Artists Archive
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Isabella Saavedra lives and works in Portland, OR. She originally hails from rural Northern California. Saavedra received her BS in Studio Art from Southern Oregon University in 2020 and began her MFA in Visual Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Fall 2025. Saavedra received a 2024 Career Opportunity Grant from Oregon Arts Commission, as well as consecutive Arts3C Grants from Regional Arts and Culture Council in 2023 and 2024. She has attended residencies at ATNSC: Center for Healing & Creative Leadership in Cleveland, OH, and p:ear in Portland, OR. Her exhibition record includes the Newport Visual Arts Center and Portland Center Stage. Most recently, she completed Understory, a permanent large-scale public art installation commissioned by the City of Portland’s Percent for Art in Public Places Program at the Mt. Scott Community Center.
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 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 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 moreSahar al-Sawaf (she/her) is an Iraqi-American filmmaker, visual artist, and photographer based in Oregon. Born in Saudi Arabia and raised in Lebanon and Iraq, she fled to California just before the Gulf War. Her work explores war, displacement, and fragmented family memory shaped by her experiences in Iraq and the United States. Her short films “Uncle Ma’an,” “Um Abdullah,” and “Shadow of Paradise” have screened internationally, including at DOC NYC, Chicago International Film Festival, and Animafest Zagreb. She was a Creative Culture Fellow at the Jacob Burns Film Center in New York, NY, and a NYSCA/NYFA Fellow in Video/Film. Most recently, she completed a photogravure intensive at Mullowney Printing, supported by a Regional Arts Cultural Council grant. Her photo-performance work is featured in the 2026 Artists’ Biennial, The Price of the Ticket, at Oregon Contemporary.
Learn moreSarah AbuAbdallah lives and works in Qatif, Saudi Arabia and studied art in both Rhode Island School of Design for a Masters in Digital Media, and in the College of Art and Design in University of Sharjah. She is currently an artist and puzzlemaker. Working with video, installation, poetry and images. Shown work in Sharjah Biennial 11, Serpentine Galleries Marathons, Fluidity in Kunstverein in Hamburg, Co-Workers in Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Do it Arabic, Prospectif Cinéma/Filter Bubble in Centre Pompidou and Luma Foundation, Private Settings in Warsaw Museum of Modern Art; Arab Contemporary in Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Rhizoma in the 55th Venice Biennale, amongst others
She is the recipient of Sharjah Art Foundation’s production programme grant (2016) in collaboration with Josh Bitelli for their project To Gaze at Ten Suns Shining and is a shortlisted artist for Abraaj Group Art Prize 2017.
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