Artists Archive
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AKIO SUZUKI is known as a pioneer of sound art, but the breadth of his activities and the form of his works far exceeds the normal boundaries of sound art. It is perhaps more as a “quester after sound and space” that he has received the most attention from artists in many fields. Suzuki’s journey as an artist began in 1963 with a performance at Nagoya station, in which he threw a bucket full of junk down a staircase. The inspiration behind this performance is the idea that if one were to hurl an object down a well-balanced stairway, a pleasant rhythm might be the result— took the desire to “listen” as its subject. That desire to hear, to listen has remained the one constant in Suzuki’s stance as an artist. During the sixties, Suzuki’s sense of playfulness led him to undertake a series of Self-Study Events, where he explored the processes of “throwing” and “following”, taking the natural world as his collaborator. The experiences he gained in these events led him in the seventies to invent an echo instrument he named Analapos. The instrument’s structure resembles that of two mirrors facing each other, reflecting into infinity. As an extension of the principles underlying Analapos, Suzuki constructed the Hinatabokko no kukan (Space in the Sun) in 1988. This space consists of two huge parallel walls, in between which the artist can sit all day and purify his hearing by listening to the reflected sounds of nature. This space leads the artist to discover a new method of listening. Suzuki himself comments: “Sound, which had been conceptually imprisoned in various spaces, is freed to circle the world.”
His performances and installations have been presented at major venues internationally including: Yokohama City Art Gallery, Japan, 2010; The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan, 2010; The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan, 2007; Gelbe Musik, Berlin, Germany, 2007; The Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama, Japan, 2005; British Museum, UK, 2003 and DAAD Galerie, Berlin, Germany, 2000.
He has also participated in major international events and Festivals including: Tuned City, Brussels, 2013; LISTE Art Fair Basel, Switzerland, 2013; MaerzMusik, Berlin, Germany, 2012; Nuit Blanche Festival, Paris, France, 2004; Adelaide Festival, Australia, 1999; Sonambiente Festival, Berlin, Germany, 1996; Documenta 8, Kassel, Germany, 1987; and Festival d’Automne, Paris, France, 1978.
Learn moreAlessandro Sciarroni is an Italian performing artist with an extensive background in visual art and theater. His works are featured in contemporary dance and theater festivals, museums, and art galleries, as well as in unconventional spaces and involve professionals from different disciplines.
His work goes beyond the traditional definitions of gender. He starts from a conceptual Duchamp-like matrix, makes use of a theatrical framework, and he can use some techniques and experiences from dance, as well as circus or sports. In addition to the rigor, coherence and clarity of each creation, his work tries to uncover obsessions, fears and fragilities of the act of performing, through the repetition of a practice to the limits of the physical endurance of the interpreters, looking at a different dimension of time, and to an empathic relationship between the audience and the performers.
His works have been performed in 21 European countries, the United States, Canada, Brazil, Uruguay, and the United Arab Emirates. Among the main events he took part: the Biennale de la Danse in Lyon, Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, Impulstanz Festival in Wien, the Venice Biennale, the Festival d'Automne and the Festival Séquence Danse at 104 in Paris, Abu Dhabi Art Fair, Juli Dans Festival in Amsterdam, and he exhibited his work at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the MAXXI Museum in Rome.
Alessandro Sciarroni is supported by APAP - Advancing Performing Arts Projects - and his shows are produced by Marche Teatro in collaboration with international co-producers such as the Comune di Bassano del Grappa / Centro per la Scena Contemporanea, the Biennale de la Danse / Maison de la Danse de Lyon, the Mercat de les Flors-Graner / Barcelona, Centrale Fies and the Association Corpoceleste-C.C.00# of which he is artistic director. It is also one of the artists of the Project Matilde, regional platform for the new scene in Marche. In 2015, Alessandro Sciarroni was appointed Associate Choreographer of the company of the Ballet of Rome and he is supported for his latest creation Aurora from the Fondation d’Entreprise Hermès.
Learn moreAlex Ian Smith is an artist, musician, and curator based in Portland, OR.
Learn moreA.L. Steiner is a collective member of Chicks on Speed, co-curator of the project Ridykeulous, founding member of Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) and collaborates with numerous visual and performing artists. Her works have been featured internationally at such venues as P.S.1/MoMA, Tate Modern, The New Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, Centre Pompidou, The Kitchen, REDCAT, and Zacheta National Gallery of Art, among others. Her work is included in such public collections as the Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art and the Marieluise Hessel Collection. Steiner is currently based in Los Angeles and is faculty at the University of Southern California.
Selected Press
The Lowdown: A.L. Steiner, Io Tillet Wright, New York Times T Magazine, May 11, 2011.
Eve Fowler & A.L. Steiner, North Drive Press #4, 2007.
Would it be okay if I kept my sweater on?, Naomi Fry, Paper Monument.
Learn moreAmy O’Neal and Ellie Sandstrom have danced together in other people’s productions and in O’Neal’s own choreographic work for 10 years. O’Neal is a performer, choreographer, dance educator, the creator of Amyo/tinyrage, and the co-director of locust (music/dance/video) with musician/composer Zeke Keeble.
Learn moreAndrew Schneider is an OBIE award-winning, Drama Desk nominated performer, writer, and interactive-electronics artist who creates original works for theater, video, and installation since 2003. Schneider creates and performs original performance works, builds interactive electronic art works and installations, and was a Wooster Group company member (video/performer) from 2007-2014. Rooted at the intersection of performance and technology, Schneider’s work critically investigates our over-dependence on being perpetually connected in an always-on world. Andrew’s original performance work in NYC includes AFTER (2018 Under the Radar Festival), YOUARENOWHERE (2015 OBIE award –The Invisible Dog, 2016 Drama Desk nom – 3LD); DANCE/FIELD (2014 – Dance Roulette), TIDAL (2013 – River to River festival); and WOW+FLUTTER (2010 –The Chocolate Factory Theater) among others.
Learn moreAngelo Scott is an interdisciplinary artist from the South currently living in Portland, OR and completing their BFA in Intermedia at PNCA. Their sonic compositions build shifting layers of melodic sentiments from splintering phrases, emphasizing irregularities in live sampling, synthesis, and insisting upon fleeting swells of emotive expression as a passage through intricate patterns in overwhelming soundscapes. Scott received their Associate of the Arts from Linn-Benton Community College in 2019, where they worked as the photo editor for The Commuter. While living in Corvallis, Oregon, they began operating in DIY sonic arts communities, co-organizing and curating installation and video works for Corvallis Experiments In Noise's What is Noise? festivals. In 2016, they co-initiated and co-created Sponsored Trash, an ongoing performance arts collective. They currently perform solo sound compositions as Tyronza and participate in improvisational ensembles, create video projections, and make collaborative CRT installations for interactive music events.
Learn moreChoreographer Suniti Dernovsek and visual artist David Stein began making work together in 2004 under the name Hot Little Hands, which, in 2011, evolved into the Portland-based contemporary dance company bobbevy. In addition to 18 shorter works, Dernovsek and Stein have produced six evening-length shows: This is how we disappear (2013); Palace of Crystal (2011); ill-starred (2009); Lawn of the Limp (2008); Avian Fable (2007); and Marionette (2004). They have been presented by Conduit Dance, Reed College Arts Week, Danspace in NYC, Velocity Dance Center, Northwest New Works at On the Boards, Ten Tiny Dances’ South Waterfront Project, and PICA’s Time-Based Art Festival. They have received several grants from the Regional Arts and Culture Council, as well as the Dance New Work Award from UWM.
Learn moreChristopher Sutton is a longtime artist, musician, writer, and DJ who currently lives in Portland, Oregon. As a musician he has toured, performed, and recorded with bands such as Hornet Leg, Gossip, Dub Narcotic Sound System, Spider & The Webs, C.O.C.O., Hooded Hags, The Dirtbombs, and Chain & The Gang to name a few. His life as a writer has seen contributions mainly to self published fanzines like Shotgun Seamstress, Bumpidee, and his own zine Nigerian Triple Daisy. He currently writes a blog called Record Lections and some of his opines can be read in the online magazine called Network Awesome. Sutton also exhibits his work as a painter and designs album art for his bands Hornet Leg and C.O.C.O. Finally, Sutton is a DJ participating in regular soulful Portland dance parties like Soul In The Hole and Sugar Town and in various venue around the Northwest.
Selected Press:
"DJ Hornet Leg talks records," Nikki McCoy, Northwest Military, May 14, 2014
"Hornet Leg: Ribbon of Fear," Joe Hemmerling, Tiny Mix Tapes, 2009
Learn moreColin Self (b. 1987 Oregon, USA) is an artist, composer, and puppeteer based between Brooklyn, NY and Berlin, DE. They create music, performances, and new systems for interfacing with the human spirit across a spectrum between the living and deceased. Their practices revolve around the temporary assembly of communities and envelop collaborative and dialogical experiments into play.
Learn moreDao Strom is an artist who works with three “voices”—written, sung, and visual—to explore hybridity and contemplate the intersection of personal and collective histories. Using practices of polyvocality, fragmentation, and (re)assemblage, Strom writes arrangements of poetry, music, image, song, and sound, to be experienced as performance, installation, multimedia, recordings, and inside the spaces of a book. Although separate, these elements are unified by a shared (under)current that transposes itself through or despite its conduits, and endeavors toward “re-membering” and attempting to synchronize the divided ‘languages’ within the self and concerning the self as placed in the world.
Strom is the author/composer of several hybrid works, including the music/poetry project TENDER REVOLUTIONS/YELLOW SONGS (2025), and INSTRUMENT (2020), which won the 2022 Oregon Book Award for Poetry, and its musical companion of song-poems, TRAVELER’S ODE. She co-curated and co-edited the hybrid-literary anthology and exhibition, A Mouth Holds Many Things (2024), and released an album of ambient-folk songs, Redux (2022). She is also the author of a bilingual poetry-art collection, You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere Else; a hybrid-form memoir, We Were Meant To Be a Gentle People, with song cycle, East/West; and two books of fiction. Her work has received support from the Creative Capital Foundation, Oregon Community Foundation, Ford Foundation, Precipice Fund, NEA, and others. She is the co-founder of She Who Has No Master(s), a collective of Vietnamese women writers and artists making polyvocal poetry-art works; and de-canon, a literary social art project centering BIPOC writers. Born in Vietnam, Strom grew up in the Sierra Nevadas of northern California and now lives in Portland, OR.
Learn moreMiller & Shellabarger create artist books and public performances that examine queer identity, politics, and displays of affection and intimacy. They are recipients of a 2008 Artadia Chicago Award and a 2007 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation award. Together, Miller & Shellabarger have presented their projects at venues across the United States and at art fairs including Volta in Basel; Switzerland; NEXT in Chicago; NADA in Miami; and the Affair at the Jupiter in Portland, Oregon. The two artists also maintain separate artistic practices. Miller & Shellabarger are represented by Western Exhibitions in Chicago, where they live and work.
Selected Press
Run, Don't Walk, Carlos Suarez de Jesus, Miami New Times, September 17, 2009.
Learn moreEileen Isagon Skyers has worked with contemporary art and nonprofit arts organizations including the Whitney Museum, David Zwirner, Rhizome, the New Museum, Frame Contemporary Art Finland, PICA, and the Digital Museum of Digital Art (DiMoDA). Her first book, Vanishing Acts, was published by LINK Editions (Brescia, Italy) in 2015, and her writing has been published in the New Museum Catalogue Trigger: Gender as a Tool and Weapon, NATASHA, Wreath, Glass Press of the Future, Web Safe 2k16, Printed Web, and New World UNLTD, among others. Her moving image work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in the U.S., U.K., France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Mexico. Skyers holds a BA in philosophy and a BFA in studio art from the University of South Florida (Tampa, FL) and an MA in critical studies from Pacific Northwest College of Art (Portland, OR).
Learn moreFounded in 1991 by Artistic Director John Collins, Elevator Repair Service creates original works with an ongoing ensemble.
ERS’s theater pieces are built around a broad range of subject matter and literary forms; they combine elements of slapstick comedy, hi-tech and lo-tech design, both literary and found text, and the group’s own highly developed style of choreography.
ERS creates its performances through extended periods of collaboration. A typical development cycle includes 4-6 intensive work periods within a 2 year period, which conclude with work-in-progress showings. Time off between development is filled with touring and presentations of finished works. Following completion, the piece is presented in NYC for an extended run and is toured throughout the US and abroad.
Learn moreStephaun E. Wallace, MS, MOL, is a thought leader, public health researcher, project manager at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and co-director of the University of Washington’s (UW) Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) Community Action board (CAB), with a track record in developing, implementing, and evaluating major public health and human service programs in the areas of HIV/AIDS & STD prevention, care and treatment, in diverse, high-risk populations in the United States. Wallaces’ career highlights include Director of Programs/Deputy Director of the MOCHA Center, Inc.; Program/Training Coordinator of AID Atlanta, Inc. (where he co-founded the Evolution Center/Project); and Founding Executive Director of My Brothaz Keeper, Inc., and currently serves on several nonprofit boards, committees and coalitions, including maintaining active membership in national public health associations.
Mr. Wallace is a public health/social justice leader with more than 16 years of sexual/public health experience with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities and men who have sex with men (MSM), more than a decade of senior-level non-profit administrative and management experience, more than 20 of grassroots social justice/advocacy experience with LGBTQ/MSM communities, and a proven commitment to the illumination and eradication of HIV/AIDS and other health disparities via policy, research, education and advocacy. He has completed undergraduate degrees in psychology and criminal justice, Masters of Science degrees in Management and Organizational Leadership, and is currently pursuing a Doctor of Philosophy in Epidemiology.
In the house and ball community (HBC), he is known as Stephaun Blahnik, Chairman/President of the House of Blahnik. Since 2000, Wallace has been an active part of the HBC, and has provided ballroom/life guidance and talent development for many ballroom superstars. Wallace has received several ballroom awards and accolades since being a part of this community; and has walked and won Best Dressed, American Runway, Face, and Sneaker vs. Sneaker in multiple regions of the country, in addition to having the honor of judging major and mini-balls around the United States. Wallace resurrected the House of Elite in 2000, and has been a part of the Houses of Revlon, Cavalli, Valentino, and now Blahnik. Wallace founded the Western New York Council of Houses, resurrected the Atlanta Ballroom Alliance, and has directly supported the Chicago, Carolinas, Kansas City, and the West Coast Ballroom Alliances over the years. Wallace also provides consultation to the federal agencies, and local and state health departments and organizations around the country on projects addressing the needs and issues of LGBT communities, especially those in the HBC. Additionally, Wallace co-lead the development of an intervention called Project VOGUE; which the 1st EVER CREATED research-based HIV prevention intervention focused on the HBC, utilizing community-based participatory research principles.
Learn moreGare St. Lazare Players Ireland are Ireland's most travelled theatre company, having visited over 63 cities in 21 countries worldwide to perform from their repertory of over 17 Beckett productions. The group evolved out of the original Gare St. Lazare Players, an international company founded in Chicago by Bob Meyer in 1983 and based simultaneously in Ireland and France. Since 1995, Judy Hegarty Lovett and Conor Lovett have been running the company. First Love premiered in 2008 in Ireland and has since toured to Argentina, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Ireland, Romania, Switzerland, Turkey and USA.
Selected Press
The Lovetts of Méricourt, Ruadhan Mac Cormaic, The Irish Times, April 10, 2010.
In Festival, Biography, Beckett and Blues, Jason Zinoman, New York Times, January 14, 2009.
Conor Lovett has a 'Love' affair with Beckett, Christina Borger, New Haven Register, June 14, 2009. Learn moreGob Squad explores the point where theater meets art, media, and real life. They stage their work in houses, shops, underground stations, car parks, hotels, or directly on the street, and often ask the audience to step beyond their traditional role as passive spectators. Gob Squad began in Nottingham, UK in 1994, but is now based in Berlin. They’ve toured to all continents apart from Antartica.
Selected Press
Semiotics of the Kitchen, Amy Taubin, Artforum. February 1, 2012.
A Visit to Warhol's World, In All Its Goofy Glory, Charles Isherwood, New York Times, January 23, 2012. Learn moreGreasy Kid Stuff began in 1995 on freeform radio legend WFMU and relocated to Portland in 2004. Hailed as “the best kid's radio program of all time” by Alternadad Neal Pollack, the show strikes a cord with punk-inspired parents looking for alternatives to mass-market kiddie culture. greasykidstuff.vox.com
Learn moreJacqueline Shea Murphy teaches courses in critical dance studies in University of California Riverside's Dance department. She is author of The People Have Never Stopped Dancing: Native American Modern Dance Histories (University of Minnesota Press, 2007), awarded the 2008 de la Torre Bueno Prize for Outstanding Book of the Uear in Dance Studies by the Society of Dance History Scholars (SDHS), co-editor of the collection Bodies of the Text: Dance as Theory, Literature as Dance (Rutgers University Press, 1995), and has published in journals including Discourses in Dance, American Literary History, Theatre Research International, Interventions, and several anthologies. She was the 2009 recipient of a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award to Aotearoa New Zealand, and is writing a new book about ways that contemporary Indigenous choreographers in the U.S., Canada, and Aotearoa are inhabiting Indigenous epistemologies and thereby reframing colonizing institutions in their dancing and dance making.
Professor Shea Murphy regularly teaches courses such as "Dance: Cultures and Contexts," "Introduction to Dance Studies," "Dance, Gender, Sexualities," "Yoga for Dancers," and "Rhetorical Approaches to Dance Studies." She holds a Ph.D. in English from UC Berkeley, a Master's in fiction writing from The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars Program, and a BA from Barnard College of Columbia University. She has previously taught at San Francisco State University (American Indian Studies) and Mills College (English). She has a background in modern dance, and is a longtime practitioner and certified instructor of Iyengar yoga.
Learn moreJohn 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. Learn moreKaneza Schaal is a New York City based theater artist. Her recent work GO FORTH premiered at PS122 and then showed at the Genocide Memorial Amphitheater in Kigali, Rwanda; LMCC’s River-to-River Festival; Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans; Cairo International Contemporary Theater Festival in Egypt; and at her alma mater Wesleyan University, CT. Schaal received a 2017 MAP Fund award, 2016 Creative Capital Award, and is the current Aetna New Voices Fellow at Hartford Stage. This spring her new piece CARTOGRAPHY will be workshopped through New Victory Theater Lab, NYU Abu Dhabi, and will show at The Kennedy Center’s New Vision New Voices. Her work with The Wooster Group, Elevator Repair Service, Richard Maxwell/New York City Players, Claude Wampler, Jim Findlay, and Dean Moss has brought her to venues including Centre Pompidou, Royal Lyceum Theater Edinburgh, The Whitney Museum, and MoMA.
Learn moreKaren Sherman makes performances that incorporate her background in dance, writing, theater, music, and the handyman arts. Her work has been presented nationally by P.S. 122, Walker Art Center, PICA’s TBA Festival, Fusebox Festival, The Chocolate Factory Theater, American Realness, The Southern Theater, Dance Place, Diverseworks, Movement Research, ODC, Red Eye Theater, and many others. Her honors include a 2007 “Bessie” Award for her performance in Morgan Thorson's Faker, multiple McKnight Foundation Fellowships in Choreography and Dance, a Bush Foundation Artist Fellowship, SAGE Awards for her work as a choreographer, performer, and scenic designer, and residencies with the MacDowell Colony, Vermont Performance Lab, Movement Research, LUMBERYARD, and the Bogliasco Foundation program in Liguria, Italy. She was a 2016-2017 Hodder Fellow in The Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University and is currently an inaugural Caroline Hearst Choreographer-in-Residence in its dance program. A freelance stage technician for over 20 years, she was Technical Director and Production Manager of NYC’s legendary Judson Church (1994-2004), Technical Director of both Movement Research (1994-1998) and Circus Amok (1995-1997), and she has been an overhire stage technician at Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) since 2005. Her writing, including essays and poetry, has been featured on many live, web, and print forums, including e-flux journal, Movement Research Performance Journal, Criticism Exchange, Culture Bodega, and The Triumph of Poverty: Poems Inspired by the Work of Nicole Eisenman. She is currently working on an interdisciplinary project about blood, astronomy, and animals. Part one, a solo visual art show opened at Hair + Nails Gallery in Minneapolis in March 2018. Part two, a dance, premieres in 2019, with part three, a book, to follow.
Selected Press
"Karen Sherman's 'One with Others,' gleefully mocks artistic hooey," Sarah Kaufman, Washington Post, April 21, 2013
Learn moreKim Smith Claudel is an interdisciplinary artist based in Portland, OR, whose work intersects painting, sculpture, installation, and performance through a wide range of media. Smith Claudel's work has been exhibited internationally, including shows in Japan and Sweden, as well as throughout the United States. Recent solo exhibitions include the Painting Center, New York, NY; Mt. Hood Community College, Portland, OR; and Carnation Contemporary, Portland, OR. She is an active member of the artit collective WAVE Contemporary and Carnation Contemporary in Portland. She is the recipient of the 2025 Career Opportunity Grant from the Oregon Arts Commission and Ford Family Foundation, and was recently awarded an artist in residency at Building 5. She holds an MS in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab, as well as an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY.
Learn moreSuraj, coined as the "The Queen of Waacking Nouveau ", is also the Queen of many historical firsts. The first Waacking choreography videos on YouTube, influencing everyone in the industry the world over. Now, Whacking is seen in countless stage shows, concerts, commercials, music videos and more, with much of the style’s visibility tracing back to Kumari’s tireless promotion of the dance style in the 2000s. Suraj is the first Waacking choreographer to explicitly introduce the dance style to mass media by creating dance content for the FOX reality hit TV show So You Think You Can Dance. Suraj is the founder and CEO of LA's International Waack/Punk/Pose Festival (Waackfest), the first festival in the world solely devoted to the cultural education and preservation of Waacking, Whacking, Punking and Vogue. Suraj is considered as the “go-to” expert for this underground dance from the 70s, serving as an international ambassador of its history, culture and technique.
Learn moreFounded by Luisa Pardo and Gabino Rodríguez in 2003, Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol is a young Mexican theater company reflecting the new dynamics of contemporary Mexican culture. They develop their multimedia stage productions as mechanisms to link work and life and give voice to overlooked moments in social and political historical. Lagartijas has toured widely throughout Mexico and Europe and has received awards from the Impatience Festival and the Zürcher Theater Spektakel.
Related Content
Learn moreLo Steele is a singer, songwriter, and award winning actor and poet from Portland. Known for her frank lyrics and simple melodies, like that in her most recent single “Insecurities”, she aspires to make art “that makes people feel seen”. You may have recently seen her in the one-woman-show Queens Girl in the World at Clackamas Repertory Theatre for which she won a Drammy for “Outstanding Solo Performance”. Check out her website or follow her on social media to find out what she has been creating while in isolation.
Learn moreMalik Nashad Sharpe, also known as Marikiscrycrycry, is a choreographer and movement director known for his provocative and formally engaging performance works that address themes of violence, alienation, horror, melancholia, and the horizon. He holds a BA in Experimental Dance with highest honors from Williams College and a certificate in Contemporary Dance from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, where he won the Simone Michele Prize for Outstanding Choreography. He has received commissions and shown his work at venues and festivals across the UK, Europe, and Canada, and is currently an Associate Artist at The Place, London and a studio resident of Somerset House Studios, London. He has held artistic residencies at Sadler’s Wells, Barbican, Performance Situation Room, Dance4, Duckie, and Tate Modern. In 2019, he was named a Rising Star in Dance by Attitude Magazine and is a member of the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2022, recognized for his unique and pervasive choreographic achievements. He currently lives in London and is a guest professor in dance and performance at the Stockholm University of the Arts in Sweden.
Learn moreManuel Solano (Mexico City, 1987): Through painting, performance and video, Manuel Solano’s work references pop culture and personal memories to inform on Manuel’s own queer identity and bittersweet experiences. After becoming blind for life in 2014 as a result of an HIV-related infection, Manuel’s rebellious nature drove him to keep making art rather than giving up his past life. He has since shown at Museo Carrillo Gil, Zona MACO and Galería Karen Huber.
Learn moreMaster Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr. is Black, Italian, Queer, Non-Binary, Neurodyvergent, and practices primarily in america. Their collaborative approach results in artwork by and for the people.
Stevenson’s practice has been dedicated to supporting young people ages 4 to 18 in developing the necessary skills to encourage advanced imaginative thinking and self-confident expression. In 2019 they developed the Afro Contemporary Art Class at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School which has had many forms since, including Afro Futurist February, and three years of Fred Hampton Summer Camp. Supporting community efforts as well, taking the shape of support for the effort to Save Dr. Martin Luther King School from being displaced by the expansion of Interstate 5 which has triggered the need to move Harriet Tubman Middle School. Stevenson is currently working in the Albina community to develop a Living Archive at Jefferson High School with students, community, and the architectural design team. Stevenson also has a robust portfolio of artist projects centering food and gathering around it, projects involving sculpture, drawing, and photography, and new work in collaboration with currently and formerly incarcerated folks. These include Tin Can Phone, a podcast all about life in and outside of prison, and Gallery Blue, a curation and exhibition project both of which are owned and operated by formerly incarcerated individuals. Stevenson pursues these professional and creative goals passionately because they believe that empowered and open-minded young people and communities are the best and most direct way toward ensuring a sustainable and prosperous future for all.
Learn moreStuart received her BFA in dance from NYU and was a member of the Randy Warhaw Dance Company for five years. On invitation from the Klapstuk Festival in Leuven in 1991, she created her first full-length piece, Disfigure Study. In 1994 Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods began a series of collaborations with visual artists, including Lawrence Malstaf, Gary Hill, and Ann Hamilton. Together with choreographer/dancer Benoît Lachambre and composer Hahn Rowe—both honored with Bessie Awards—Stuart created Forgeries, Love, and Other Matters.
Learn moreNight Shade is a group of artists rebelling against traditional flat-surface silhouettes and revolutionizing the ancient art of shadow puppetry by using light to manipulate depth and space. This art group blends hand-held lights, masks, puppets, composed music, sound-effects, and experimental storytelling into a bewitching form of cinematic puppetry that flows like film. Core artists are Alicia Cortes, Sarah Frechette, Oviedo Menendez, Jason Thibodeaux, and Alain Z, but also working under the banner Night Shade are Kevin Bouton-Scott, Michel Fiffe, Chris Rabilwongse, and Cynthia Star.
The Portland-based Night Shade collective began collaborating with Japanther back in 2005 in New York. That first show at the Arm Gallery in Williamsburg started the momentum of late night cutting and, since then, this group has performed across the US at various puppetry and art festivals, galleries, anarchist spaces, gutted bowling alleys, and pubs. In 2009 Night Shade performed their full-length epic shadow play, Night Shade, which contains over 700 intricate cut-outs, for a sold-out run at Disjecta, in Portland.
Learn moreAs a dance artist, Noelle Stiles is interested in how and where experience is held in the body. This interest provides a framework for extracting the corporeal language that both intimately connects and individuates us. Stiles has a BFA in dance from Cornish College of the Arts and completed her graduate studies in dance at The Ohio State University. She has performed and presented work at venues such as the PICA's Time-Based Art Festival (2010), On The Boards, PWNW, Dance New Amsterdam, and Links Hall. Stiles' interest in teaching has taken her to places such as The Ohio State University, the Governor’s School of North Carolina and she co-founded the community focused dance class series Heavy Rotation with Kathleen Keogh of Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner. Her work has been supported by Caldera's Artist Residency program, PICA's Resource Room Residency, the Regional Arts and Culture Council, the ACA Associate Artist Residency program and was selected by PICA and the NDP to travel to the Dublin Dance Festival as part of a pilot international exchange program. In 2010, Stiles merged her work as a graphic designer with her work in dance to co-create a dance publication entitled FRONT. Based out of Portland, Oregon, FRONT is Tahni Holt, Danielle Ross, Noelle Stiles, and Robert Tyree. FRONT utilizes the old-school tactics of the broadsheet newspaper to explore the new, current, future energy of dance theory and practices in the field.
Learn moreThe Oregon Painting Society is an art collective from Portland, Oregon, formed in 2007. They have exhibited and performed at Fontanelle Gallery (PDX) and Reed College (PDX).
Learn moreSince the Oregon Symphony was established 117 years ago, it has been recognized for its internationally acclaimed music directors, skilled performers, diverse programs, and outstanding community services in education and regional touring. The Oregon Symphony now ranks among the largest orchestras in the nation, and the oldest west of the Mississippi.
Learn morePeter Simensky’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; Museum 52, New York; The Swiss Institute, New York; and Project Row Houses, Houston. Selected group exhibitions at Sculpture Center, NY; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Mass Moca, North Adams; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery New York; Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York; and Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York among others. Simensky’s Gold Dust was recently featured in Cabinet’s, Money Issue. He has received awards and grants from LMCC, NYFA, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. He lives and works in Portland, OR and Brooklyn, NY.
Learn moreBorn in 1970, Philippe Quesne received his education in Visual Arts. For 10 years he designed sets for theater, operas and exhibitions. In 2003, he created the Vivarium Studio Company, and directed his first show, La Démangeaison des ailes, based on the acts of taking off and falling down. Philippe Quesne hunts the marvelous, the tiny, and pushes to the extreme experiences of our daily lives as well as the relationship between mankind and nature. As he did as a child, collecting insects, he now works and studies small communities under his microscope. The scenography is used as an ecosystem in which he immerses his actors into. His shows, such as La Démangeaison des ailes (2003), Des expériences (2004), D’après nature (2006), L’Effet de Serge (2007), La Mélancolie des dragons (2008), Big Bang (2010), Swamp Club (2013), Next Day (2014), compose a repertory that tours all over the world. In addition to his work for the theater, he creates performances and interventions in public spaces or natural sites, and displays his installations in the context of exhibitions. Since January 2014, he has been serving as the co-director of Nanterre-Amandiers, National Dramatic Center. In 2016, he will create Caspar Western Friedrich at Kammerspiele in Munich and Welcome to Caveland! at Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels
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La Mélancolie des dragons 1 @ Martin Argyroglo
La Mélancolie des dragons 5 © Pierre Grosbois Learn morePublication Studio is an experiment in sustainable publication. They print and bind books on demand, creating original work with artists and writers they admire, books that both respond to the conversation of the moment and can endure. They attend to the social life of the book, cultivating a public that cares and is engaged. Publication Studio is a laboratory for publication in its fullest sense — not just the production of books, but the production of a public. This public, which is more than a market, is created through deliberate acts: the circulation of texts; discussions and gatherings in physical space; and the maintenance of a digital commons. Together these construct a space of conversation, a public space, which beckons a public into being. At TBA, Publication Studio will conduct real-time collaborations with Festival artists and performers, strategizing and producing new books on-demand in a retail storefront.
Publication Studio was founded and is run by Matthew Stadler, formerly the literary editor of Nest Magazine and co-founder of Clear Cut Press, and Patricia No.
Selected Press
Book Publishing as Common Ground, Caroline Cummins, Oregon Humanities, Spring 2010.
A Very Long - and Very Interesting - Interview with Matthew Stadler of Publication Studio, Matthew Simmons, HTMLGIANT, March 18, 2010.
Learn moreWith a career spanning over 25 years, Rakesh has captivated audiences worldwide as a versatile performer, choreographer, teacher, and producer. His journey through the realms of artistry began in Bollywood dance, where he lent his talents to numerous films in South India. Evolving his craft, Rakesh found a new passion in Contemporary movement art, drawing inspiration from his family's lineage of yoga and disciplines like Kalarippayattu and other Indian dance forms.
For the past 15 years, he has traversed the globe, immersing himself in diverse cultures and artistic landscapes, shaping his unique perspective and vision. Experience the culmination of Rakesh's passion, dedication, and global influences in every performance and creation.
Learn moreCurrently based in Brooklyn, New York, Stiler received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from Yale University. Her work has been shown internationally at galleries including Nicelle Beauchene (New York), Sandroni Rey (Los Angeles), and Annarumma 404 (Naples, Italy). Recent and upcoming exhibitions include solo projects at Callicoon Fine Arts (New York), The Suburban (Chicago) as well as the Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition at Socrates Sculpture Park (New York). Stiler has been featured in BOMBlog, Artforum.com, and Flash Art Italia and is represented by Nicelle Beauchene Gallery in New York.
Selected Press
Ruby Sky Stiler, Christopher Howard, Artforum, May 2009.
Ruby Sky Stiler, Rebekah Drysdale, Daily Serving, May 16, 2009.
In Words: Ruby Sky Stiler, Kelly Devine Thomas, BOMBlog May 25, 2009.
That's What He Said, Ian Cooper, The Highlights, October 2009.
Learn moreSacha Yanow is a New York City-based artist and actor. Her solo performance works include: Dad Band, New Museum, NYC (2015); Silent Film (in development), The Lab, San Francisco, Pieter, Los Angeles, and MAPP/Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, NY (2015), Dixon Place, NYC (2014), and Movement Research Festival, NYC (2013); and The Prince, Dixon Place, NYC (2013). Her residencies and awards include: LMCC Process Space (2016); SOMA, Mexico City (2015); Dixon Place, NYC (2014); Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY (2012); and The Field, NYC (2011). She was creative consultant for Elisabeth Subrin’s feature film A Woman A Part (2016), and co-director and dramaturge for Dynasty Handbag’s performance piece Soggy Glasses (The Broad/REDCAT 2016, Brooklyn Academy of Music 2014). Yanow received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and is a graduate of the William Esper Studio Actor Training program.
Learn moreSaint Abdullah is the moniker of Mohammad and Mehdi, New York based Iranian-Canadian brothers working across sound, and music. Inspired by Iran’s religious, political and cultural history, the project was formed out of a deep frustration with the way the West perceives – and treats – Muslims and the Islamic faith. We aim to challenge stereotypes and act as a conduit between unnecessary enemies.
Learn moreSam Gould is the co-founder and editor of Red76, an experimental publication platform. Established in Portland, Oregon in January of 2000, Red76 often works towards forming publics through print and other methods like meals and public projects that open space to discuss social, educational, and political life in America today.
Gould has taught within the graduate department for Social Practice at the California College of the Arts and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He has written, as well as lectured extensively within the United States and abroad.
Learn moreGreen is a documentary filmmaker based in New York and San Francisco. His film The Weather Underground was nominated for an Academy Award, broadcast nationally on PBS, and included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. He has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, Creative Capital, and the NEA.
Selected Press
Sam Green's Love Song at SFIFF, Mike Plante, Filmmaker Magazine, May 7, 2012.
'The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller' with Yo La Tengo at SFIFF, John Angelico, SFGate Culture Blog, May 3, 2012.
A hundred visions and revisions, Sam Stander, San Francisco Bay Guardian, April 17, 2012.
Someone else's glasses: Sam Green Talks Buckminster Fuller, Moriah Ulinskas, Bay Area Video Coalition, April 25, 2012.
Learn moreSam Hamilton (Sam Tam Ham) is an independent, working class, interdisciplinary artist from Aotearoa New Zealand of Pākehā (English settler colonial) descent based in Portland, OR. After 20 years of working independently and professionally across experimental music and sound art, moving and still image, painting, writing, performance, stage, cinema, and curatorial projects, Hamilton's practice today operates more like an ecology than a discipline. A messy but verdant garden full of old and new growth, hidden places, edible arrangements, toxic weeds, garden parties, frolicking, and most importantly, the life-affirming ferment of deep existential entanglement. What physically emerges in any given season through the confluence of this garden depends most simply on what vessel(s) best serve the idea at hand.
The long song
a meandering garden path
Both an entrance and an exit
Hamilton's work has existed in a wide range of contexts, including Converge 45, Portland; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Portland Art Museum, OR; Transmediale, Berlin; Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival; Artspace Aotearoa, Auckland; as well as a research station in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, an active volcanic island crater, a billboard, a functioning Shinto shrine in Japan, an anarchist squat in Athens, Greece, the Australian outback desert, a dank underground parking lot, some dude’s apartment in Lima, Peru, and on the radio.
In addition to their solo work, they have collaborated extensively with artists across Aotearoa New Zealand, Sāmoa, Australia, Kiribati, the US, Finland, Japan, and Peru, including ten years spent working with the internationally acclaimed Lemi Ponifasio MAU Dance Company, touring major works to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, NY; Louvre Abu Dhabi, UAB; Ruhrtriennale, Ruhr; KVS; REDCAT, Los Angeles; Théâtre de la Ville, Paris; and more.
Their work has been recognized with a Creative Capital Award, Oregon Community Foundation's Creative Heights Award, and an Arts Foundation of New Zealand New Generation Award, among others.
Learn moreArtist and composer Samita Sinha creates multidisciplinary performance works that investigate origins of voice. She synthesizes Indian vocal traditions and embodied practices to create a decolonized, bodily, multivalent language of vibration and transformation. Sinha's works have been commissioned and presented by Asia Society, Performance Space 122, Danspace, Rubin Museum, Queens Museum, Western Front, and Gibney Dance, among others. Sinha teaches voice extensively.
Learn moreSan Cha is a Mexican-American artist whose multidisciplinary practice blends rancheras, electronics, cumbia, and pop to explore themes of identity, power, and liberation. Born Lizette Gutierrez to Mexican immigrant parents, San Cha's artistic journey began with singing in the Catholic Church choir and evolved within the vibrant Bay Area queer drag nightlife scene. This formative period fostered a unique fusion of musical influences, including Catholic hymns, Mexican corridos, rancheras, cumbias, and punk queer electroclash, shaping her distinct artistic voice.
Rooted in the DIY, punk, and queer nightlife cultures, San Cha's work is driven by a commitment to personal, social, and political liberation. Her creative process is fueled by community narratives, lucid dreams, and cultural exploration. A transformative experience living on her aunt's farm in Jalostotitlán, Mexico inspired her to reimagine traditional ranchera music through a queer lens, subverting established forms and cultural signifiers.
San Cha's early work, such as the Capricho del Diablo EP (2018), received critical acclaim, with Bandcamp Daily naming it Album Of The Day. Her 2019 album, La Luz De La Esperanza, earned an 8.0 rating on Pitchfork and recognition as one of The Advocate's "Women Of The Year" in 2020. Her music has been featured in the Starz TV series Vida and Kacey Musgraves' film Star-Crossed: The Film, with the Los Angeles Times declaring, "San Cha sings from a divine place." Her ongoing Processions (2024) mixtape, released through Ballroom Marfa, further demonstrates her artistic versatility and commitment to exploring complex narratives.
San Cha's practice extends to collaborative projects in classical music and opera. She has engaged in projects, performances, and residencies with Performance Space New York, New York, NY; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; lumber room, Portland, OR; The Getty, Los Angeles, CA; LACMA, Los Angeles, CA; Red Bull; Ballroom Marfa, Marfa, TX; Denniston Hill, Glen Wild, NY; Oak Head; On the Boards, Seattle, WA; REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA; Movimiento de Arte y Cultural Latino Americana, San Jose, CA; KQED; Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Portland, OR, and more. Her work has also been supported by the California Arts Council.
Recent awards and accolades include the National Performance Network Creation & Development Fund Grant (2023), National Performance Network Documentation & Storytelling Grant (2024), Los Angeles Performance Practice Research & Development Award (2024), a 2023 California Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship, and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant. San Cha's work consistently pushes artistic boundaries, utilizing music and performance as powerful vehicles for sociopolitical change and liberation.
Learn moreSarah Dougher is a musician, composer, and university professor. She has performed for over twenty years, including at PICA’s TBA festival and has received commissions from the Classical Greek Theater of Oregon, the Oregon Arts Commission, the Multnomah County Library, and the Cooley Gallery at Reed College.
Learn moreSarah Hennies is a composer and percussionist based in Ithaca, NY. Her work utilizes an often grueling, endurance-based performance practice in a subversive examination of psychoacoustics, queer identity, and performance art. She has presented her work in a variety of contexts including Café Oto (London), cave12 (Geneva), Ende Tymes (NYC), Festival Cable (Nantes), the Johns Hopkins Digital Media Center, O’ Art Space (Milan), and Second Edition (Stockholm). Hennies is currently a member of improvised music group Meridian with Greg Stuart and Tim Feeney, a duo with sound/performance artist Jason Zeh, and the Queer Percussion Research Group with Jerry Pergolesi, Bill Solomon, and Jennifer Torrence. Hennies founded the record label Weighter Recordings, releasing works by artists working at the fringes of contemporary music.
Learn moreSara 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.
Learn moreSasha Wortzel is a visual artist and filmmaker working between South Florida (Miccosukee and Seminole lands) and New York City (Lenape lands). Blending the archival and the imaginary, Wortzel uses film, video, installation, sculpture, sound, and performance to explore how the past haunts and inextricably shapes contemporary American life. Projects examine queer place-making, geographies of resistance, and the systems that marginalize, extract, and erase communities, peoples, and histories.
Wortzel’s films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art’s DocFortnight, True/False Film Festival, DOC NYC, BAMcinemaFest, Blackstar, New Orleans Film Festival, Wexner Center for the Arts, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Berlinale, among others. Their work has been exhibited at the New Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and The Kitchen, New York; and SALTS, Birsfelden. Wortzel has been supported by the Sundance Institute, Ford Foundation, Field of Vision, Doc Society, Art Matters, and a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship. Wortzel has participated in residencies including Smack Mellon’s Artist Studio Program, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Program, Abrons Arts Center, Watermill Center, New York; AIRIE (Artists in Residence in the Everglades) and Oolite Arts, Miami Beach. Wortzel’s film This is an Address (2020) is distributed by Field of Vision. Happy Birthday Marsha! (2018; co-director Tourmaline) won special mention at Outfest and is distributed by Frameline. Their work is in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Studio Museum of Harlem, Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, and Miami Dade County Art in Public Places. She has been featured in publications including the New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, and New York Magazine. Wortzel received an MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College.
Learn moreSeba Calfuqueo are from Mapuche origin. Their work appeals to their inheritance to propose a critical reflection on the social, cultural, and political status of the Mapuche subject in contemporary Chilean society and in Latin America. It includes installations, ceramics, performances, and video art that explore cultural similarities and differences as well as the stereotypes produced from the cross between Indigenous and Western ways of thinking. Their research also has the purpose of making visible feminist and sexual dissidence issues. Seba Calfuqueo is part of the Mapuche collective Rangiñtulewfü, which edits YeneRevista, an online magazine of art, thought, and writing in Wallmapu and AbyaYala language.
Learn moreSilent Ending Caught in Rapture Emblems Truth and Secrets (S.E.C.R.E.T.S.) is a performance based surrealist musical project from Portland, OR, and is comprised of musician Aaron Chapman (of Nurses), and visual artist/dancers Andrea Glaser and Rose Dickson.
Learn moreShameka Marshall is a retired track and field athlete, coach, and educator specializing in the long jump and hurdles. A three-time U.S. Olympic Trials qualifier (2004, 2008, 2012), she won a silver medal in the long jump at the 2011 Pan American Games and earned a silver medal runner-up at the 2008 USA Indoor Championships. A Rutgers University graduate and Hall of Fame inductee (2017), she still holds six school records, including the indoor and outdoor long jump. Marshall coached at the collegiate level from 2008–2016, winning Penn Relays titles in 2014 and 2016, and has served as an adjunct professor at Temple University from 2008–2023.
Learn moreBorn in California, Moulton is a Brooklyn-based video, installation, and performance artist. She attended school at UC Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University, and has participated in residencies at Skowhegan, De Ateliers, LMCC, and Harvestworks. She was also a New Commissions artist at Art in General in 2009. Moulton has presented at venues such as The Wexner Center, MoMA P.S.1, The Kitchen, Performa 09, Electronic Arts Intermix, the Andy Warhol Museum, and Socrates Sculpture Park.
Selected Press
Whispering Pines 10 at the Kitchen, Kareem Estefan, BOMBlog, April 28, 2010.
The Object Whisperer: Shana Moulton's Whispering Pines, Brian Droitcour, Rhizome, April 14, 2010.
Learn moreShannon Funchess is an activist and self-taught, interdisciplinary queer performance artist. The founder, vocalist, producer of internationally revered, electronic music project LIGHT ASYLUM founded in Brooklyn, New York in 2007, she has engaged audiences in performance at DIY art spaces, museums, galleries, music festivals and nightclubs in the U.K., North America, Europe, South America, Scandinavia, Japan, Russia, Mexico, Australia and Canada. Her musical journey began in a gospel choir of a southern baptist church in Spokane, Washington at the age of nine. With an ethos rooted in community and a passion for collaboration, she has joined forces with artistic peers and allies globally. From recording studio vocal features, creating sound design and remix productions for performance artists The Knife, LEECH, Yves Tumor, TR/ST, Chris Garneau and Justin Kennedy among others to lending vocals and appearing as an actor in video installation works of Elysia Crampton Chuquimia, Michelle Handelman, Gloria Maximo, Wu Tsang, Tony Ousler, A.K. Burns and A.L. Steiner. She has regularly been invited on stages as a guest performer / musician with artists the likes of The Knife, LCD Sound System, TV on the Radio, electronic music pioneer Laurie Anderson, Coco Rosie and Christeene. Funchess has established herself as a force across her community and is lauded for her cathartic performances as well as a DJ at established art institutions, clubs and underground events. She’s at home in all stages of her creative exploration and continues to produce music and art within her community in Portland, Oregon.
Learn moreBorn in Madras, India, and brought up in Paris, Shivalingappa is the child of East and West. She is a world-renowned practitioner of the classical Indian Kuchipudi technique, and she received an intense and rigorous training from the master teacher Vempati Chinna Satyam. Driven by a deep desire to bring Kuchipudi to Western audiences, she has performed in important festivals and theaters around the world, earning praise and admiration from all.
Acclaimed for her rare talent by artists and connoisseurs in India and Europe, Shantala combines a perfect technique with flowing grace and a very fine sensitivity. Since the age of 13, she has worked with some of the greatest artists of our time: Maurice Bejart, Peter Brook, Bartabas, and Pina Bausch. She began dancing with Pina Bausch in 1999 and was a featured performer in Bausch’s Nefes and Bamboo Blues.
Selected Press
A Dancer rises in the East, and now the West, Julie Bloom, New York Times, December 10, 2008.
Learn moreAs an artist, Sharita Towne’s interests lie in unpacking the inherited struggles of past burdens and in affording collective catharsis. Through collaboration, stereo-photography, printmaking, video, and community art projects, she’s worked at memorials in Germany; in the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria; Brazil; in gentrifying cities like Portland and New Orleans; in schools, museums, and neighborhoods, and within her own family. She received a BFA from UC Berkeley and an MFA from Portland State University. She currently teaches at Pacific Northwest College of Art, works in the DIY printmaking and audiovisual collective URe:AD Press (United Re:Public of the African Diaspora), the post-colonial conceptual karaoke band Weird Allan Kaprow, and is a 2016 Art Matters grant recipient.
Learn moreIranian-born visual artist Neshat is known for her hauntingly beautiful explorations of Islam and gender relations. Neshat left Iran before the revolution in 1979 and, since 1996, has been unable to return to her country due to the controversial nature of her art. Over the past 15 years, she has created work that draws from her personal experiences in exile and the widening political and ideological rift between the West and the Middle East. Neshat has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the Tate Gallery (London), and was the recipient in 1999 of the Golden Lion Award, the First International Prize at the 48th Venice Biennial. In 2009, Neshat won the Silver Lion for Best Director at the 66th Venice Film Festival.
Selected Press
Women Without Men: A Conversation with Shirin Neshat, Leila Darabi, PBS Frontline: Tehran Bureau, May 5, 2010.
Women Without Men - In 1953 Iran, Sisterhood Sought During a Coup, Stephen Holden, The New York Times, May 14, 2010.
Shirin Neshat: An Interview, Eleanor Heartney, Art in America, June 16, 2009.
Shirin Neshat: Women Without Men, Tehran Review.
Shirin Neshat, Arthur C. Danto, BOMB, Fall 2000.
Shirin Neshat: A long way from home, Homa Khaleeli, Guardian.co.uk, June 13, 2010.
Iran's Hidden Turmoil: Shirin Neshat's Women Without Men, Sarah Kerr, nybooks.com, May 14, 2010.
Learn moreShirotama Hitsujia discovered her passion for cabaret singing and performance art after studying literature at Meiji University in Tokyo. In 1994, she founded Yubiwa Hotel, a key force in Japan’s alternative theatre scene. Yubiwa Hotel has created more than forty works, all written, directed, and performed by women. They are known for a burlesque–like aesthetic that ranges from the delicate to the outrageous, and often use non-traditional spaces like warehouses, galleries, underground dance clubs, rooftop tennis courts and strip clubs. Their work has toured internationally and includes Long Distance Love (2001), Yubiwan Beauty (2001), and It’s Up to You (2003).
Learn moreSholeh Asgary is an Iranian-born interdisciplinary sound artist whose immersive works, performances, and audience participatory scores implicate the viewer-participant into future mythological excavations, bridging large swathes of time and history through water, water clocks, crude oil, movement, light, imaging, voice, and sound. Asgary’s practice is a conglomeration of visual, sound, and collective processes, all of which she is deeply dedicated to.
Featured in Art in America’s 2022 “New Talent Issue,” Asgary has been supported by numerous residencies, most recently including Headlands Center for the Arts, MASS MoCA, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, UCLA Art Sci, ARoS Kunstmuseum, and Berkeley Art Center. Her work has been presented through performances, exhibitions and screenings by such institutions as Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Minnesota Street Project, Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, 500 Capp St., and Ann Arbor Film Festival. Asgary holds an MFA from Mills College and BA from San Francisco State University. Learn moresidony o’neal is an artist and writer working from interdisciplinary research and pre- to post- machine computing. o’neal’s practice treats conceptual art and mathematics as related forms of industrial culture that have shaped human relationships to objects, labor, and technology over time.
Recent solo exhibitions include Et al. (SOFTMAX HARD HASP), San Francisco, CA; Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, (The Pudding Butcher), Princeton, NJ; Dracula’s Revenge (NOT TALKING UNTIL BAD COMPANY JOINS), New York, NY; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (Enchiridion: Aisle, Spline, Resort), Portland, OR; and Veronica (AuguRing), Seattle, WA. Duo and group exhibitions include Third Born (Continuous Dimensional Thorax), Mexico City, Mexico; ICA at Maine College of Art and Design (ENTER:), Portland, ME; and SculptureCenter (In Practice: Total Disbelief), Long Island City, NY. o’neal has participated in residencies at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; and Banff Centre, Banff, AB, among others. o’neal is the co-founder of INFANT design firm. Performances as a part of DT have been presented with Kunstverein Düsseldorf, Volksbühne Berlin, and Performance Space New York. o'neal is the recipient of awards and fellowships including the Oregon Arts Commission's Joan Shipley Award and a Hodder Fellowship from the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University. In 2023, o’neal was awarded a Hallie Ford Fellowship. Learn moreSigne Becker is a freelance scenographer and artist. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in scenography from the Norwegian Theatre Academy (NTA) in Fredrikstad (2006) and a Master’s Degree in visual culture from Oslo National Academy of the Arts (2008). Her artistic projects include theatre and dance productions, as well as personal art projects as installations, pictures and video work. In recent years, she has worked on a number of productions in Norway, and for six years she has been a permanent scenographer at Verk Produksjoner. Their The Eternal Smile won the prize of The performance of the year (2011), and Becker was nominated for best scenography for the performance Stalker, 2013. She also curates and organizes «++», a monthly art event held in the foyer at Black Box Theatre, Oslo.
Learn moreSimon Liu (b. 1987, Hong Kong) is an artist filmmaker working between alternate documentary forms, abstract diary films, 16mm projection performance, and video installation. He has exhibited at film festivals and institutions globally including the New York Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam: Tiger Short Competition, Toronto International Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, British Film Institute, The Shed, M+ Museum, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Cinéma du Réel, Sheffield Doc/Fest, “Dreamlands: Expanded,” and a solo-presentation at the Museum of Modern Art as part of their Modern Mondays series. The M+ Museum and MoMA recently acquired Liu’s quadruple 16mm projection “Highview” with other recent works for their Permanent Collections. Liu is a 2019 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, a teacher at the Cooper Union School of Art, and a member of Negativeland, an artist-run film lab in Brooklyn. Liu is currently editing his first feature film, Staffordshire Hoard.
Learn moreRichard Bishop, guitarist and founding member of the band Sun City Girls (1981-2007), released his first solo record (Salvador Kali) in 1998 on John Fahey’s esteemed Revenant label under the moniker Sir Richard Bishop. Since then he has released albums on a variety of labels: Improvika, Elektronika Demonika, and While My Guitar Violently Bleeds (Locust Music); Fingering the Devil (Southern Records, UK); Hypostasis: A Work in Three Parts (VDSQ); Intermezzo (Editions Mego); The Unrock Tapes and Road to Siam (Unrock); and Polytheistic Fragments, The Freak of Araby, Tangier Sessions, and Oneiric Formulary (Drag City).
“Sir Richard Bishop forces one to alter that hoary cliche ‘jack of all trades’, to master of…damn near all. Renowned for his mercurial guitar-playing for 26 years with Seattle ethno-delic legends Sun City Girls, Bishop has wrought a distinguished solo canon as well. He combines soulfulness and advanced technique with a panache that’s nearly unrivaled among today’s guitarists. Bishop strums spiritual with incantatory ragas, free-folk excursions, crystalline flamenco flourishes, ruddy Appalachian folk, Middle Eastern-tinged fantasias and gypsy arabesques. This is eclecticism done with respect and third-eye-dilating filigree; his compositions attain a sepia-toned wistfulness and a psychedelic complexity.” - Dave Segal (OC Weekly)
Learn moreS.J Norman (b. 1984) is a cross-disciplinary artist and writer. His career has so far spanned 18 years and has embraced a diversity of disciplines and formal outcomes, including solo and ensemble performance, installation, sculpture, text, video, and sound. He is a non-binary transmasculine person and a diasporic Koori of Wiradjuri descent, born on Gadigal land. Since 2006 he has lived and worked between Australia, Germany, the UK, and the United States.
His practice is routed through the volatile interstices of the social and the corporeal. Working extensively with durational and spatial practices, as well as intimate/one-to-one frameworks, Norman's primary medium is the body. Drawing on embodied ancestral lineages of ceremonial praxis, Norman frequently utilises relational and process-based choreographies as a mode of structural critique: reflected in his work is an abiding interest in the space of co- and inter-corporeality, the forces that suffuse it, and how the live act might be utilised as a mean to examine, disrupt and re-inscribe prevailing systems of social power.
Norman has received major commissions from the Biennale of Sydney (AU), Performance Space New York (US), Dark Mofo (AU), The National Gallery of Australia (AU), Venice International Performance Week (IT), Spill Festival of Live Art (UK), Fierce Festival (UK), In Between Time (UK), Arnolfini (UK), Liveworks (AU), Australian Experimental Art Foundation (AU), Unsound Festival (PL), Fusebox Festival (US), Melbourne Festival (AU), Tarnanthi Festival of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art (AU) and Tate Modern (UK), the Science Gallery London (UK), Die Fabrikanten (AT), and the Festival of Live Art (AU), to name a few. He has received numerous awards for his work including a Sidney Myer Fellowship and an Australia Council Fellowship, two of Australia's most prestigious honors for art.
Aside from his artistic and curatorial practice, he is also a writer of fiction, essays, and poetry. He has won or placed in numerous literary awards, including: The Peter Blazey Prize, The Kill Your Darlings Unpublished Manuscript Award, The ABR/Elizabeth Jolley Award for Short Story, and the Overland/Judith Wright Prize for Poetry. His award-winning debut short story collection, Permafrost, will be published by the University of Queensland press in 2021.
Learn moreSophia Tweed Ahmad is a freelance movement artist, vocalist and costume maker. Over the years she has been exploring the intersections of dance, the voice, and costume design. Her movement training stems from Contemporary Dance, Contact Improvisation and Capoeira currently training in Portland with Capoeira São Salvador with Mestre Pedro Cruz. Her choreography has been presented by Ten Tiny Dances, Performance Works NW, Stripart Festival, Choreoscope Dance & Film Festival, and is currently in Residence at Shaking the Tree Theatre. Find her at Capoeira Rodas, teaching Soft Acrobatics and working with multicultural youth.
Learn moreSounds et al is an independent record label exploring sound, product design, collaboration and curation.
Learn moreRecognized worldwide as one of today's most accomplished monologue artists, Spalding Gray is also a celebrated writer, actor, and performer. He has created over 14 monologues which have been performed throughout the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia, including Swimming to Cambodia, which also earned him an OBIE Award. Mr. Gray has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation. His work is noted for its eccentric detail, razor wit, and encyclopedic obsessiveness. Regarded as the "high priest of anxiety," his monologues and stories are autobiographical in nature, built through improvisation, and reflect the mastery of years of experience.
Learn moreFounded in New York in 1980 with Deb Margolin, Split Britches continues with the duo and solo work of Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw which spans satirical, gender-bending performance, methods for public engagement, videography, digital and print media, explorations of aging and well-being, and iconic lesbian-feminist theatre.
Learn moreStephen Thompson, originally from Calgary, Alberta is an inter-disciplinary artist working between Canada, USA and Europe. Stephen’s introduction to movement and performing was through competitive figure skating. He received a Bachelor of Kinesiology (art and science of movement) and Dance from the University of Calgary. In 2015 at the World “Figure” Championships in Lake Placid, Stephen received the bronze medal. In 2016 he received a Victor Martin-Lynch award from the Canada Council for the Arts. Past choreographic work and collaborations: 2012 Bessie award winning Antigone Sr. (Large), The Ghost of Montpellier and the Samurai (2014) with Trajal Harell, Culture Administration & Trembling (2014), Les Etudes (2017), Chaud (2020); Jennifer Lacey, Antonija Livingstone, Dominique Pétrin, whatwearesaying (2014); Public Recordings (2 Dora Mavor awards Toronto), numerous projects with Benoit Lachambre, Relative Collider (2015); Liz Santoro and Pierre Godard, Service #5: Try to keep kids off naturalism and Kein Paradiso with Adam Linder recipient of the Mohn Prize at the L.A. Bienniale, Stitchomythia with Nadia Lauro and Zeena Parkins, Dramaturge for Such Sweet Thunder (2019) recipient of 8tensions Impulstanz, Compulsory Figures (2019) co-signed with French visual artist Xavier Veilhan.
Learn moreSylvan Oswald is an interdisciplinary artist originally from Philadelphia who creates text-based projects exploring trans identity, history, and nonviolent dramaturgy. He seeks alternative structures designed to respect all people. He seeks spaces that interrupt consumption and open up new styles of satisfaction.
Current work includes High Winds (Fusebox Festival, X Artists' Books); text for choreographer Meg Foley's Blood Baby; and an essay titled "Towards a Trans Theater." Projects include "Cut Piece," a personal history of play publishing; Play A Journal of Plays (2003-2011); and Outtakes, a lo-fi semi-improvised web series starring Becca Blackwell and Zuzanna Szadkowski, hosted at weareopentv.com. Plays include Trainers: A Theatrical Essay (Gate Theatre, London, Oberon Books); A Kind of Weather (Diversionary Theater, San Diego); Profanity (Undermain Theater, Dallas); Vendetta Chrome (Clubbed Thumb, New York); and Pony (About Face Theater, Chicago). Pony is a seminal work about queer and trans belonging revived summer '22 in a production directed by Jess Barbagallo.
Honors include a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rosati Fellowship from Duke University Libraries, the Thom Thomas award from The Dramatists Guild, a Jerome Fellowship, and residencies at Sundance/Ucross, Macdowell Colony, and Yaddo. Sylvan is an alum of CTG's Writers' Workshop, an affiliated artist at Clubbed Thumb, and an alum of New Dramatists.
Learn moreSymara Sarai, a Portland, OR native currently residing in Brooklyn, NY, has immersed herself globally in interdisciplinary and choreographic studies with deep recognition. Named Dance Magazines’ 2025 “Top 25 to Watch,” a 2023 Bessie Winner for Breakout Choreographer, and a recipient of the Dai Ailian Foundation Scholarship based in Trinidad and Tobago, she is known to be a courageously committed performer and maker. The New York Times stated, “Sarai is a daring solo improviser, and her uninhibited spirit infuses.” Sarai is a 2019 graduate of the Conservatory of Dance at Purchase College, State University of New York. She was most recently a MoMA PS1 Greater New York Artist and was commissioned in 2025 by Danspace Project and BOFFO. Between 2024 and 2026, they were a Movement Research Artist-in-Residence and an Abrons Arts Center Performance AIRspace Resident. She participated in Live Artery Festival 2025, Triple Canopy Symposium 2025, and more. Their work as a performer and maker has been reviewed and featured in prominent publications such as The New York Times and Brooklyn Rail. She has most notably danced with Urban Bush Women, Joanna Kotze, and Ogemdi Ude, among others.
Learn moreSynth Library Portland is a collectively run arts organization that supports a diverse community of artists, centering access for marginalized folks to experiment, learn, and participate. We are an audiovisual art laboratory that provides Portlanders with access to a myriad of production tools and equipment, as well as practical workshops hosted by local and visiting artists. After having to close our physical space and suspend in-person programming due to Covid-19, we adapted to host remote workshops, launched our take-home gear lending program in 2021 and resumed in-person workshops a year later. We are committed to generating equity, opportunity, and freedom to explore and create in our artistic communities.
http://synthlibraryportland.com
Aaron Guice - artist in residence of Synth Library Portland (2023)
Yaw Evans - artist in residence of Synth Library Portland (2023)
Learn moreJacob Ciocci is an artist; a current Eyebeam Fellow; one third of the American art collective Paper Rad; and a prolific producer of music, installations, websites, and animations. David Wightman is completing a PhD in Music Composition at UC San Diego where he is a Lecturer of Pop Music Studies. Some of his many musical projects include Fortress of Amplitude, Powdered Wigs, and Chariots of Fire. Together, Jacob and David connect like Voltron in the high-NRG electronic music band Extreme Animals. They have toured the country every summer for the past 8 years presenting their music, videos, and art.
Selected Press
Eleven Evocations (For Paper Rad), Ed Halter, Rhizome, September 2, 2009.
Learn moreThe Suicide Kings are a spoken word power-house comprised of Geoff Trenchard, Jamie DeWolf, and Rupert Estanislao. Collectively, they are known for their explosive live performances combining gritty punk rock theatrics, a cappella hip-hop and vaudeville comedy. The Kings also facilitate workshops and host slams for the inmates in San Quentin Penitentiary and create feature length performances with at-risk youth. Their work has been featured on two seasons of Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, UPN, 60 Minutes and radio stations from the Midwest to the Phillipines.
Learn moreTim Smith-Stewart is a queer interdisciplinary artist based in Seattle who uses text as his primary medium for creating installations, performances and zines. For the past seven years, Tim has primarily been creating work in collaboration with artist/electrical engineer Jeffrey Azevedo. They are currently developing Salvage Rituals: a dance set on six piezoelectric tiles to premiere in the fall of 2019. Visual and durational iterations will be presented at various locations including Seattle University in the fall of 2018.
Most recently they 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.
Selections of Awaiting Oblivion... have been presented at: On The Boards NW New Works festival (SEA), Risk/Reward Festival (PDX), Velocity Dance Center (SEA) 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 2010-2013 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 NW New Works Festival 2013 (Ω<1),and Lofi Arts Festival 2013 (Less than red, more than violet).
Learn moreTim 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).
Learn moreHalf Straddle is an Obie-winning, Brooklyn-based ensemble of performers and designers that makes plays, performances, videos, and music led by Artistic Director Tina Satter. This critically acclaimed company began in 2008, and has toured its shows to cities throughout U.S., Europe, and Asia.
Tina Satter is an American writer, director, and Artistic Director of the Brooklyn-based, Obie-winning theater company Half Straddle. She is a recipient of a 2016 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award; a 2014 Doris Duke Impact Award, and was named an Off-Off Broadway Innovator to Watch by Time Out New York. She has written and directed 9 full-length shows and a number of smaller performance and video pieces with Half Straddle that have premiered in New York City. Tina’s work has been presented at theaters and festivals in Europe, Asia, Australia, and other U.S. cities. Tina has had residencies at Yaddo, Headlands Center for the Arts, LMCC, The Performing Garage, Kitchen L.A.B., MASS MoCA, and New Museum for Contemporary Art. She’s been a visiting artist at Princeton University, Carnegie Mellon University, New York University, Sarah Lawrence College, Reed College, and Fordham University—and a visiting playwriting professor at the University of Michigan. Drawing on her recent teaching work, Tina has been developing and leading generative writing and directing workshops to participants from a range of backgrounds and experience. Tina attended Mac Wellman’s graduate playwriting program at Brooklyn College and received an M.A. from Reed College and a B.A. from Bowdoin College. Her first collection of plays, Seagull (Thinking of you), was published by 53rd State Press in 2014.
Learn moreTravis Stewart is a contemporary Northwest artist of Chinook, Rogue River, and Kalapuya descent. He lives in Grand Ronde, Oregon, and works in a variety of mediums to depict stories defined by the cultural landscape and design of the Willamette Valley and Columbia River people. He also works as a curator at Chachalu Museum and Cultural Center (Grand Ronde, OR) and has devoted his life to the preservation of the art and culture of the tribes of Western Oregon. Travis is a founding member of the Shawash Ili?i Kanim Tilixam, which is a nonprofit cultural preservation group and canoe family that works to impart traditional teachings to at-risk tribal youth through song, dance, language, and art.
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.
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