodies, architectures and ideas between New York City and Berlin. Her works focus on an improvisational approach to choreographic thought, locating ways of being together amidst impossible spaces. Recent works include Hands (upcoming, 2016, The Invisible Dog/New York Live Arts), a Natural dance (2014, The Kitchen), Pastor Pasture, in collaboration with composer Jules Gimbrone, (2013, Issue Project Room), In Mouth (2012, Dance Theater Workshop), and When Them (2010, Danspace Project). Rosenblit is a 2015-16 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, a recipient of a 2014 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Emerging Choreographer for a Natural dance and was awarded the 2012 Grant to Artists from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Rosenblit was included in MoMA PS1’s Greater New York exhibition in October 2015, and has received commissions from The Kitchen, The Invisible Dog, New York Live Arts, Danspace Project, and Issue Project Room. Rosenblit has also collaborated and performed with artists including Simone Aughterlony, Young Jean Lee, Ryan McNamara, Yvonne Meier, Sasa Asentic, Anne Imhof, Miguel Gutierrez, A.K. Burns, and Kerry Downey with Joanna Seitz. Rosenblit's upcoming work, Swivel Spot, in collaboration with Geo Wyeth premiers at The Kitchen in March 2017. A new collaboration with Simone Aughterlony, Everything Fits in the Room, premieres January 2017 as a commission between HAU Hebbel am Ufer and Haus der Kulturen Der Welt in Berlin as part of their 100 Years of Now festival.
Jermone Donte Beacham: 4 Events; Dancing has been in my blood since I can remember. It started off with hip hop dancing for my high school -- I began to recognize my skill and talent. After 4 years of that, I was introduced to the world of J-Sette by women. J-Sette historically refers to Jackson State University’s female drill team that began in the 1970s. They “created” the dance style, and thus far have made it a distinctive form of dance. I was interested in this type of dance, but not entirely until I saw a group of males performing it. At that point, I claimed the style for myself and perfected it on my body. Currently, I have my own J-Sette line, Mystic Force, and plan to increase our already considerable renown in this style of dance in our community, and eventually internationally. Previously, I served as co-captain of Dallas’ Texas Teasers. I have participated and competed in several events and competitions, including 2 SetteItOff video challenges, Atlanta Pride 2010, Tennessee Classics 2009, and Memphis Pride 2008. In 2015, I was named New Legendary by the Meet Me on the Dance Floor J-Sette council, and have gained many titles since then, such as, Best Dancer and Most Entertaining.
Re-Sette the Stage—a three-part conversation series happening in August, September, and October 2021—was conceived by Jermone Donte Beacham in partnership with jumatatu m. poe and Jamarsa Peters.
Jérôme Bel: 1 Event; Jérôme Bel was born in 1964 and lives in Paris. He studied at the Centre National de Danse Contemporaine of Angers (France) in 1984-1985. In 1992, he was an assistant for the ceremonies of the XVIth Winter Olympic Games of Albertville and Savoie. His first piece, entitled nom donné par l'auteur (1994), led to a series of intensely personal dances: Jérôme Bel (1995), Shirtology (1997), and The Last Performance (1998). In 2004, Bel began a series of performance portraits of contemporary dancers, including Véronique Doisneau, Isabel Torres, Pichet Klunchun and Myself(TBA:08), Cédric Andrieux and Lutz Förster. His work, The Show Must Go On (2001), received a Bessie Award in 2005.
Selected Press
We Are People Before We Are Dancers..., Christine Hou, The Brooklyn Rail, October, 2010.
With "Cédric Andrieux" Jérôme Bel takes us below the dance, history, Wu Yi-hua, Geneactive.ch, December 1, 2009 (Translated from French).
Jerry Quickley: 2 Events
Jesse Hayward: 4 Events; Jesse Hayward received his MFA from California College of Art in 2002. His work has been exhibited at PDX Contemporary Art Window Project in Portland, OR; Southern Exposure and Eleanor Harwood Gallery in San Francisco, CA; and at The Affair at The Jupiter Art Fair. In 2006, Hayward’s work was included in the Oregon Biennial at the Portland Art Museum. His work has been reviewed in The Oregonian, PORT, PDX Magazine, Willamette Week, and The Portland Mercury. Most recently, Hayward was shortlisted for the Portland Art Museum’s Contemporary Northwest Art Award.
Jesse Hewit: 6 Events; Jesse Hewit is a dance artist who lives in San Francisco. He has performed and had residencies with Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, CounterPUSLE, Z Space, KUNST-STOFF Headlands Center for the Arts, Ponderosa Tanzland, Firkin Crane, and others. Hewitt received a 2010 SFBG Goldie Award winner and was a 2011 YBCA Bay Area Now artist. He founded the THIS IS WHAT I WANT Festival with the National Queer Arts Festival, and has curated for THEOFFCENTER and Dancer’s Group/CounterPULSE’s 2nd Sundays series.
Jesse Sugarmann: 3 Events; Jesse Sugarmann is an interdisciplinary artist working in video, performance, and sculpture. His work engages the automotive industry as a manufacturer of human identity, accessing automotive history as an index of both cultural identity and social development. Jesse has exhibited work in venues such as the Getty Institute, Los Angeles; el Museo Tamayo, Mexico; Southern Exposure, San Francisco; the Banff Center, Canada; Filmbase, Ireland; Human Resources, Los Angeles; Michael Strogoff, Marfa; el Museo de Arte Moderno de Santander, Spain; Drift Station, Omaha; Spirit Abuse, Albuquerque; the Knockdown Center, New York; Fugitive Projects, Nashville; the 21c Museum, Louisville; and High Desert Test Sites 2013. His work has been written about in publications including ArtForum, Art Papers, ART LTD, Art Cards, Art Fag City, Frieze Magazine, and The New York Times. Jesse lives and works in Bakersfield, California.
Selected Press:
"Sitting in the Back of a Car by Chip Lord," The Architect’s Newspaper, July 2014
"Doing Battle with the Remains of Industrial America by Christian Frock," Hyperallergic, May 2014
"Jesse Sugarmann," John Motley, Frieze Magazine, March 2014
"Critic’s Picks: Jesse Sugarmann," Stephanie Snyder, Artforum, October 2013
"High Desert Test Sites, a Diary by Mutual Art," Huffington Post, October, 2013
"Subverting Deadly Materials: The Work of Jesse Sugarmann," Mack McFarland, NY Arts Magazine, October, 2013
Jessica Bissett Perea: 2 Events; Jessica Bissett Perea (Dena’ina/Scottish American) is an Assistant Professor of Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis. Her research and teaching focus on music, sound, and media studies; critical race and gender studies; Alaska Native and Circumpolar Inuit cultures, histories, and politics; Urban Indigeneities; African and Native alliances and cultural production in the Americas; jazz and improvisational musics; research ethics and methodologies; critical theory and pedagogy. She completed her PhD in Musicology from UCLA in 2011 and was awarded a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship in Music at UC Berkeley from 2011-2013.
Jessica was born in Anchorage, Alaska and raised forty miles north in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley. She is an enrolled member of the Knik Tribe and a shareholder in Cook Inlet Region, Inc. (an Alaska Native Corporation). Her innovative dissertation research and dedication to community outreach were recognized with a 2010 Alaska Native Visionary Award, presented by the Alaska Native Heritage Month committee and board of directors.
Jessica’s writings have appeared in the American Indian Culture and Research Journal, MUSICultures (formerly the Canadian Journal for Traditional Music / La Revue de Musique Folklorique Canadienne), the Journal of the Society for American Music, the Grove Dictionary of American Music (2nd edition), and an edited volume Jazz/Not Jazz: The Music and Its Boundaries (University of California Press, 2012).
Jessica Jackson Hutchins: 5 Events; Hutchins received her BA in Art History from Oberlin College and her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Hutchins has had solo exhibitions in New York and Portland, Oregon, and has been shown across the US, as well as in Iceland, the UK, and Germany. Most recently, Hutchins’ work was included in 2010: The Whitney Biennial. Later this year, Hutchins will be featured in Ephemera at Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park; in Shape of Things to Come: New Sculpture at the Saatchi Gallery (London), and at Timothy Taylor Gallery (London). She is represented by Laurel Gitlen (Small A Projects) in New York.
Selected Press
Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Stuart Horodner, BOMB, Summer 2010.
Jessica Jackson Hutchins, John Motley, Art in America, June 4, 2010.
Minor Miracles, Ben Davis, Artnet.com, March 26, 2010.
Critics' Picks: Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Stephanie Snyder, Artforum, March, 2010.
500 Words: Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Patricia Maloney, Artforum, July 22, 2009.
Jessica Jackson Hutchins' Hours and Ours at Small A, Jeff Jahn, PORT, February 1, 2008.
Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Chas Bowie, Portland Mercury, February 8, 2007.
Jess Perlitz: 4 Events; Jess Perlitz’s work is informed by our formations of landscape and the body’s place within it, finding points of desire, incongruity, and disruption. Born in Toronto, CA, she is a graduate of Bard College and received an MFA from Tyler School of Art and clown training from the Manitoulin Center for Creation and Performance. Perlitz is currently based in Portland, OR, where she is Associate Professor and Head of Sculpture at Lewis & Clark College, and most recently, the co-leader of the year-long Portland’s Monuments & Memorials Project and the Experimental Arts Research Forest. Perlitz was named a 2019 Hallie Ford Fellow, won a Joan Shipley award, and received an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her work has appeared in playgrounds, fields, galleries, and museums, including the Institute for Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA; Socrates Sculpture Park, Astoria, NY; Cambridge Art Galleries, Cambridge, CA; De Fabriek in The Netherlands; and aboard the Arctic Circle Residency. Her project, Chorus, is currently installed at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, PA, as part of the museum’s ongoing artist installation series.
Jesus Rodales: 2 Events; Jesus Rodales is a Hillsboro native. He started his dance career as a freestyler, specializing in Tutting and Popping. He is co-founder of Find A Way Threads, a lifestyle brand dedicated to its self-explanatory purpose. Through Find A Way, they hope to help create opportunities for their community!
Jibade-Khalil Huffman: 4 Events; Jibade-Khalil Huffman is an artist and writer based in Los Angeles. He is the author of three books of poems, 19 Names For Our Band (Fence, 2008), James Brown is Dead (Future Plan and Program, 2011), and Sleeper Hold (Fence, 2014). His art and writing projects, spanning photography, video, performance and poetry, have been exhibited and performed at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, MoMA/P.S.1, Long Island City, NY, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, among others.
Jibade-Khalil Huffman: 2 Events; Jibade-Khalil Huffman is an artist and author of three books of poems: Sleeper Hold (Fence, 2015); James Brown Is Dead (Future Plan and Program, 2011); and 19 Names for Our Band (Fence, 2008). His recent and forthcoming exhibitions include the Hammer Museum’s Made in L.A. (2014); Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (2015); Jewish Museum, New York (2016); LAX ART (2016); Studio Museum in Harlem (2016); Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (2016); Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2017); Swiss Institute, New York (2017); KMAC Museum, Louisville (2018); Ballroom Marfa, Marfa (2018); The Kitchen, New York (2018); and Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland (2019). This fall he will present a new body of work along with a selection of recent projects at Tufts University Art Galleries, as well as a solo exhibition at Magenta Plains in New York.
Jibz Cameron / Dynasty Handbag: 3 Events; Jibz Cameron is a performer, visual artist, and writer living in Los Angeles, most well known for her multimedia work as alter ego Dynasty Handbag. Over the last 20 years, Cameron has combined tragedy and comedy at such institutions as MOCA, PS1, Joe’s Pub, The Kitchen, REDCAT, The Broad Museum, The Hammer Museum, and the New Museum, among others. The New York Times has heralded her as “the funniest and most pitch-perfect performance seen in years,” and New York Magazine has called her “outrageously smart, grotesque and innovative.” Cameron has written and produced seven evening-length performance pieces and countless short works that have been performed in clubs and venues internationally. She has also produced multiple video works and three albums of original music. She is a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, a 2020 Creative Capital Awardee, and a 2021 United States Artist. Her film, Weirdo Night, made with director Mariah Garnett, is an official Sundance Film Festival 2021 submission. Cameron also produces and hosts Weirdo Night!, a monthly experimental comedy and performance event in Los Angeles + New York. Jibz is honored to be included in 2023’s Made In LA Biennale “Acts Of Living” at the Hammer Museum. Cameron's memoir, Hell In A Handbag, is being released by DOPAMINE Books in 2026.
Ji Yang: 2 Events; 1. JI YANG is a PUZZLE MAKER and a FICTION BUILDER. 2. JI YANG makes art like saying “2 x 2 = 5 ?” or “ fighting with a puffy pillow.” 3. JI YANG does it underwhelmingly.
JJJJJerome Ellis: 1 Event; JJJJJerome Ellis (any pronoun) is a disabled Grenadian-Jamaican-American artist, surfer, and person who stutters. Through music, performance, writing, video, and photography, the artist asks what stuttering can teach us about justice.
Born in 1989 in Groton, Connecticut, USA the artist lives in Norfolk, Virginia, USA with their wife, poet-ecologist Luísa Black Ellis. JJJJJerome dreams of building a sonic bath house!
Concepts that organize the artist’s practice include: unknowing, improvisation, inheritance, opacity, prayer, gap, contradiction, aporia, eternity, unpredictability, interruption, and silence. Ellis researches relationships among blackness, disabled speech, divinity, nature, sound, and time.
jjjjjerome.com
Joan Findlay: 1 Event; Lifelong neurodivergent artist.
Two main pathways: abstract painting and dance/performance.
As a painter of close to 50 years, my work is equal parts improvisation and design: chance elements sometimes kinesthetically generated, a studied compositional eye, and a deep love of color, movement, architecture, and gesture. I create abstract acrylic paintings with many layers and sometimes collage elements. My studio is in The Drawing Studio in SE Portland, which I co-own with Phil Sylvester, adjoined by the Findlay/Sylvester Gallery, in which my paintings can be viewed.
As a contemporary modern dancer I have created and performed my own, mostly solo performance work. Also worked extensively for many years with these choreographers:
Beginning in 1980 with Jann McCauley Dryer in CIRQUE (formerly Portland Dance Theater), Gregg Bielemeier and Gregg Bielemeier Dance Project, Catherine Egan and Eggshell Productions, and Bonnie Merrill, who, in addition to the many works I danced over the years, choreographed a solo for me that I performed while heavily pregnant.
Helen Buckingham, Kiken Chin, Linda K Johnson, Kimi Okada, Mary Oslund, Sara Padilla, Judy Patton, Ray Terrill.
Collaborated with artists in performance: Alva Bradford, costumer/puppet maker, Cristina DeGennaro, visual/performance artist, Van Findlay, singer/violinist, Daniel Storto, fashion/costume designer, Tyrrell Sweetman cellist, Phil Sylvester, composer/musician, and painter/set designer.
Designed and constructed sets, costumes, props, and hair designs for many choreographers/directors, including Gregg Bielemeier, Jann Dryer, Catherine Egan, and Randee Paufve.
Studied visual art and dance in the 1970’s at Portland State University with instructors who were creative working artists. In addition to modern dance have studied tap, ballet, African, improvisation, jazz, flamenco, as well as piano and drums. Influential teachers include Gregg Bielemeier, modern dance; Ruby Burns, African dance; Jann Dryer, modern dance; Cathy Evleshin, modern and jazz dance; Fred Heidel painting; Jim Hibbard drawing; Michi Kosuge sculpture; and Vincent Martinez-Grieco, modern jazz dance; Bonnie Merrill modern improvisation and tap dance; Judy Patton modern dance and performance collaboration; Barbara Remington ballet; and Claire Roche, tap dance.
Joan Frosch & Alla Kovga: 1 Event; Born and raised in Brooklyn, Joan Frosch (producer/director) explores 21st century artmaking through the voices of often previously marginalized artists and thinkers, including the emergent voices of contemporary dancers and choreographers in Africa, and the African Diasporas of France and the USA. Joan's 30 year creative path encompasses making and directing dance theatre, writing as a dance ethnographer/activist, and, now, directing her first documentary feature. She graduated from California Institute of the Arts, Laban Institute of Movement Studies, and Columbia University. At present, Joan is Professor of Dance and co-Director of the award-winning Center for World Arts at the University of Florida, and a founding member of the The Africa Contemporary Arts Consortium (USA).
Alla Kovgan (co-director/editor) is a Boston-based filmmaker/intermedia artist/curator, born in Moscow, Russia. Her films have been screened at numerous venues around the world including Boston Museum of Fine Arts, New York Dance on Camera Festival at Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and others. Among Alla's most recent endeavors is co-directing and editing “Traces of the Trade: a Story from the Deep North” by Katrina Browne about the role of the North in the US slave trade; co-producing with Russian filmmaker Efim Reznikov “Terpsychore's Captives II”, a feature documentary about Bill T. Jones and a Russian prima ballerina Natalia Balakhnicheva; and working with Kinodance Company, on a new intermedia performance "Denizen" that will premiere in May 2007 as a part of Bank of America Celebrity Series. Alla has been teaching and curating dance film and avant-garde cinema worldwide and acts as an International Director of St. Petersburg Dance Film Festival KINODANCE.
Joël Tan: 4 Events; Joel 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.
Johanna Billing: 2 Events; Johanna Billing lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. The artist uses performance and video to portray group interactions, merging the real and the staged. Billing received her MFA from Kanstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in 1999. She has been the subject of numerous solo shows over the last few years in Europe and the U.S. and was included in the 9th Istanbul Biennial, the 50th Venice Biennial and the 1st Prague Biennial, Marabou Park, Sweden, P.S. 1, New York and Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago. Her work is part of the collections of the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven, Holland, Ulrich Museum of Art, Kansas and Moderna Musset, Stockholm.
Johanna Ketola: 4 Events; Working in video and photography, Finnish artist Johanna Ketola reconstructs narrative that is built upon her quotidian observations of life. This results in both fictional and autobiographical characters and stories, which often reflect her state of being as affected by a kind of sweet and absurd hopelessness about the human condition. Her work has been exhibited at Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum in Helsinki, Finland; in Holden Gallery in Manchester, UK; in Espace Croix-Baragnon in Toulouse, France; in Amos Anderson Art Museum in Helsinki, Finland; in the following Finnish museums: Jyväskylä, Rauma, Oulu, and Mikkeli; and in Gallery Jangva in Helsinki, Finland, among others.
http://johannaketola.com/
John Jasperse Company: 3 Events; Jasperse is Artistic Director/Choreographer of the New York-based John Jasperse Company/Thin Man Dance. He has created several short works and thirteen evening-length pieces for the company, as well as various projects in collaboration with other artists. His work has been presented by festivals and presenting organizations throughout the United States and Europe and in Brazil, Chile, Israel, and Japan. Jasperse and company have received numerous prizes, grants and fellowships, including a Guggenheim and a “Bessie” Award in recognition of their body of work. Jasperse has created works for several companies including Baryshnikov's White Oak Project, Batsheva Dance Company, and The Lyon Opera Ballet.
Selected Press
Hamming It Up, With Pink Light, Flashes of Murakami and Flowered Bikinis, Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times, June 18, 2010.
John Jasperse Company, Joyce Theatre, New York, Apollinaire Scherr, Financial Times, June 18, 2010
Dance review: John Jasperse's flirty West Coast premiere at REDCAT, Victoria Looseleaf, LA Times, April 15, 2010.
True Lies: John Jasperse collaborates in search of beauty, Valerie Jean Johnson, NewCity Stage, April 5, 2010.
Of Men Who Go Naked With Women Who Aren't, Anna Kisselgoff, New York Times, June 3, 2000
John King: 1 Event; JOHN KING, composer, guitarist and violist, has received commissions from the Kronos Quartet; Ethel; the Albany Symphony/“Dogs of Desire”, Bang On A Can All-Stars; Mannheim Ballet; New York City Ballet/Diamond Project, Stuttgart Ballet, Ballets de Monte Carlo; as well as the Merce Cunningham Dance Co. His string quartets have also been performed by the Eclipse Quartet (LA) and the Mondriaan Quartet (Amsterdam), in addition to the Secret Quartet which has premiered many of his compositions at The Stone (June 2007, May 2015), The Kitchen (April 2009), Lincoln Center Festival (July 2011); and Roulette (Oct. 2014).
Johnny Woods: 1 Event; Johnny Woods is an animator, video artist, and editor based in Los Angeles. His work has appeared at the Museum of Moving Image, the Sydney Opera House, MoMA, LACMA, the Hirshhorn Museum, ICA (Philadelphia), Imagine Science Festival, Animafest Zagreb, Coachella, and Lollapalooza. Currently, Johnny is working primarily on short-form experimental films. He is co-founder of Ghosting.tv, a monthly screening event in Los Angeles featuring experimental animation and video art, programmer for Animation Breakdown at The Cinefamily, and director of Undervolt & Co., a label for experimental video artists.
John Smith: 4 Events; John Smith was born in London in 1952 and studied film at the Royal College of Art. After graduating in 1977 he became involved in the activities of the London Filmmakers’ Co-op. John Smith has developed a body of work that deftly subverts the perceived boundaries between documentary and fiction, representation and abstraction.
Since 1972 John Smith has made over forty film, video and installation works and shown in cinemas, art galleries and on television throughout the world. His solo exhibitions include: Royal College of Art (London), Ikon Gallery (Birmingham, UK), Kunstmuseum Magdeburg (Germany), Open Eye Gallery (Liverpool), Pearl Gallery (London), and Tanya Leighton Gallery (Berlin). Smith’s work has been featured in retrospectives at the 2007 Venice Biennale and film festivals in Oberhausen, Cork, Tampere, Uppsala, Bristol, Regensburg, Glasgow, La Rochelle and, most recently, in the 2010 Berlin Bienniale. John Smith lives and works in London, where he teaches part-time at the University of East London as Professor of Fine Art. He is represented by Tanya Leighton Gallery (Berlin).
Selected Press
On the Street where You Live: The Films of John Smith, Adrian Dakes, senses of cinema, November, 2003.
Interview with John Smith, Brian Frye, Millennium Film Journal, Winter 2003.
John Smith, Michael O'Pray, LUXOnline, 2003.
Jon Kessler: 1 Event; Download 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.
Joseph Keckler: 4 Events; Joseph Keckler is a musician, writer, and artist who often zeroes in on moments of daily life and spins them into absurd and affecting underworld voyages. His musical performances have been presented by the NPR Tiny Desk concert series, Lincoln Center, Centre Pompidou, and others. In 2019 he premiered two performance pieces—a dreamlike travelogue, Train With No Midnight, with Prototype Festival, and Let Me Die, an epic medley of operatic death scenes, with Opera Philadelphia—and toured the US as the national support act for Sleater-Kinney. His writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, Vice, Lithub, and other publications; his debut collection Dragon at the Edge of a Flat World was published in 2018 by Turtle Point Press. This year he is an artist in residence with Dartmouth and the Ringling Museum of Art and is currently working on new videos and recordings.
"Singer with a range that shatters the conventional boundaries...The sensibility of a magician, a trickster’s dark humor and a formidable musical and literary erudition. Major vocal talent"-- Stephen Holden, The New York Times
“Tantalizing… dynamic… with magnetism and poise is so high that he seems to have been born onstage.” — The Village Voice
“Riveting and beautifully absurd, Keckler singlehandedly has the power and chops to legitimately modernize a dying art form.” — Huffington Post
“His timing is impeccable, his wit is sharp… Keckler himself is the masterpiece”– Brooklyn Rail
Joseph M. Pierce: 3 Events; Joseph M. Pierce is an Associate Professor in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature at Stony Brook University. His research focuses on the intersections of kinship, gender, sexuality, and race in Latin America, 19th-century literature and culture, queer studies, Indigenous studies, and hemispheric approaches to citizenship and belonging. He is the author of Argentine Intimacies: Queer Kinship in an Age of Splendor, 1890-1910 (SUNY Press, 2019) and co-editor of Políticas del amor: Derechos sexuales y escrituras disidentes en el Cono Sur (Cuarto Propio, 2018) as well as the forthcoming special issue of GLQ, “Queer/Cuir Américas: Translation, Decoloniality, and the Incommensurable.” His work has been published recently in Revista Hispánica Moderna, Critical Ethnic Studies, The Art Newspaper, and has also been featured in Indian Country Today. Along with SJ Norman (Koori of Wiradjuri descent) he is co-curator of the performance series Knowledge of Wounds. He is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.
Joseph Rosenburger: 1 Event; Joseph Rosenburger has not let hardships, tragedies, and adversities stop him from excelling in the written word. His wit matches his wisdom, both of which are plentiful beyond his years. Newly released from five years in three institutions, Joe has much to offer the people.
Joti Mangat: 1 Event; Joti born and raised in Portland, Oregon is the first in his family to be born outside of India. He graduated from Roosevelt High School and will be majoring in film at Portland State University in the fall of 2017. Attending Roosevelt High School created many opportunities for Joti to use his passion for film and photography to talk about social issues he saw in his community. His first project #Teens4SocialJustice shined light on the issue feeling racially profiled in stores as a minority teen. His second project “American Nightmare” was a short film he created that consisted of many metaphors and symbols to represent what it felt like to be a minority in America. Joti hopes to one day create projects that reach audiences on a global scale that address issues in the society.
Judy: 4 Events; JUDY was created as a collaboration of DJs, artists, and friends; Ana Briseño, Megan Holmes and Kayla Oh. Originally created in response to the void of queer femme DJs in dance spaces, Judy was born as a place for people to sweat, scream, make out, and throw their shirts off to music, while feeling the openness of sexual freedom and gender expression.
Juliana Huxtable: 2 Events; Juliana Huxtable will treat opening night audiences to a dynamic experience sonically and visually. The night will play between text, sound and video, questioning the parameters between club and gallery. In her work, Huxtable explores the intersections of race, gender, queerness, and identity. She uses a diverse set of means to engage these issues, including self-portraiture, text-based prints, performance, nightlife, music, writing, and social media. Huxtable’s work has been featured in group presentations at MoMA PS1, New York (2014); White Columns Annual, White Columns, New York (2014); “Take Ecstasy with Me,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2014); Frieze Projects, London (2014); and2015 Triennial: Surround Audience, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2015); among other venues.
Julie Atlas Muz: 2 Events; Julie Atlas Muz, an internationally performing artist who is based between NYC’s Lower East Side and London, UK has been around the block more than twice. One of the most acclaimed, prolific, and experienced creators around, Julie sucker-punches the boundaries between theater, dance, puppetry, film, and burlesque with outrageously loving performances that have secured her place in the underworld of nightlife, as well as solidifying her as a bastion of the art world.
Juma Sei: 1 Event; A rising senior at Catlin Gabel School, Juma Sei has always found himself engrossed in predominantly white, privileged, and “liberal” school systems and communities across the world. As a result of this, Sei has deeply explored the more subtle aspects of oppression and prejudice his entire life - bringing a unique and somewhat introspective point of view to the work he does at Catlin Gabel and other organizations across Portland. In addition to his identity as a black male and African American, Sei’s parents are both Sierra Leonean immigrants, adding yet another perspective to his intersectional integrity. Arguably the most important aspect to any work he does is making sure to understand the context and history in which he’s operating.
jumatatu m. poe: 5 Events; I am a choreographer, performer, and educator based between Philadelphia and New York City who grew up dancing around the living room and at parties with my siblings and cousins. My early exposure to concert dance was through African dance and capoeira performances on California college campuses where my parents studied and worked, but I did not start formal dance training until college with Umfundalai, Kariamu Welsh’s contemporary African dance technique. My work continues to be influenced by various sources, including my foundations in those living rooms and parties, my early technical training in contemporary African dance, my continued study of contemporary dance and performance, and my recent sociological research of and technical training in J-setting with Donte Beacham. I produce dance and performance work with idiosynCrazy productions, a company I founded in 2008 and now co-direct with Shannon Murphy. Previously, I have danced with Marianela Boán, Silvana Cardell, Emmanuelle Hunyh, Tania Isaac, Kun- Yang Lin, C. Kemal Nance, Marissa Perel, Leah Stein, Keith Thompson, Kate Watson-Wallace, Reggie Wilson, and Kariamu Welsh (as a member of Kariamu & Company). As a performer, I also collaborate with Merián Soto.
Re-Sette the Stage—a three-part conversation series happening in August, September, and October 2021—was conceived by jumatatu m. poe in partnership with Jermone Donte Beacham and Jamarsa Peters.
Junaid Sarieddeen: 2 Events; Junaid Sarieddeen (Beirut, Lebanon) His artistic research is oriented towards focusing on the position of the artwork within the time and space contexts of events. “Lorca” (2005), the intrusive event in the streets of Beirut, followed by the installation performance “ish ibka smu sud jud...” (2006) both carried the beginning of this artistic question for him. A question which started developing after he took part in establishing Zoukak Theatre Company in 2006 and later finishing his BA in Philosophy at the Lebanese university in 2008; which led him to consider the artwork as a political proposition. Sarieddeen is the dramaturg for Leila's Death, part of PICA's 2016 TBA Festival.
Justine A. Chambers: 1 Event; Justine A. Chambers is a dance artist and educator living and working on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations in Vancouver, Canada. Her practice is a collaboration with her Black matrilineal heritage, and extends from this continuum and its entanglements with Western contemporary dance and visual arts practices. At the centre of her practice is a question often posed by her grandmother: “You feel me?” This question is both a declaration of one’s personal orientation, and an invitation to reorient and include what is held in our flesh. Chambers meets this question in her work by attending to individual and collective embodied archives, social choreographies of the everyday, and choreography/dance as otherwise ways of being in relation. Chambers’ work has been hosted at galleries, festivals, and theaters nationally and internationally including Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), Troy, NY; Toronto Biennial of Art, Toronto, ON; Libby Leshgold Gallery, Vancouver, BC; Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, Montreal, QC; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC; Sophiensaele, Berlin, Germany; National Arts Centre, Ottawa, ON; Agora de la Danse, Montreal, QC; Art Museum at the University of Toronto, Toronto, ON; Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC; Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford, PA; Artspeak, Vancouver, BC; Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC; Western Front, Vancouver, BC; The Dance Centre, Vancouver, BC; Burrard Arts Foundation, Vancouver, BC; and the Hong Kong Arts Festival. Chambers holds a MFA in Interdisciplinary Art and is currently Assistant Professor in Dance at the School for Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, and Associate Artist to The Dance Centre, Vancouver, BC. Chambers is Max Tyler-Hite’s mother.
Kameelah Janan Rasheed: 1 Event; Kameelah Janan Rasheed (East Palo Alto, CA) is an artist, writer, and former public school social studies teacher based in Brooklyn, NY. In her interdisciplinary and research intensive practice, she considers ideas of selective legibility and opaqueness as a political strategy; the tension between narrative contingencies and narrative resolutions; as well as black traditions of covert literacies and self-publishing. She has exhibited at Studio Museum in Harlem, Bronx Museum, Queens Museum, Smack Mellon Gallery, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Project Row Houses, among others. She has been the recipient of awards including the Keyholder Residency at Lower East Side Print Studio, Triple Canopy Commission at New York Public Library Labs, Artadia Grant, Queens Museum Jerome Emerging Artist Fellowship, Art Matters Grant, among others. She is a curriculum writer for NYC public schools, the Arts Editor for SPOOK Magazine, a contributing editor at The New Inquiry, and on faculty at School of Visual Arts. Currently, she is an artist in residence at Smack Mellon.
Katie Janovec: 2 Events; Katie Janovec is a freestyle dancer, popper, performer, teacher and event producer. She created The Beautiful Street to connect, support, and promote the Northwest street and club dance community. Katie continues to dive deeper into street and club dance culture through traveling, battling, learning from teachers who share the history, and creating community events. She is currently the Fundraising Coordinator at The Aspire Project.
Kendra Jayne Patrick: 1 Event; Kendra Jayne Patrick directs an itinerant, eponymous art gallery based in New York City. The program is focused on exhibition-making and symbology related to the twenty-first century avant-garde, specializing in post-conceptual and post-internet sculpture, digital, photography, and painting. Since opening in late 2017 the gallery has shown a range of international artists and practices including Ivan Argote, Lap-See Lam, Kenya (Robinson), Jo Shane, and Arden Surdam. Gallery Kendra Jayne Patrick has been featured in Artsy, Vulture, ARTnews, Barron’s, the San Francisco Chronicle, and DAZED Magazine.
Lars Jan / Early Morning Opera: 2 Events; Lars Jan is a director, writer, visual artist, and the founding artistic director of Early Morning Opera (EMO), a genre-bending performance + art lab whose works explore emerging technologies, live audiences, and unclassifiable experience. He is the son of émigrés from Afghanistan and Poland.
Jan has received multiple commissions from the Whitney Museum and developed his recent projects with major commissioning and residency support from the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC). His works have been also presented by The BAM Next Wave Festival, Sundance Film Festival, REDCAT, Hammer Museum, Guggenheim Museum, Symphony Space, Kirk Douglas Theatre, Ringling Museum of Art, Pasadena Museum of California Art, and Toronto Nuit Blanche Festival.
His work has been supported by multiple awards from the NEA and Center for Cultural Innovation; Rauschenberg Foundation; MAP Fund; Adam Mickiewicz Institute; Surdna Foundation; NEFA’s National Theatre Project; NPN’s Creation Fund; New York State Council on the Arts; and the Sherwood Award. He has spoken at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Performa, and the 92Y, and held residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and Princeton Atelier; CalArts; and the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, where he was an inaugural artist-in-residence.
In August 2015, EMO’s lecture performance ABACUS will be presented by Summerhall at the Edinburgh Fringe, and in October 2015, the public performance spectacle HOLOSCENES will be presented by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in downtown San Francisco, prior to an exhibition of related video works at the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art in January 2016. Jan is a TED Senior Fellow.
Linda K. Johnson: 9 Events; Oregon native and Portland resident Linda K. Johnson has been a professional dance-based, transdisciplinary artist for 40 years. Over these decades of creative practice, Johnson has taught, performed, choreographed, curated, and produced extensively, influencing and forwarding the development of infrastructure (studios and dance programs), funding (support), and conceptual networks (information and training) for professional colleagues and students. Hybrid in her practice, Johnson’s concerns as an artist are social and environmental—curious equally about both the human and nonhuman, addressing our collective relationship to site, place and community. Since creating her first site-based, large-scale interdisciplinary performance in 1992, Finding the Forest, Johnson has gone on to author over 17 major dance/movement installations, most recently Mycelium Dreams, 2022 and Polka Dots/Pioneer Square, 2020, which have utilized forests, intersections, waterways, derelict lots, neighborhoods, green spaces, warehouses, and galleries, as well as formal performance spaces, as staging grounds for presentation. A recipient of the 1999 Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship, Johnson’s work has been consistently funded and commissioned by public, private, and individual sources, and has received critical review in many venues, including Dance Magazine, Landscape Architecture, NPR’s Living on Earth, Oregon ArtsWatch, and Metropolis Magazine. She has been awarded residencies at the Rauschenberg Artist Residency at Captiva, Yaddo, Caldera Arts, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology to further the development of her work. She is honored to be one of six international custodians of Yvonne Rainer’s seminal postmodern dance work Trio A, and to have been included in Kristin Timken’s 2015 book The New Explorers: Making Meaning in the 21st Century American Landscape, which includes a forward by Lucy R. Lippard. Now considered a “mother tree” (from Suzanne Simard’s work on forest ecosystems) in her community, Johnson’s current practice is devoted to advancing networks of inclusion and collective memory (Mycelium Dreams).
Lisa Jarrett: 5 Events; Lisa Jarrett (she/her) is an artist working in social and visual forms. Her intersectional practice considers the politics of difference within a variety of settings including: schools, landscapes, fictions, racial imaginaries, studios, communities, museums, galleries, walls, mountains, mirrors, floors, rivers, and prisms. She recently discovered that her primary medium is questions; the most urgent of which is: What will set you free? Her current work connects an interest in tracing lost histories and homelands to the Beauty Supply store and Beauty Salon as critical spaces of Black cultural production with their own sets of aesthetics, desires, and complications.
Lisa is also co-founder/director of projects like KSMoCA (Dr MLK Jr School Museum of Contemporary Art); the Harriet Tubman Middle School Center for Expanded Curatorial Practice in NE Portland, OR; and the art collective Art 25: Art in the 25th Century. She is a professor at Portland State University where she teaches classes in art and social practice.
Marbles Jumbo Radio: 4 Events; Marbles Jumbo Radio is a dancer and movement thinker who works within performance, video, and discussion based platforms that engage experiences of social marginality with politics of place, belonging, land, and identity.
Marc Bamuthi Joseph: 4 Events; Marc Bamuthi Joseph is an inaugural recipient of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship, the winner of the 2011 Alpert Award in Theater, and an inaugural recipient of the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award. He is the founding Program Director of the exemplary non-profit Youth Speaks, and is a co-founder of Life is Living, a national series of one day festivals designed to activate under-resourced parks through hip hop arts and focused environmental action. Mr. Joseph recently premiered the Creative Time commission “Black Joy in the Hour of Chaos” in New York’s Central Park, and is currently completing new works for the Chautauqua Symphony, the Philadelphia Opera and South Coast Repertory Theater while serving as Chief of Program and Pedagogy at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. His evening length piece “/peh-LO-tah/” has been commissioned by the Kennedy Center and will premiere at YBCA in the Fall of 2016.
Master Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr.: 2 Events; Master 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.
michaelstevensonjr.com
Matthew Day Jackson: 2 Events; Matthew Day Jackson (born 1974) is an American artist whose multifaceted practice encompasses sculpture, painting, collage, photography, drawing, video,performance and installation. Since graduating with an MFA from Rutgers University in 2001, following his BFA from the University of Washington in Seattle, he has had numerous solo exhibitions. His work has been shown at MAMbo Museo d'Arte Moderna in Bologna, Italy; Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art in Boulder, Colorado; the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA; the Portland Museum of Art Biennial in Portland, Maine; and the Whitney Biennial Day for Night in New York.
Meryem Jazouli: 4 Events; Moroccan choreographer and dancer Meryem Jazouli has lived and worked in Casablanca since 1997. After pursuing dance studies and performing for several companies in Paris, Jazouli returned to her home country where her artistic work has been strongly influenced by the Moroccan context. She has worked extensively with collaborators in various disciplines, such as Mouna Sekkat, Bernardo Montet, Ambrose Bye and the visual-arts collective La Source du Lion. Works include: Temps de chien (2006), Keima…un cir à la mère (2009), Entre deux (2012), and Contessa (2013). Among other community-oriented initiatives, Jazouli established L’Espace Darja, a space in Casablanca dedicated to creation, artist residencies, training and experimentation in contemporary dance as well as a space to develop and expand exchanges and dialogues between artists of various disciplines and generations.
Miranda July: 2 Events; Miranda July is a filmmaker, artist, and writer. Her videos, performances, and web-based projects have been presented at sites such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and in two Whitney Biennials. July wrote, directed and starred in her first feature-length film, Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), which won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival and four prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, including the Camera d’Or. Miranda July’s most recent film is The Future (2011), which she wrote and directed and stars in.

Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Harper’s, and The New Yorker; her collection of stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You (Scribner, 2007), won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and has been published in twenty countries. Her latest book is It Chooses You (McSweeney’s, 2011).

July created the participatory website, learningtoloveyoumore, with artist Harrell Fletcher and a companion book was published in 2007 (Prestel); the work is now in collection of The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Eleven Heavy Things, an interactive sculpture garden she designed for the 2009 Venice Biennale, was on view in Union Square in New York in the summer of 2010 and is currently being presented by MOCA in Los Angeles. Raised in Berkeley, California, she currently lives in Los Angeles.
Mx Justin Vivian Bond: 1 Event; Mx Justin Vivian Bond is a singer, painter, performance artist, and author of the Lambda Literary Award winning memoir TANGO: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels and Susie Says…, a collaboration with Gina Garan. V’s debut CD, Dendrophile, was self-released in 2011 and was followed by Silver Wells in 2012. In 2011 Justin Vivian’s art exhibition The Fall of the House of Whimsy was presented at Participant Inc. in New York City. Mx Bond was nominated for a Tony Award for Kiki and Herb Alive On Broadway in 2007. Other notable theatrical endeavors include starring as Warhol Superstar Jackie Curtis in Scott Wittman’s production of Jukebox Jackie: Snatches of Jackie Curtis, originating the role of Herculine Barbin in Kate Bornstein’s groundbreaking play Hidden: A Gender, touring with the performance troupe The Big Art Group and appearing in John Cameron Mitchell’s film Shortbus. Other films include Sunset Stories (2012), Imaginary Heroes (2004), and Fanci’s Persuasion (1995). Mx Bond is a recipient of The Ethyl Eichelberger Award, The Peter Reed Foundation Grant, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award for Performance Art/Theater, an Obie, and a Bessie.
Selected Press
Justin Vivian Bond Preps 'Snow Angel' Show For New York's 54 Below, Curtis M. Wong, Huffington Post, December 7, 2012.
"Justin Bond: 'I think everybody's trans'," Hermione Hoby, The Guardian, June 28, 2011.e
Nick Jones: 1 Event; His play TREVOR received multiple Ovation and Critics Circle awards for the 2015 production starring Laurie Metcalf and Jimmi Simpson. Other plays include the COWARD and VÉRITÉ, both produced by Lincoln Center/LTC3, and IMPORTANT HATS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, produced by Manhattan Theater Club.
In television, Nick worked as a writer and co-executive producer on the Netflix original series GLOW and ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK, for which he has garnered multiple WGA and Emmy nominations, as well as RAMY, for which he served as Co-Executive Producer on its Peabody Award winning first season.
Upcoming projects include the film THE FACE OF THE KING with Sebastian Silva, and COMPLICITY ISLAND, an audio play commissioned by Audible. Nick earned his Literature/Creative Writing BA from Bard College and a Lila Acheson Wallace Playwriting degree from Juilliard, where he was a two-time winner of the Lecomte du Nouy Prize, and was recently awarded the Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters by Bard College. He began his career as a puppeteer and musician for the acclaimed madcap rock puppet musical JOLLYSHIP THE WHIZ-BANG, for which he also built puppets and wrote scripts. He is originally from Anchorage, Alaska.
Packard Jennings: 1 Event; Packard Jennings is an American artist who appropriates pop culture symbols and references to create new meaning using a variety of media including printmaking, sculpture, animation, video, and pamphleteering. In his early career he modified billboards, a common practice of culture jammers.
Patrick J. Rock: 3 Events; Patrick Rock is a conceptual artist who has shown internationally, most recently with the collective AMERICAN MEAT LLC., and with the post-punk trio PISS in the Sequences Live Art Festival in Reykjavik. He is the director of ROCKSBOXCONTEMPORARYFINEART, a short-term artist residency and exhibition space in Portland, as well as the director of the Portland State University Art Department galleries, where he also teaches as an adjunct instructor of its Art Department.
Sara Jaffe: 3 Events; Sara Jaffe is a writer living in Portland, OR. Hurricane Envy, a short story collection, was published in Fall 2025 by Rescue Press. Dryland, a novel, was published by Tin House Books and Cipher Press (UK ). Her short fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in publications including Joyland, Fence, BOMB, NOON, and Maggot Brain. She co-edited The Art of Touring (Yeti, 2009), an anthology of writing and visual art by musicians, drawing on her experience as a guitarist for post-punk band Erase Errata.
Sara has received fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, RADAR Productions, and the Regional Arts and Culture Council. She is also co-founding editor of New Herring Press, a publisher of prose chapbooks. She teaches creative writing as part of the Pacific Northwest College of Art’s Low-Residency Creative Writing MFA.
The Javaad Alipoor Company: 4 Events; The Javaad Alipoor Company (TJAC) is a contemporary theater company that makes work for a changing world and a global audience. Rooted in experimental and multiplatform practice, their work asks the most pressing questions we all face. With a commitment to internationalism, complexity, diversity, and fun, they make work for the twenty-first century, transforming what people think theater can be and what it can do.
Javaadalipoor.co.uk
The Julians: 2 Events; The Julians are four of Portland's finest classically trained female vocalists working together to explore, challenge, embrace, and sing the living daylights out of music that they love. The Julians formed in 2010 with the intention of creating genre-defying programs that seamlessly meld classical, pop, jazz, and indie music. They have performed their original arrangements in a variety of Portland venues including Alberta Rose Theatre, Someday Lounge, Splendorporium, Jade Lounge, as well as on many concert series. They collaborate frequently with local artists and are featured on Bryan Free's 2011 album, Red Queen. The Julians are comprised of: Kristen Buhler, Liz Bacon, Maria Karlin and Vakarė Petroliūnaitė.
"...the group sounded completely natural in a startling range of repertoire.They're one of the most refreshing breezes to blow through Portland's alt classical scene." - Oregon ArtsWatch
Selected Press
"Weekend MusicWatch: Pirates, Fairies, and more," Brett Campbell, Oregon Arts Watch, November 25, 2011.
"Singing with The Julians," Dmae Roberts, Stage and Studio, November 5, 2011.
"Let's Get to Know: The Julians," Artslandia, June 2013.
The Julie Ruin: 2 Events; In 1997, riot grrrl legend Kathleen Hanna (Bikini Kill, Le Tigre) released a solo album under the name Julie Ruin, hoping someday to find a band to play the songs live. She finally assembled her dream team in 2010 as The Julie Ruin, with her ex-Bikini Kill bandmate Kathi Wilcox on bass; Kenny Mellman (half of the legendary punk cabaret act Kiki and Herb) on keys; actor, filmmaker, and musical juggernaut Carmine Covelli on drums; and, Sara Landeau, who Kathleen met while through the Rock Camp for Girls, killing it on guitar. The Julie Ruin brings a strong, tight musical backbone to Hanna’s iconic vocals. Run Fast—their debut album as a band—spans topics from euthanasia to cookies and will be released in September 2013.
Selected Press
"Kathleen Hanna Shares Details of Her Band Julie Ruin's Collaboration With James Murphy", Jenn Pelley, Pitchfork.com, December 10, 2012.
Tim Smith-Stewart | Jeffrey Azevedo: 1 Event; Tim Smith-Stewart | Jeffrey Azevedo is a Seattle based artist duo creating contemporary art at the intersection of performance and installation. They are currently artists in residence at On the Boards, where they are developing their latest project Salvage Rituals. Tim was recently a resident artist in the spring 2018 PICA Creative Exchange Lab cohort.Tim and Jeffrey premiered Awaiting Oblivion—Temporary Solutions for surviving the dystopian future we find ourselves within at present at On the Boards in February 2017 and The Perpetual Insurrection of Claude Cahun at the Henry Art Gallery in October 2017.
Twenty-minute selections of Awaiting Oblivion have been presented at: On The Boards NW New Works Festival (SEA), Risk/Reward Festival (PDX), and Fresh Oysters Performance Research (MSP). Tim and Jeffrey have presented multiple installations including their video/paper tapestry installation, Queer City Lost, at New Tomorrow, Erasure curated by the Lion’s Main Art Collective, and the Velocity Dance Center Big Bang. They also presented Stained glass in my replacement church at the 2014 Lofi Arts Festival.
From 2011-2013 Tim & Jeffrey co-created The Eternal Glow Project—a four part performance/installation which premiered work at The Seattle Center Next50 (The Eternal Glow of Electric Hearts), On the Boards NorthWest New Works Festival 2013 (Ω<1), and Lofi Arts Festival at Smoke Farm 2013 (Less than red, more than violet).
Young Jean Lee's Theater Company: 4 Events; YOUNG JEAN LEE (Artistic Director) is an OBIE award-winning playwright and director who has been called “the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation” by the New York Times and “one of the best experimental playwrights in America” by Time Out New York. She has written and directed nine shows in New York with Young Jean Lee's Theater Company and toured her work to over twenty cities around the world. Her plays have been published by Theatre Communications Group (Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven and Other Plays, The Shipment and Lear) and by Samuel French (Three Plays by Young Jean Lee). She is currently under commission from Plan B/Paramount Pictures, Lincoln Center Theater, Playwrights Horizons, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She is a member of New Dramatists and 13P and has an MFA from Mac Wellman's playwriting program at Brooklyn College. She has received grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Creative Capital, NYFA, NEA, NYSCA, the Jerome Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, and the Rockefeller MAP Foundation. She is also the recipient of two OBIE awards, the Festival Prize of the Zuercher Theater Spektakel, a 2010 Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2012 Doris Duke Artist Award.
zoe | juniper: 6 Events; Visual artist Juniper Shuey and choreographer Zoe Scofield began their collaboration for On the Boards’ NW New Works Festival in 2005. Since then, they have been commissioned by On the Boards and, in 2007, they choreographed a music video for Dave Matthews. Scofield and Shuey co-founded the Secret of Gold Festival, with Morgan Henderson, an annual art festival in Arlington, WA. The duo’s photographic and video collaborations have been shown at the Howard House, the 8th Northwest Biennial at Tacoma Art Museum, Arts Center/SOFA Gallery (New Zealand), and PONCHO Gallery.
Selected Press
Zoe|juniper's abstract 'Crack' offers dance in multi-dimensions, Janine Parker, Boston Globe, July 23, 2011.
zoe | juniper @ Jacob’s Pillow, 7/20/11, Tresca Weinstein, Times Union, July 21, 2011.
Zoe | Juniper dance explores 'A Crack in Everything' at Jacob's Pillow, Tresca Weinstein, The Times Union, July 15, 2011.
A confounding, memorable 'devil,' Karen Campbell, The Boston Globe, February 24, 2009.
Zola Jesus: 2 Events; Hailing from the isolated northwoods of rural Wisconsin but currently settled in Seattle, WA, Zola Jesus mastermind Nika Roza Danilova has spent most of the last decade mesmerizing audiences with her time-stopping, operatically-trained voice. Danilova has been touring relentlessly over the past year in support of her debut for the legendary Mute Records (and fifth album overall) Taiga—a meticulously crafted collection of evocative pop epics where the haunting synth layers of her previous efforts (while still present) take a backseat to big brass arrangements, explosively trudging rhythms, and thoughtful pop hooks. At TBA, we'll catch a crucial glimpse at what's behind Danilova's massive voice. As evidenced by Danilova's sprawling eccentric mixes for the likes of Fact, Dazed, and most recently an icy, dystopian collection for Time Out New York, the sonic backdrop for her music is a blurry and immersive aesthetic patchwork of power electronics, industrial, futurist beat music, avant-classical compositions, post-punk, IDM, R'n'B, and so much more. While Zola Jesus' recorded work exhibits quite a singular sound, we're excited to peak behind the veil for a rare DJ set, as Danilova gives a taste of what spins the cogs.

Artists Archive

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Ahamefule J. Oluo

Akela Jaffi

Andrew J. Brown/Sister James

Ariana Jacob

Arnold J. Kemp

Bill Jenkins

burke jam

Eisa Jocson

Selected Press

Elisheba Johnson

Emily Johnson / Catalyst

Emily Jones

Emily Jones and Hannah Krafcik

Geumhyung Jeong

Ishmael Houston Jones

jaamil olawale kosoko

Jack Ferver

Selected Press

Jacob Wren

Jaleesa Johnston

James Benning

Selected Press

James Mapes

James Tigger! Ferguson

James Yarker

Jamie Isenstein

Selected Press

Jan Dabrowski

Janet Pants

Japanther

Jasmine Elizabeth Johnson

Jasmine Mahmoud

Jasmine Orpilla

Jason N. Le

Jason Traeger

Jennie MaryTai Liu

Jennifer Monson

Jennifer Reeves

Selected Press

Jennifer West

Jenny Yang

Jen Rosenblit

Jermone Donte Beacham

Jérôme Bel

Selected Press

Jerry Quickley

Jesse Hayward

Jesse Hewit

Jesse Sugarmann

Jessica Bissett Perea

Jessica Jackson Hutchins

Selected Press

Jess Perlitz

Jesus Rodales

Jibade-Khalil Huffman

Jibade-Khalil Huffman

Jibz Cameron / Dynasty Handbag

Ji Yang

JJJJJerome Ellis

Joan Findlay

Joan Frosch & Alla Kovga

Joël Tan

Johanna Billing

Johanna Ketola

John Jasperse Company

Selected Press

John King

Johnny Woods

John Smith

Selected Press

Jon Kessler

Joseph Keckler

Joseph M. Pierce

Joseph Rosenburger

Joti Mangat

Judy

Juliana Huxtable

Julie Atlas Muz