Artists Archive
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Allison Akootchook Warden is an Iñupiaq futurism artist that resides in Fairbanks, Alaska, and is a tribal member of the Native Village of Kaktovik. She translates her traditional values through the mediums of installation, music, performance, visual art, poetry, and dance. Her most recent contribution took form as poems as a part of a hyphen-labs project for Google Arts and Cultures. She is the recipient of a 2019 United States Artists Fellowship in the field of traditional arts. She is most excited to work with Aqqalu Berthelsen, an Inuit producer and beat maker from Greenland.
Learn moreGray and Paulsen are artists who live and work collaboratively. Their idea-based practice fuses history, fiction, autobiography, and artistic commentary into a wide variety of material works. Their work has been shown and published internationally. They live and work in Portland, where they are represented by PDX Contemporary Art.
Selected Press
Anna Gray & Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Nat Andreini, Shift.jp, June, 2011.
Review: Anna Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen at PDX Gallery, DK Row, The Oregonian, July 15, 2010.
Learn moreAnna Martine Whitehead does performance from the homelands of the Council of the Three Fires; the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi Nations; as well as the Miami, Ho-Chunk, Sauk and Meskwaki; the Kiikaapoi, Peoria, and the Očeti Šakówiŋ (Sioux) Nations. Their solo and collaborative work has been presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL; REDCAT, Los Angeles; Chicago Symphony Orchestra, IL; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San José Museum of Art, CA; Links Hall, Chicago; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. She has developed her craft working closely with Onye Ozuzu, Jefferson Pinder, taisha paggett, Every house has a door, Keith Hennessy, BodyCartography Project, Julien Prévieux, and the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project, among others. She has been recognized with awards and fellowships from the New England Foundation for the Arts, National Performance Network, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, MAP Fund, Dance/USA, PICA’S Creative Exchange Lab, Arts + Public Life at the University of Chicago, 3AP (3Arts Projects), Chicago Dancemakers Forum, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Whitehead has written about Blackness, queerness, and bodies in action for Art21 Magazine, C Magazine, Frieze, and Art Practical. They have also contributed chapters to a range of publications, including Queer Dance: Meanings and Makings (Oxford University Press, 2017), Organize Your Own: The Politics and Poetics of Self-Determination Movements (Sobsercove, 2016), and Platforms: Ten Years of Chances Dances (Gallery 400, 2016). Whitehead is the author of TREASURE | My Black Rupture (Thread Makes Blanket, 2016).
Learn moreClaude Wampler works at the intersection of art installation and performance; engages and experiments with liveness and the art object, concealment and revelation, the performance of the spectator, and the productivity of failure.
Using video, painting, photography, lighting, sound, sculpture, costume, and texts, to explore the possibilities and the value of grafting performance technique onto visual expression and vice versa, Wampler creates an experience of immediacy/excess in which the viewer leaves with a sense of mystery or magic.
Claude has had solo exhibitions and performances at The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Kitchen, New Museum for Contemporary Art, and P.S. 122 (New York); The Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), The Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and in many international institutions including the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Witte de With & Schouwburg Theater (Rotterdam), the Yokohama Triennale, Kaaistudios (Brussels), and many others.
Learn moreYou seen her on BET comic view, and also she was a finalist in funny is Mom’s in America. She has been in the business over 30 years and has open for all the fellow comedians such as Jamie Foxx,Sinbad, And recently perform at the Northwest black comedy festival with Marsha Warfield that is just a few. She believes laughter is a healer and is known as comedy nurse because she knows the power of laughter, she is the diva Comedy Debbie Wooten.
Learn moreHolcombe Waller is one of America’s most distinct voices in music theater. He is a 2011 United States Artists Berresford Fellow in Music, an award which noted his mournful, folk-inflected style, and his approach to music “as total theater.” He is a Creative Capital artist, a recipient of the MAP Fund Award, and a 2013 Joan Shipley Fellow of the Regional Arts and Culture Council. Waller has been presented and commissioned by numerous theaters, arts institutions, and festivals. Holcombe Waller "Hardliners" Music Video from Two Penguins on Vimeo.
Learn moreJennifer West was born in Topanga, California and lives and works in Los Angeles. Significant commissions and special projects include High Line Art, New York (2012), 5th Biennial of the Moving Image, Mechelen, Belgium (2011); The Aspen Art Museum (2010); the Turbine hall at TATE Modern (2009) and she was Artist in Residence at the MIT List Visual Arts Center in 2011. Solo exhibitions include Focal Point Gallery, Essex, England and Vdrome.org (2014); High Line Art, NY and S1 Artspace, Sheffield, England (2012); Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; Western Bridge, Seattle and Kunstverein Nuremberg, Nuremberg, Germany (2010); Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland (2008); White Columns, NY (2007). West has been included in numerous exhibitions internationally including Nottingham Contemporary, England; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Kunstlerhaus Graz, Austria; Henry Moore Foundation, Leeds, UK; Saatchi Gallery, London; White Columns, New York; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Drawing Center, New York; Leubsdorf Gallery, Hunter College, New York; Tel Aviv Museum of Art ; CAPC Musee d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux, France; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; ZKM Museum for New Media, Karlsruhe, Germany and Tate St. Ives, England. West has published 12 Zines that she gives away at her exhibitions. West was shortlisted for the 2012 3rd Annual Nam June Paik Center Award in Korea. She is an Asst. Professor of Fine Arts Practice at USC’s Roski School of Art and Design, Los Angeles.
Learn moreKnowledge of Wounds is the collaborative curatorial practice of S.J Norman (Wiradjuri) and Joseph M. Pierce (Cherokee Nation). Since its first iteration in Lenapehoking/NYC in 2020, and currently operational as a hybrid live/digital program, KoW is continually evolving in its mission to foreground the work of Indigenous creators and knowledge workers across hemispheres and disciplines. www.knowledgeofwounds.com / IG: @knowledgeofwounds
Chloe Alexandra Thompson is a Cree sound artist approaching sound as a mode of connection. Her work engages tactics of material minimalism to create site-specific installations that sculpt droning, maximalist experiences out of space and sound.
DB Amorin (b. Honolulu, Hawai'i) is an artist addressing audio-visual non-linearity as a container for intersectional experience, often focusing on the role error plays as a generative opportunity. His media-centered installations are the result of DIY methodologies, lo-fi translations, and persistent, inquisitive experimentation of available materials.
Learn moreFounded in 2012 by Libby Werbel, Portland Museum of Modern Art (PMOMA) is an investigative project focused on the lack of major contemporary and modern art institutions within a growing metropolis. PMOMA has produced more than 50 exhibitions and events within the context of a self-actualized and community-grown modern art museum.
Learn moreAU is the work of multi-instrumentalist Luke Wyland. Begun back in 2005 while finishing up his degree from the Massachussetts College of Art, Wyland moved the band across the country to find its roots in the thriving community of Portland, Oregon. It’s now a working live band with an ever changing roster of players that currently includes Dana Valatka (Jackie-O-Motherfucker) on drums, Jonathan Sielaff (Parenthetical Girls, Nick Jaina) on guitar, clarinets and saw, and has been blessed by the help of Mark Kaylor (Hamor of Hathor, CexFucx), Becky Dawson (Saw Whet, Ah Holly Fam'ly) and Sarah Winchester (A Weather) on its recordings.
Au’s sound is vast and “deftly treads a narrow bridge between the loose-associations of the backwoods freak-folk crowd and the more formalized concoctions of art-poppers like Brian Eno.” Both on record and on stage Au “manages to erase the high art/low art boundary between American contemporary classical music and American pop music, blending them into a simple, compelling, verse-chorus celebration…[and] is the rare band that can reinvent its songs live and still manage to match their recorded quality.”
Learn moreMeg Whiteford writes books and makes theater. Her writing on visual art and performance has appeared in Artforum, Aperture, and X-TRA. She is the author of The Shapes We Make With Our Bodies (Plays Inverse, 2015), the Curator's Choice for the 2017 BAM Next Wave Festival Reading Room, and Callbacks (&Now and Northwestern U. Press, 2018), recipient of the 2016 Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writers Prize. She has performed at Pieter, PAM, REDCAT, Machine Project, Coaxial, and Project Utopia. She is currently the managing editor of the Art Book Review and teaches dance and performance theory and history. Her ballet, Overture, a response to the drawings of artist Beau Rhee, will be published with Gravel Projects this fall. She is interested in creating wild rides.
Learn moreWolfe’s work has been presented at venues including REDCAT, Live Arts Exchange Festival, FRESH Festival, the New Original Works Festival, Off Center Festival/Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project at St. Mark’s, Dia Center for the Arts, The Kitchen, The Living Theater, and Movement Research at Judson Church. She has performed in the works of Vicky Shick, Jérôme Bel, Molissa Fenley, Clarinda Mac Low, and Susan Rethorst. Wolfe has had residencies at REDCAT, Performance Works NorthWest, the Djerassi Resident Artist’s Program, and the Hothouse Residency program at UCLA, among others. She is the founder and director of Show Box L.A., and was a founding co-editor of itch dance journal.
Learn moreRobbie Wing is a sound artist and musician from Tulsa, OK. He is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation. His practice focuses on acoustic geographies, ecological sound art, installation, and composition. He is a multi-instrumentalist, field recordist & researcher. He has an undergraduate degree in Environmental Sustainability and a master's degree in Urban Design from the University of Oklahoma.
Learn moreRoland Dahwen Wu is a filmmaker whose work explores migration, race and memory. His films and installations have been shown at CalArts, Portland Art Museum, Time Based Art Festival, Northwest Film Center, and numerous galleries. His films span nonfiction, experimental, and narrative genres, and are commonly marked by poetry: from his first documentary about the whistling language of the Canary Islands (There are no birds in the nests of yesterday) to his recent short film about 20th century Asian migration (Haft-Seen).
Learn moreThe son of folk singers Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle, Rufus Wainwright has achieved success by carving out his own singular sound in the worlds of rock, opera, theater, dance and film. He has released seven albums and three DVDs, as well as collaborating with artists including Elton John, David Byrne, and Burt Bacharach. Wainwright was nominated for a Grammy for the live recording from his Judy Garland tribute concert, Rufus Does Judy At Carnegie Hall. His opera, Prima Donna, premiered at the 2009 Manchester International Festival, and has been presented as part of Toronto's Luminato Festival and at London’s Sadler’s Wells.
Selected Press
A flair for the popular, Andrew Clark, Financial Times, July 13, 2009.
How We Met: Janis Kelly & Rufus Wainwright, Rhiannon Harries, The Independent, March 21, 2010.
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 moreTashi Wada is a composer and performer based in San Francisco. His recent work focuses on various aspects of sound perception as a basis for direct processes of listening. Wada’s work has been performed throughout the United States and Europe in a variety of venues, and for several years now he has performed alongside his father, Yoshi Wada.
Learn moreThe Wooster Group is an ensemble of artists who make new work for the theatre, dance and media. The Group has created over 40 pieces since its first in 1976.
Elizabeth LeCompte, a founding member of The Wooster Group, has directed all of the company's works. Her honors and awards include a NEA Distinguished Artists Fellowship for Lifetime Achievement in American Theater, a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a US Artists Fellowship and a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Selected Press
Two Experimentalists Under One Roof, Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times, March 26, 2010.
Learn moreTyler Wallace is a Portland-based artist working in video, installation, and performance to investigate concepts of identity and personal history. Nicole Dill is a Portland-based artist whose work interrogates the function of celebrity culture in contemporary society through photography, performance, audio, sculpture, and installation. Both Wallace and Dill recently defended their theses at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, and received their BFAs in May 2009.
"Between Us," Leah Bobal, PNCA UNTITLED.
Learn moreWeekend Leisure was founded in Vancouver, BC, in 2004 by graduates of Emily Carr Institute's Integrated Media program, to satisfy their mutual love of karaoke videos. Bridging their backgrounds in video and installation work with their involvement in design, music, and the art collective Norma, the group’s repertoire has expanded to include video art, short films, original music, and music videos, while critically analyzing the power each medium has over its audience. Their activities range from gallery exhibitions to weekly karaoke nights in Vancouver, BC.
Learn moreWeird 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 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 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 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 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)
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