Artists Archive
Weird Allan Kaprow (WAK) is a post-colonial conceptual karaoke band comprised of artists Mariah Carrie Mae Weems, Yoko Bono, Jasper John Lennon, and Joseph Beuys II Men.
WAK projects have been featured in the Agitprop! exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York; the Out Of Sight Survey of Northwest Art in Seattle, Washington; the Writ Large festival at The Great Wall of Oakland, California; the Auto Body exhibition in Miami, Florida; the Faena Art Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Shine a Light at the Portland Art Museum, the POW Film Fest, the Converge 45 art fair, and the Hollywood theater in Portland, Oregon.
Learn moreWendy Red Star was born in Billings, Montana just outside of the Crow Indian reservation where she was raised. She grew up in a multi-cultural family. Her mother is of Irish decent, her father a full blood Crow Indian and her older sister is Korean. Wendy left the Crow Indian reservation when she was eighteen to attend Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana where she studied sculpture. She then went on to earn her MFA in sculpture at UCLA. Wendy has worked as an adjunct professor of fine art at Portland State University for five and a half years. In 2012 to 2013 Wendy was the manger of Chief Plenty Coups State Park located within the Crow Indian Reservation in south-central Montana. The park preserves the log home, sacred spring, museum, and farmstead of Chief Plenty Coups and is a National Historic Landmark. Wendy is currently the Program Associate for the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation.
Wendy Red Star’s work explores the intersection between life on the Crow Indian reservation and the world outside of that environment. She thinks of herself as a Crow Indian cultural archivist speaking sincerely about the experience of being a Crow Indian in contemporary society.
Her work has been shown at the Missoula Museum of the Arts, Missoula, MT, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City, UT, Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, MN, Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis, IN, Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM, The Fondation Cartier L’Art Contemporain, Paris, France, The CSULB gallery, Long Beach, CA, Research & Development, Chicago, IL, The Museum Tower at MOCA, Los Angeles, CA, And/Or gallery, Dallas, TX, The UCLA New Wight gallery, Los Angeles, CA, The L.A. Municipal Art gallery, Los Angeles, CA, The Domaine De Kerguehennc, Brittany, France, The Hudson D. Walker gallery, Provincetown, MA, The Plush Gallery, Dallas TX, The Laura Bartlett Gallery, London, England, The Luckman gallery, Los Angeles, CA,The Volitant gallery, Austin, Texas, Eiteljorg Museum of Native American & Western Fine Art, Yellowstone Art Museum, and Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. Studio Visit with Wendy Red Star in Portland Oregon from Amelia winger-bearskin on Vimeo.
Learn moreWendy's Notes on Soph
When I was growing up on the South Side of Chicago on Essex Avenue, every Shabbos my mother, various aunts, uncles, bubbes and zadyes would have brisket, kugel, green bean mushroom soup casserole, and challah and French pastry brought by my rich Uncle Julie, who drove an aqua 1957 Thunderbird, was a bachelor, knew Hugh Hefner, dated shikses and later stole the family fortune, etc. Oh, but I digress. Anyhoo, at these serene and deeply spiritual Friday night dinners, after discussing my weight problem, after my performance of the Nutcracker Suite Ballet in which I played all the parts dressed in a pink tutu, my family would settle down on the plastic covered white brocade fringed furniture and we would listen to the great Sophie Tucker on the Hi Fi. Soph was gutsy and loud and she sang specialty songs about men, sex, adultery and female independence. Some songs were talked, some were sung, but all of them made us either laugh or cry. Even at nine years old, I loved her because of her voice, her glamour, her individuality and her zaftig shape. I never forgot her through the years. She mean a lot to me and reminded me of those countless Friday night dinners, and the Ed Sullivan Show on Sundays where she often appeared, scarf in hand, diamonds and furs dripping.
Skip to 1984 -- I had been living in Portland, Oregon for nine years as an active member of The Storefront Theatre. Having just completed the original Angry Housewives, I wanted a project that would be creatively challenging and really stretch me as a performer. My darling, talented friend Vana O'Brien, knowing I was Jewish, thought it would be most appropriate for me to do a one woman show about Sophie Tucker, the great Jewish singer/comedienne. Vana, a lovely, gentile girl, had gone to only Catholic schools growing up and Soph and I were the only two Jews she'd ever known or heard of. Well, I loved the idea, I went wild. How could that goyishe gal have known Soph was my hero! So Vana and I researched, we listened to recordings, we wrote, we rewrote, we ate bagels, went to New York, ate cheesecake from Zabar's, ate corned beef at Katz's, wrote some more, she walked much faster than me, I complained a lot and we wrote.
Finally, Soph was presented at The Storefront Theatre on November 25, 1984. My best friend and mentor, Ric Young, directed it and after many performances to sold out crowds, many would-be producers with shetls on their heads, many magic and not-so-magic moments, Ric made me dinner at his fabulous apartment. He said in a dramatic fashion, that only he could pull off and which was quintessential Ric, "Wendy, you must go to LA and perform Soph. You've grown past Portland. I will miss you, but you must try. It's time for you to go." Oh, brother! "You must go and be a star." Oh, for God's sake!
So, I left in my pink 1957 Rambler, and cried for two years from homesickness, but finally Soph was produced at the Callboard Theatre in Beverly Hills, California. This director, however, was no Ric Young. His favorite expression was (say this in your head as bitchy as possible) "Is there a problem?" Oy Vey! Anyway, Soph went very well, critically acclaimed, busloads of retired Jewish people from Laguna Beach, agents, etc. I stayed in LA for six years.
Skip to now -- I've been home in Portland for five and a half years and turned fifty this September. And guess what? I met this darling little pitzle Kristy Edmunds. She believes that PICA people need to see this great vaudevillian Sophie Tucker, this predecessor of performance art, and this Wendy Westerwelle, a genre unto herself, as Kristy puts it. I trust her. I really like this little Kristy. I think she's such a doll. We have breakfast together, Kristy and I. Well, I have breakfast, she has coffee and a cigarette. Not since Ric have I met someone with this kind of drive and charisma. I want to do this show again, to share Soph with a new audience who has yet to meet to his grand and glorious dame, and for an old familiar audience who has met her and wants to embrace us both again.
I'm just so thrilled at the age of fifty to be performing Soph again and I'm ready to give her and my audience all they deserve. My hoe is that everyone really enjoys themselves and is entertained. Soph has always been and continues to be my special gift for all of you. It's a way for me to say thank you for all you have given me and to pay homage to the great legendary Sophie Tucker, who paved the way for this zaftig Chicago girl and gave me the courage to be exactly who I was meant to be. Thank you.
—Wendy Westerwelle
Learn moreWendy White has had solo exhibitions at Leo Koenig in New York, Galeria Moriarty in Madrid, Van Horn in Düsseldorf, and Andrew Rafacz Gallery in Chicago. She has participated in group exhibitions at Harris Lieberman Gallery, Nicole Klagsbrun, Fredericks & Freiser, and John Connelly Presents, all in New York; Country Club Projects in Los Angeles; The Bemis Center in Omaha; Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art; CCA Andratx in Mallorca, Spain; Fred Gallery in Leipzig, Germany; Galerie Markus Winter in Berlin; Aschenbach & Hofland in Amsterdam; and Motus Fort in Tokyo. Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, Art in America, The New York Times, Artpapers, Time Out New York, New York Magazine, and The Brooklyn Rail. White holds a MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, and a BFA from The Savannah College of Art & Design. She received a 2008 grant from The Artists' Fellowship in New York, a 2005 George Segal Painting grant, and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation studio grant in 2004. Her work is included in Vitamin P2: New Perspectives in Painting, published by Phaidon. White is represented by Leo Koenig and lives in New York City.
Learn moreWhite Rainbow is Portland, OR electronic music producer Adam Forkner. With a storied past in the experimental/psychedelic/electronic underground, White Rainbow explores the full spectrum of psychedelic sound production.
Learn moreWhoop Dee Doo is a non-profit community project led by artists living and working in Kansas City, Missouri. The group has created commissioned projects for organizations including the Bemis Center for contemporary Arts (Omaha), Deitch Projects (New York), the Smart Museum (Chicago), The Kemper Museum for Contemporary Arts (Kansas City), Loyal Gallery (Sweden), and others.
Selected Press
Interview with Jaimie Warren of Whoop Dee Doo, Jacob Gaboury, Rhizome.org, August 25, 2010.
Role Model, Marisa Meltzer, NYLON, March 30, 2010.
Learn moreWill Bryant is an artist and designer based in Austin, TX. His work weaves together humor with commerce, fun, and positivity. In his sculptural installations, photographic still lives, and commercial illustration projects, there is always a sense of exuberance at play with a colorful palette.
His work has been plastered across advertising campaigns, t-shirts, record sleeves, posters, magazines, furniture, snowboards, underwear, and also exhibited internationally. In 2013 he was awarded as a Young Gun by the Art Directors Club. His whimsical food-themed graphic and environmental designs were memorably used for the TBA Kitchen at THE WORKS during PICA's 2013 and 2014 Time-Based Art Festivals.
When not working, he enjoys hanging out with his daughter and wife, reading about”sports”, shooting hoops, or lounging in expensive sweatpants.
Learn moreBasinski has been working in experimental media in New York for over 25 years. His epic 4-disc masterwork, The Disintegration Loops, was chosen as one of the top 50 albums of 2004 by Pitchfork and Artforum selected The River, his transcendental 2-disc shortwave music experiment as one of the top ten albums of 2003. His concerts, installations, films made in collaboration with artist-filmmaker James Elaine have been presented internationally, most recently at The Venice Biennale of Music. Basinski's latest albums, 92982 and Vivian & Ondine were released in 2009 on 2062/USA and distributed internationally. The Wire selected 92982 as one of the top 50 releases of 2009.
Learn more
William Pope.L was born in 1955 in New Jersey. He currently lives and works in Chicago, IL, where he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago. He has had solo exhibitions at institutions including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carpenter Center at Harvard University, the Santa Monica Museum of Art, the Kunsthalle Wien and the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. MIT Press published a monograph to accompany The Friendliest Black Artist in America, his 2002-2004 traveling survey exhibition. His work has been exhibited and performed at Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Whitney Museum in New York, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, The New Museum in New York and the Renaissance Society in Chicago. Recent exhibitions and performances include Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Texas; Flux This! With Pope.L and Special Guests at Museum of Modern Art in New York, NY; and The Long White Cloud, Te Tuhi Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand. Learn moreWill Rawls is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses choreography, dance, video, sculpture, works on paper, and installation. Rawls is best known for his choreographic work that employs repetition to explore the limits of language and gesture as tools for staging performances of black presence and becoming. Rawls has created a solo exhibition for Adams + Ollman Gallery (2022) and a multi-part installation at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, Everlasting Stranger (2021), as well as presenting work at the Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum, Performa 15, Danspace Project, The Chocolate Factory Theater, High Line Art, REDCAT, the 10th Berlin Biennale, and the Hessel Museum at Bard College. He has received fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, The Alpert Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Mellon Foundation, United States Artists, the Rauschenberg Foundation, Creative Capital, New England Foundation for the Arts, National Performance Network, MAP Fund, the MacDowell Colony, Headlands Center for the Arts, and Movement Research. Rawls recently joined UCLA’s Department of World Arts and cultures/Dance as an Associate Professor of Choreography. In 2016, Rawls co-curated Lost and Found—six weeks of performances at Danspace Project that addressed the intergenerational impact of HIV/AIDS. His writing has been published by the Hammer Museum, MoMA, Museu de Arte de São Paolo, Dancing While Black Journal, Brooklyn Rail, and Artforum.
Learn more at will-rawls.com
Learn moreDJs Speedy and Salama (TBA:09 alumnus Johanna Ketola, with Reeta Sironen) are two friends and visual artists based in Helsinki, Finland. They share an enthusiasm for the sounds of Balkan and Eastern European folk and gypsy music, whether traditional or pop, old or contemporary, rural or urban. Their DJ set was collected through travels in Eastern parts of Europe, where they also found visual inspiration. Wonderlust mixes local styles with playful, imaginative and invented elements in their visuals, objects and costumes, creating a new visual world unique to itself.
The duo has known each other since 1987, and since 2005, they have performed in Finland, Holland, Italy and the US. Their visual DJ practice is the latest form of “Landia,” their mutual imaginary world.
Learn moreWoodrow Hunt is a Klamath, Modoc, and Cherokee artist who was born and raised in Portland, OR. Woodrow's film practice is focused on documentary and experimental forms. His experimental work explores the functions and relationship between digital video and memory and the ways digital video can communicate issues related to the Native community. Woodrow’s films have screened at the Portland Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, MoMA Doc Fortnight, and other festivals internationally. His work has been featured in Artforum, Boston Art Review, and Hyperallergic. Woodrow is a featured artist of COUSIN Collective and was a 2022 Sundance Institute Non-Fiction Intensive Fellow.
Learn moreWoolly is an aesthetically-inclined, trans-pop-culture, dance-therapy performance group formed in Portland, OR in 2006. They have performed in venues ranging between burned-out buildings, black box theaters, Mexican bars, fields of llamas, cowboy dance halls, and downtown alleyways. Traversing between hilarious absurdity and a dark intensity, they bring audiences to the precipice of tantalizing confusion.
Selected Press
Ultra Q: Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner, Lisa Radon, ultrapdx.com, January 14, 2008. (PDF)
Learn moreWU TSANG is a Los Angeles based artist, performer, and filmmaker. His projects have been presented at the 2012 Whitney Biennial and New Museum Triennial in New York, the ICA Philadelphia, MOCA Los Angeles, the Gwangju Biennial (South Korea), and the Tate Modern and Liverpool Biennial (UK). He was named one of 2012's “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker Magazine, and is currently a Film Independent Project:Involve Fellow. His first feature WILDNESS won the Grand Jury Award for Outstanding Documentary at Outfest 2012 [World Premiere: MoMA Documentary Fortnight (New York, NY), SXSW (Austin, TX), Hot Docs (Toronto, Canada), SANFIC8 (Santiago, Chile)]. He has received grants & support from Good Works, Frameline, Wexner Center for the Arts, IFP, Film Independent, Art Matters, Tiffany Foundation, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the Contemporary Art Foundation.
Selected Press
"25 New Faces of Independent Film: Wu Tsang," Scott Macauly, Filmmaker Magazine.
Learn moreWynne Greenwood is a queer feminist artist who incorporates video, performance, music, and object-making to practice, in the artist’s words “culture-healing.” Greenwood’s performances, installations, and object-based works have been included in exhibitions at independent and institutional spaces across the globe including: the Tate Modern, London; the 2004 Whitney Biennial, NYC; The Kitchen, NYC; the Frye Art Museum, Seattle; Susanne Vielmetter, Los Angeles; Soloway, Brooklyn; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; and Lawrimore Project, Seattle. From 1999–2006, Greenwood performed the celebrated multimedia
art band Tracy + the Plastics. Since 2006, Greenwood has shifted her focus to installation and object-based work. Most recently, Greenwood participated in Anti-Establishment, a group exhibition at Bard College's Center for Curatorial Studies, and released the full-length music album A Fire To Keep You Warm. Greenwood teaches performance and video in colleges and schools in Seattle and across the country.Selected Press:
Review of Soloway, Kristan Kennedy, Artforum, June 2014.
Learn moreYaara Valey Perczek is a multidisciplinary performer, sound healer and media artist of Jewish Latinx heritage based in Portland. She utilizes looping technology to create vocal-based live transmissions. Yaara trained in movement based expressive arts therapy and her work is centered in somatic reconnection. In addition to her solo work, she collaboratively creates work for dance, film, and other performance art projects.
Learn moreYaw Evans is an electronic music artist, composer and DJ from South London known for his innovative approach to house, 2-step garage and UK techno. Yaw first rose to popularity on Instagram in 2018 after he began posting minute-long videos of jams he’d created solely using a Digitakt. He soon built his own modular synthesiser to expand his Digitakt compositions, and he now makes multi-genre music using a custom hybrid set up of groove boxes and his modular synth.
Creatively inspired by London, Yaw’s distinctive electronic style is explorative, merging textures of his city's culture, music and identity into his sound. His debut EP ‘Memories Of Now’ was released under Los Angeles-based label Mystery Circles in late 2020. Followed by a single, remix project and 2022 EP with South London based label GD4YA. The E.P has had support from BBC radio and club DJ’s.
Yaw has performed as DJ in a string of high profile nightclubs, most recently in Detroit’s Spotlite and London’s Fabric. As a content creator/composer Yaw has featured in interviews, created bespoke compositions and performances for brands such as Reverb, Roland, Spitfire Audio, Labs, Pioneer, L’Oréal, Selfridges and Sumo Digital. Yaw has been a guest lecturer at King Britt’s Blacktronika undergraduate course at the University of California San Diego, sharing his journey into electronic music and his use of modular synthesis and music technology.
Yaw is also an AFRORACK instructor, supporting audio-focused STEM education for young people of colour.
Learn moreYemenwed is a collaborative project series, which brings together an expansive cast of artists from varied disciplines. Through video, performance, sculpture, and musical instrumentation, Yemenwed explores abstracted concepts of displacement and detachment, fluid identity, domesticity, and the peripheral. Yemenwed has participated in exhibitions and performances at MoMA P.S.1, Performa 09, Fake Estate Gallery, 179 Canal, John Connelly Presents, and Gavin Brown's Passerby. Their publications have been distributed by Ooga Booga (Los Angeles), Printed Matter (New York), Quimby's (Chicago), United Bamboo (Tokyo), and Midway Contemporary Art (Minnesota).
Selected Press
Yemenwed's Fantasy Architecture, Michael Bullock, Interview Magazine, December 1, 2008.
Art Collective Yemenwed Visits Mars, Emma Pearse, New York Magazine, November 25, 2008.
Learn moreYétundé Olagbaju is an artist and maker, currently residing in Oakland, CA. They utilize performance, sculpture, action, gesture, and video as through-lines for inquiries regarding Black labor, legacy and processes of healing. They are rooted in the need to understand history, the people that made it, the myths surrounding them and how their own body is implicated in history’s timeline.
They have shown work at various spaces including Oakland Museum of California, Southern Exposure, and Museum of the African Diaspora. They hold an MFA from Mills College and are the recipient of the inaugural Nancy Cook Fellowship, the Murphy Cadogan Awards, the Jay Defeo Award, and the Headlands Center for the Arts Graduate Fellowship.
Learn moreYGB Portland formed in 2015 to provide healing space for Black and Brown people in Portland. It has since grown from the parties at Killingsworth dynasty to create more community-based activations. YGB alongside DUG (Deep Under Ground), Gentrification is Weird, and Friends of Noise made sure displaced artists got paid through the “Art Saved My Life” residency. YGB also collaborated with Deep Under Ground to run Young Gifted Artists, which brings art education to youth during the summertime free lunch program at McCoy Park. YGB curates the entertainment for My People’s Market, which has been happening in different parts of Portland since 2017.
Learn moreYOKO HIGASHINO is the artistic director and choreographer for Baby-Q. Her productions depict emotional ups and downs, impulses in the human body, and the true nature of mankind. Her body-based performances combine various dance elements and present her strong and vivid viewpoint of the world. She received the prestigious Choreographer of the Next Generation at the Toyota Choreography Awards in 2004 and Yokohama Prize for Brilliant Future in the group dance category in the Solo/Duo Competition in 2005. As a solo artist, Higashino collaborates with many musicians. Sometimes she appears in clubs, bars, or galleries, naming herself as “Kemumaki Yoko,” an unclassifiable avant-garde dancing body.
Yoko Higashino, Mariko Takei, SHIFT, April, 2009. Learn moreYo La Tengo is a critically acclaimed indie rock band from Hoboken, New Jersey. They’ve recorded twelve studio albums, written soundtracks to the films Junebug, Shortbus, and Old Joy, and provided a score for the surrealist aquatic films of Jean Painlevé.
Learn moreYosimar Reyes is a nationally-acclaimed Poet and Public Speaker. Born in Guerrero, Mexico, and raised in Eastside San Jose, Reyes explores the themes of migration and sexuality in his work. The Advocate named Reyes one of “13 LGBT Latinos Changing the World” and Remezcla included Reyes on their list of “10 Up And Coming Latinx Poets You Need To Know.”
His first collection of poetry, For Colored Boys Who Speak Softly… was self-published after a collaboration with the legendary Carlos Santana. His work has also been published in various online journals and books including Mariposas: An Anthology of Queer Modern Latino Poetry (Floricanto Press), Queer in Aztlán: Chicano Male Recollections of Consciousness and Coming Out (Cognella Press), and the forthcoming Joto: An Anthology of Queer Xicano & Chicano Poetry (Kórima Press). Reyes was featured in the Documentary, “2nd Verse: The Rebirth of Poetry.”
He is a LAMBDA Literary Fellow as well as the recipient of the Undocupoets Fellowship. Reyes previously served as Artist-in-Residence at the media and culture organization, Define American.
Reyes has toured and presented at university campuses across the United States. He is currently working on his one-man show, “Prieto,” to premiere in the near future. Reyes holds a B.A in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University.
Learn moreYOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES is yhchang.com. It is also Young-hae Chang and Marc Voge. They have made work in 17 languages and presented much of it in major art institutions, including Tate London; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the New Museum, New York. Selected Press "DISTANCE, HOMELESSNESS, ANONYMITY, AND INSIGNIFICANCE": AN INTERVIEW WITH YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES", Thom Swiss, The Iowa Review, December 15, 2002. Interview with Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Hyun-Joo Yoo, dichtung-digital, February, 2005. Selected Video
Learn moreYOUNG 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.
Learn moreYUKIO SUZUKI studied butoh at the Asbestos-kan (Asbestos House) from 1997 and danced in the works of Ko Murobushi and other artists. In 2000 he started the Yukio Suzuki Company. He gained attention in the dance world for his documentary style of directing and choreography that uses compelling placement of dancers with a strong emphasis on their physical presence. In recent years he has expanded his activities with projects like choreographing for dancers of the Tokyo City Ballet Company. With a highly sensitive consciousness of the body, he conducts programs around the country aimed at creating dancer-specific works. In 2008, he received the prestigious Choreographer of the Next Generation (Grand Prize) at the Toyota Choreography Awards.
Learn moreyuniya edi kwon (she/her) is a violinist, vocalist, poet, and interdisciplinary performance-maker based in Brooklyn, NY. Her practice connects composition, improvisation, movement, and ceremony to explore transformation and transgression, ritual practice as a tool to queer space and lineage, and the use of mythology to connect, obscure, and reveal. Her work has been presented throughout the US and Europe, including Performa Biennial, Dia Art Foundation, New York Live Arts, Roulette Intermedium, Under The Radar Festival, LA Phil, On The Boards, and Monheim Triennale. As a committed collaborator, she has co-created with The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Senga Nengudi, Tomeka Reid, Degenerate Art Ensemble, Roscoe Mitchell, Moor Mother, Du Yun, Shahzad Ismaily, and International Contemporary Ensemble. She is a Guggenheim Fellow, Creative Capital Awardee, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Awardee, Arts Fellow at Princeton University, Bessie Award Winner, Civitella Ranieri Fellow, and United States Artists Fellow.
Learn moreYunuen Rhi: Springs (Remote): We are a two-spirit martial movement instructor, anthropologist, performance artist, and healer. Our roots are in Mexico, the United States, and Korea. We have cultivated ourselves in western, eastern, native medicine pathways and practices as a way to deepen the understanding of “selves.” Our performance interest lie in ritual and social practice as a way to create effective bridges between performance and community needs in a decolonial setting.
TBA:20 | Mobile Projection Unit: Fernanda D'Agostino and Sarah Turner
AGAINST THE CURRENT
September 14, 2020
Learn moreOberzan is an original member of Nature Theater of Oklahoma, based in New York City. With Nature Theater, he has collaborated and performed in productions including Poetics: a ballet brut, the Obie-winning No Dice, and the one-man show, Rambo Solo. His latest theater/film work, Your brother. Remember? premiered at Brussel's Kunstenfestivaldesart. Oberzan has also released two albums of original music, most recently Athletes of Romance. He has performed with the Wooster Group, Richard Foreman, and is currently collaborating with the Dutch group Kassys.
Selected Press
Rambo Solo: Zachary Oberzan's Flooding With Love For the Kid, Matt Zoller Seitz, The L Magazine, January 6, 2010.
Rambo redux, as a homemade, one-man, no-budget movie, Ben Walters, Guardian.co.uk, June 17, 2009.
Learn moreSchomburg was a 2011 Oregon Book Awards finalist in poetry for his book, Scary No Scary. He is the author of The Man Suit; a DVD of poem-films, Little Blind Thing; and Viking (forthcoming from McSweeney’s in 2012). He co-edits Octopus Magazine and Octopus Books. Schomburg regularly collaborates with Emily Kendal Frey and has created a series of short poem-films of his and others’ writings. He is also one of the curators of the Bad Blood Reading Series in Portland. Selected Press Literature, Phoned-In: Zachary Schomburg, Luke Degnan, BOMBlog, April 9, 2010. Poetry Q & A: Zachary Schomburg, Ann Robinson, The Oregonian, January 30, 2009. Artist Website
Learn moreZach Blas (b. Point Pleasant, West Virginia, USA) is an artist, filmmaker, and writer whose practice spans moving image, computation, theory, performance, and science fiction.
Blas engages the materiality of digital technologies while also drawing out the philosophies and imaginaries lurking in artificial intelligence, biometric recognition, predictive policing, airport security, the internet, and biological warfare. The Doors (2019) is an immersive environment that imagines a new psychedelic age fueled by AI, nootropics, and tech culture. SANCTUM (2018) is a sex dungeon-cum-detention center that recasts security and surveillance through BDSM. A film installation, Contra-Internet: Jubilee 2033 (2018) follows author Ayn Rand on an acid trip, in which she bares witness to a dystopian future of the internet. im here to learn so :)))))) (2017), a four-channel video installation and collaboration with Jemima Wyman, resurrects Microsoft AI Tay to consider the gendered politics of pattern recognition and machine learning. Facial Weaponization Suite (2012-14) consists of amorphous masks that demand opacity against biometric facial recognition systems.
Blas has exhibited, lectured, and held screenings at venues internationally, including the de Young Museum, Tate Modern, Walker Art Center, 2018 Gwangju Biennale, the 68th Berlin International Film Festival, Matadero Madrid, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Art in General, Gasworks, Van Abbemuseum, Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, e-flux, Whitechapel Gallery, ZKM Center for Art and Media, and Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo. His practice has been supported by a Creative Capital award in Emerging Fields, the Arts Council England, Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst, and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.
His work is in the collections of Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, and Whitney Museum of American Art. Blas’s practice been written about and featured in Artforum, Frieze, ArtReview, BBC, the Guardian, and the New York Times.
Blas’s writings can be found in the collections You Are Here: Art After the Internet, Documentary Across Disciplines, and Queer: Documents of Contemporary Art, as well as e-flux journal and various exhibition catalogues. With Melody Jue and Jennifer Rhee, he is co-editor of the anthology Informatics of Domination, forthcoming from Duke University Press. His artist monograph Unknown Ideals is published by Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst and Sternberg Press.
Blas is an Assistant Professor of Visual Studies in the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto.
Learn moreZan Yamashita was born in OSAKA, 1970, started to dance at the age of 19. He studied modern dance and classical ballet at several dance studios, while giving street performances in Osaka.
In 1990, Yamashita joined a performance group, Monochrome Circus in Kyoto as a dancer.In 1993, he choreographed his first piece "Music" for the Monochrome Circus, which was performed at the ALTY Buyoh Festival of Kyoto Prefectural Hall. He choreographed this piece as if composing a piece of music through body movements of 6 performers without using any music.
In 1994, he directed a performance work "The poetry reading" first time as an artistic director, and presented it for the Kyoto Performance Carnival. This piece was presented in a gallery space with its entire walls covered with books where the performers and the audience were placed in a nested structure. Yamashita created scenes from precisely depicting performers' subtle and detailed behaviors, movements, and the incidents that happened simultaneously throughout the space as each performer read his favorite books.
Yamashita began his career as an independent artist in 1995. His first project was "Family" in 1995, a year long project performed in the former Meirin Elementary School, the forerunner of the Kyoto Art Center (Kyoto), Toyoshina Modern Art Museum (Nagano) and Art Space Mumonkan (Kyoto). In this project, he brought the interaction with close people to the stage without altering what were already among them. After the "Family" tour, he continued to present various experimental works at theaters and galleries mostly in Western Japan.
In 2002, Yamashita presented "It is written there" at the Itami Ai Hall (Hyogo), with which the trilogy working on the relationship between language and body began. In this piece, the audience were constantly invited to turn the page of the book given at the entrance, as the stage host called the page number backward, and to enjoy switching their gaze between what was going on the stage and written on the page.In 2004, Yamashita created "Invisible man", which was presented at the Tokyo International Art Festival. And in the same year, he received the Kyoto Art Center Theatre Award for "It is just me coughing", the last piece of the trilogy.
He made an actor debut in the theater piece, "Can you hear.....?", written and directed by Shogo Ohta in 2005.
In thinking of reproducibility of the choreography, Yamashita presented "The sailors", in 2005. The performance took place on a raft-like stage shaking under the weight of 4 performers at the BankART(Yokohama) and the Kyoto Art Center (Kyoto).
In 2007, he presented "Animal Theater", a choreography focused in freedom and restriction, produced by the Kyoto Art Center Theatre Project.
In 2008, Yamashita remade and performed "It is written there" at the Kyoto Art Center Theatre Project (Kyoto), Fukuoka Theatre Arts Series (Fukuoka), KunstenFESTIVALdesArts (Belgium).
In 2009, he presented 'It is just me coughing' at Annex Garelly in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), and 'It is written there' at Istanbul International Contemporary Dance & Performance Festival (Turkey).
In 2010, he performed'It is just me coughing' at Postmainstream Performing Arts Festival (Tokyo). In February 2010, he performed as an actor in 'Ikishima - breath island' directed by Yukichi Matsumoto, produced by Seika theatre (Osaka). In April 2010, he choreographed and presented a new performance‘Daikouzui’ at St Spot Yokohama. In August 2010, he performed a remake of “Yokohama Stay” in the TBA Festival in Portland after a month of creative residency there. Yamashita performed in a perfomance by Pichet Klunchun which was presented in the Kyoto International Performing Arts Festival in Novemever 2010. In 2011, he performed, “It is just me coughing” and “Yokohama stay” as a double-bill performance at the Esplanade theatre studio(Singapore). Experimenting in original forms of communication through words and body, Yamashita presented his new performance, “It is something like a garden,” co-produced by Itami Ai Hall, Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM) and St Spot Yokohama.
Yamashita received a Senior Fellow Grant from The Saison Foundation in 2011,2012.
Learn moreVisual 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.
Learn moreZoë Poluch’s artistic practice puts into motion different mediums and takes shape in different rooms. Her relationship with the “contemporary dance” scene is based on a long term and practice-based interest in the politics and poetics of moving and sensing. She looks forward to the far future, perhaps 2070, when she will inaugurate a dance company for dancing people over 70 years old and tour on a solar airplane. In the past, she studied and worked in Canada and Belgium and could be found dancing and performing with established and emerging choreographers, mostly in Europe and North America. Since 2010 she has been based in Stockholm, Sweden, and works as Assistant Professor and Head of the Bachelor Programme in ance Performance at Stockholm University of the Arts. She is currently on parental leave.
Learn moreZoe Scofield (she/her) is a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow and a dance and visual artist based in Seattle, WA, and Los Angeles, CA. Zoe is the co-artistic director and founder with Juniper Shuey of zoe | juniper, a dance and visual art company since 2005. Her work has been commissioned and presented by Jacob’s Pillow, New York Live Arts, Portland Institute for Contemporary Arts, On the Boards, RedCat, MASS MoCA, The Frye Art Museum, The Joyce Theater, PS 122, Carolina Performing Arts, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. Zoe works in performance, video installation, photography, opera, and film. She has received funding from the Mellon Foundation, the Princess Grace Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the National Performance Network, and more. Zoe’s current piece, Tell the truth and shame the devil, is a live dance and music collaboration with Xiu Xiu. Zoe has an MFA in Dance from the University of the Arts.
Learn moreHailing 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.
Learn moreZvonimir Dobrovic is the founder and artistic director of Domino, one of the major independent art NGOs in Croatia. In that capacity he is responsible for curating several festivals in Croatia and internationally – most notably Perforations – week of live art and Queer Zagreb. Through different platforms he curates over 100 performances annually, staged all over the world, many of them commissions and produced specifically for these and other festivals. He has served on numerous panels and boards, juries and committees in the field of performing arts and film. Zvonimir has also edited dozens of books, magazines and written articles on performance. He regularly holds lectures and workshops on curating and art management.
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