Current
For the 2026 Converge 45 Triennial, New York-based artist Trisha Baga presents MORE, a monumental immersive installation at PICA that weaves together the rise of consumer AI and the artist’s own journey into parenthood. Guest Curated by Lumi Tan.
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Past
TBA artist Clayton Lee and visiting arts writer and thinker Jason N. Le will discuss Lee’s performance, Goldberg Variations, and issues related to queer desire, performance, and Asian diasporic identity.
Learn moreJoin us for the final morning of the Festival for our beloved Pancake Breakfast.
Learn moreJoin us on Sept. 12 for the screening of By My Own Hand, Part 4: MELODY, a solo work that engages the biomechanics of voice and an interweaving of movement, sound, and specter. As if intoning an elegy to her past selves, Allie conjures a space alive with poltergeist activity—dancing and singing within an intricate tapestry of wails, laughter, overtones, and unplaceable sounds. At once methodical and mundane, otherworldly and operatic, the work lives between elegy and manifesto, between haunted house and an architecture of alteration.
Learn moreTheatre historian Kate Bredeson reads from her new book, The Diaries of Judith Malina, volumes 1-4 (Northwestern University 2026), an edited volume of radical Jewish anarchist and stage director Judith Malina’s diaries. In these diaries, Malina charts her vision for theatre as a tool to provoke what she calls the Beautiful Nonviolent Anarchist Revolution. The reading will include a conversation with theatre historian Jasmine Mahmoud and time for questions.
Learn moreTBA artist Alex Tatarsky joins theatre historian Kate Bredeson for a conversation about Sad Boys in Harpy Land.
Learn moreIn this workshop, we can explore how we treat drawing, sculpture, sound, video projection, sets, costumes, and beyond as an equal material to dance/bodies moving in space.
Learn moreTBA artist Symara Sarai and Portland-based artist keyon gaskin will discuss Sarai’s work-in-progress performance. Both artists share an interest in interdisciplinary performance, unconventional forms, risk, and relational exchange.
Learn moreJoin PICA’s fall Creative Exchange Lab artists Sahar al-Sawaf, Melanie Flood, Kole Galbraith, Lalo Perez, Jess Perlitz, and Isabella Saavedra as they discuss their work, ideas, processes, and more. PICA’s Creative Exchange Lab, known as CXL, is an artist residency that brings together a cohort of artists working in varying disciplines.
Learn moreOur Bar Garden is back—and this time, it’s a block party! We are closing down Hancock Street and bringing back your favorite hangout spot. Join us every day and night of the festival in the TBA:26 Bar Garden for shared beverages and meals that bring artists, crew, and community together.
Learn moreIf telecommunications defined the 20th century, the phone booth was its most iconic structure. Which brings us to the hole at hand: TELBOW. How did it arrive, and where does it lead?
Learn moreAn unknown cataclysm has caused all manner of surplus data and unassigned variables to leak into The Alembic Hotel. Explore the dilapidated brutalist monolith and meet the denizens as they gather packets, create cults, and invent a language to talk to God.
Learn moreAllie Hankins’ By My Own Hand is a 5-Part series of performances that began in 2022, culminating with Part 5, which will be presented during PICA’s Time-Based Art Festival in September 2026. PICA will be hosting a series of free screenings of Parts 2–3 leading up to the live premiere.
Learn moreOn Wednesday, June 10 from 6:00–8:00 PM, join artist Meech Boakye and mathematician Kyle Ormsby for a collaborative workshop exploring playful forms of drawing through meander combinatorics.
Learn moreAllie Hankins’ By My Own Hand is a 5-Part series of performances that began in 2022, culminating with Part 5, which will be presented during PICA’s Time-Based Art Festival in September 2026. PICA will be hosting a series of free screenings of Parts 1–4 leading up to the live premiere. Please join us for the first screening on Monday, March 2, 2026, at 7:30 PM in PICA’s Annex. Allie Hankins and her collaborators will be in attendance.
Learn moreJoin us for the 2025 Precipice Fund Award Ceremony and celebration—the warmest and coziest night of the year! This annual gathering is PICA’s way of ending the year on a note of generosity.
Learn morePortland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) is thrilled to announce Body on Me, a group exhibition by Cameron Clayborn, .Compost Cooperative (Tabitha Nikolai, Myra Lilith Day, garima thakur, Zanna Kerrigan, and Carly Barton), and Vishal Jugdeo, curated by Kristan Kennedy, PICA Artistic Director and Curator of Visual Art. Taking the human body and its many negotiations as its conceptual starting point, the presentation features media-based works that cross photography, installation, video, and video game technology and design. Throughout the exhibition, artists investigate digitally-mediated imagery of the natural world and human form in conversation with technological interventions. Body on Me will open with a performance by Clayborn on October 18, and will remain on view through December 20, 2025.
Learn moreOver the last several decades, textile artist Freddie Robins has earned a reputation as a radical conceptualist whose hand- and machine- made tapestries, sculptures, and chimerical assemblages are as playfully cheeky as they are political. In Apotropaic, many of Robins’ recent assemblages are composed of the soft and, at times, unwieldy remains of other projects, coupled with found stones and other natural objects, as well as treasures from her vast collection of things past.
Learn moreThroughout TBA:25, Creative Exchange Lab artists will be developing work in real time, sharing process and dialogue with one another and the public. Hear from the cohort on Saturday, September 6 at 12:00 PM for a lunchtime conversation in PICA’s Pavilion.
Learn moreOmni Rail is an ambisonic, walk-through instrument designed from the stairwells, railings, and cable system of Portland’s historic 511 Building, transforming the architecture itself into a resonant body. The instrument is its own speaker system, both metaphorically and physically.
Learn morePICA’s Pavilion—airy, welcoming, and centrally located—becomes the Bar Garden during TBA. Whether you’re a longtime collaborator or first-time attendee, join us for drinks, toasts, and long-table conversations that spill into the night.
Learn moreRooted in dovetailing practices of artmaking and gastronomy, Ray Anthony Barrett's "Who by Fire" returns to fire as one of the most fundamental elements for human survival.
Learn moreGrit & Grain is a group exhibition that brings together more than 50 contributors to celebrate five years of print work made at nůn studios since its founding in early 2020.
Learn morePresented in conjunction with "ja' / buuts' / t'aan," Patricia Vázquez Gómez's immersive installation on the maayat’aan language, join us for an afternoon screening short films from the Yucatec Mayan diaspora!
Learn moreThis immersive installation explores the relationship between a group of Mayan youth living in Portland with with their mother tongue: maayat’aan (Maya Peninsular/Yucatec Mayan), an Indigenous language of present-day Yucatán, Mexico. Mostly shot in the Yucatán municipalities of Maní and Dzan with audio recorded in Portland, ja’ / buuts’ / t’aan investigates personal struggles to learn and preserve Indigenous languages that mirror enduring societal failures to support their survival.
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