Artists Archive
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a canary torsi is a Bessie-award-winning, interdisciplinary group of artists formed by Puerto Rican artist and choreographer Yanira Castro. a canary torsi’s work examines the encounter between spectator and event, developing scenarios where the audience’s presence dramatically impacts the work. We investigate what brings us together, the nature of the space we inhabit, and how every aspect of our convergence is loaded with cultural, social, historical, and personal dynamics that influence how we form meaning and how power is structured. We develop indeterminate performative systems that catalyze—in performance—spontaneous structures, patterns, and instructions. We do this to complicate authorship, ensure multiplicity, and to form the work together in real-time. This way of working is for us a conscious de-centered politic. a canary torsi persists in the idea that live performance is uneasy communal action.
Learn moreAlex Cecchetti is an artist based in Paris, France, who works primarily in writing and performance. Cecchetti has published several books of his writing, and performed internationally at places including: La Vatrine, Paris, France (2010); Art Pavillion, Zagreb, Croatia (2010); Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, France (2009); and Artists Space, New York, NY (2009). Cecchetti was an artist in residence at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2006) and SMART Project Space, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2003).
Learn moreAli Chahrour (Beirut, Lebanon) is a choreographer, dancer, and graduate of the theatre department at The Lebanese University. Influenced by techniques from several European countries, he studies contemporary dance in the Arab world and movement that is related to society’s memory and its local circumstances that contribute to creating an identity for contemporary dance, whose techniques and problematics are inspired by its surroundings and history. His work examines the relationship between dancing and the body, and the religion and the sacred, relying on the Islamic and Shiite religious rituals and practices in the Arab world.
Learn moreAnna Craycroft’s exhibitions explore how we use culture to define individuality. Craycroft’s solo shows have been held at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art Portland, Oregon, the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin Texas, Tracy Williams Ltd in NYC, Le Case del Arte in Milan Italy. She has collaborated on performances and installations with numerous artists including Ohad Meromi, Ian Cooper, Felicia Ballos and Alex Waterman. Within some her solo exhibitions, Craycroft has organized event series, inviting artists such as Jill Magid, Pablo Bronstein, Tara Matiek, Jessica Dickenson, and Lisi Raskin to share their work. Craycroft has also had two person shows at Sandroni Rey in Los Angeles and upcoming at Redcat Gallery in Los Angeles. She participated in notable group exhibitions such as PS1’sGreater New York in 2005, Public Holiday Project’s Bunch Alliance and Dissolve at Cincinatti’s Contemporary Arts Center and in Champs Elysees at Palais de Tokyo Paris, France. She has been commissioned to make public sculpture for Socrates Sculpture Park NYC, Lower Manhattan Cultural Center NYC, Art in General NYC and Den Haag Sculptuur, the Hague Netherlands. Craycroft received her MFA from Columbia University School of Arts in 2004. Craycroft is represented by Tracy Williams Ltd Gallery in New York.
Selected Press
"Anna Craycroft: On Being Understood," MutualArt.com, August 21, 2013.
Learn moreAnthony Hudson is a Grand Ronde/Siletz artist and writer also known as Carla Rossi, Portland's premier drag clown. Hudson’s performance work—from his award-winning solo show Looking for Tiger Lily to Queer Horror at the Hollywood Theatre—have earned him national fellowships, international engagements including the US Pavilion’s drag clown in residence at the 2024 Venice Biennale, features in Hyperallergic and Art in America, and sainthood from the Portland Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. A 2023 FSG Writer’s Fellowship finalist and 2024 Tin House resident, Hudson’s writing has appeared in American Theatre, BOMB Magazine, and Arts and International Affairs. Hudson is currently adapting Looking for Tiger Lily into a book.
Learn moreCatala's practice, aside from making video, includes performance-based works and curating as a medium. A New York-based French artist, Catala holds a BA in mathematics and was schooled in sonic and fine arts at Middlesex and London Guildhall Universities in London. His work has been exhibited internationally at le Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Galerie Christine Mayer (Munich); GAM (Mexico); The Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh); and numerous venues in Bordeaux, Berlin, London, Los Angeles, Mexico, New York, Munich, Paris, Toulouse, and Saint-Etienne.
Learn moreAutumn Chacon (Diné / Chicana) is an artist and activist whose organizing work in media justice has led to the inception of three FCC-licensed community radio stations; while her work as an activist has led to meetings with the largest banks of the world in a successful effort to divest $3.8 billion from the Dakota Access Pipeline. Her work as a conceptual, installation, and performance artist has been shown among First Nations communities throughout North America and abroad. Many of Chacon’s pieces reveal Indigenous futurisms where technology has a sacred relevance, and exemplify her skills as a self-taught electronic engineer.
Learn moreBeth Campbell is a New York interdisciplinary artist, exploring the self-conscious positioning in one’s identity and surroundings. She shows with Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in New York and has had previous solo shows at Roebling Hall (NY), Sandroni Rey Gallery (LA) and Sala Diaz (TX). Campbell has participated in various museum shows including And Therefore I am at the Tang Museum in 2006, Open House at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 2004, Hello My Name Is... at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh in 2002, and Greater New York at PS1 Contemporary Art Center in 2000. She has work included in the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the New Museum’s Altoids Curiously Strong Collection. Campbell’s art reviews have appeared in various publications including the New York Times, LA Times, Village Voice, Art on Paper, Sculpture Magazine, Art in America and Art Index.
Learn moreBlues Control is Lea Cho and Russ Waterhouse, a shape-shifting pair of musicians who channel Debussy via Guaraldi qua Bley qua Hornsby pianisms, alongside the playful juxtapositions of a full spectrum of rock colors: stadium, industrial, psych and prog (to name just a few). Their music spans spacey guitar leads, clarion synth, and the punch of real drums, only to suddenly veer into world music and mellow drug-mospheres, blending exotic and classical, Western and Eastern, and the widest spectrum of sounds available. Their latest album, Valley Tangents, was released in 2012.
Selected Press
"Blues Control: Interview," John Crowell, Tiny Mix Tapes, June 2012.
Learn moreBoyzie Cekwana (Durban, South Africa) is a performing artist and choreographer. Along with some of his continental peers, he is part of an artistic noise for developing a voice for contemporary dance practice and scholarship in Southern Africa. Together with Desiré Davids, he founded The Floating Outfit Project in 1996, where he remains Artistic Director, Choreographer and performer. He works across disciplines and his work has been shown across various platforms around the world. He is part of the on-going African guerrilla thought-factory, developing and shaping ideas for artistic self-expression in the Southern African region.
Learn moreCondon’s work is notable for its influence on the repurposing of existing computer and live games to create sculpture, performance, and software installations. Examples include Youth of the Apocalypse, a series of self-playing game modifications based on Late Medieval Northern European religious paintings, and the recent Twentyfivefold Manifestation, a ritualistic performative event with 80 players from the live action role-playing subculture held at the Sonsbeek 2008 International Public Sculpture Exhibition.
Condon was born in Mexico and received his MFA from the University of California, San Diego in 2002. He attended residencies at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in 2004 and Skowhegan 2001. Past exhibitions include 2004 Whitney Biennial, Pace Wildenstein Gallery and New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York; the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Santa Monica Museum of Art and Machine Project in California; the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh; Kunst-werke in Berlin; and the Stedelijk Museum Post CS in the Netherlands.
Learn moreDr. Brook Colley (Wasco, Warm Springs, Eastern Cherokee; Enrolled: Eastern Band of Cherokee) is an associate professor and chair of the Native American Studies program at Southern Oregon University. Colley’s research is focused on federal Indian law and policy, Oregon Tribes, intertribal relations and conflict, and community health and healing. Her book Power in the Telling: Grand Ronde, Warm Springs, and Intertribal Relations in the Casino Era was published in 2019 by the University of Washington Press and it was a finalist for the Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction. In 2014, she received her PhD in Native American Studies from the University of California, Davis, and is currently working on an intertribal Indigenous-led collaboration to enhance first food access and first food production in Southern Oregon. She lives in Jackson County with her daughter and two pups named Honey and Leonard Cohen.
Learn moreBruce Conkle is an American installation artist based in Portland, Oregon. He is noted for his ecological and dystopian fantasy themes. His work is in the collection of the Portland Art Museum and has shown at Nylistasafnio The Living Art Museum in Iceland and A Gentil Carioca in Brazil.
Learn moreCameron Clayborn (b. 1992, Pine Bluff, AR) is a multidisciplinary artist working in sculpture, drawing and performance. Clayborn’s practice is deeply informed by their personal experiences, with much of their work addressing themes of heritage, fragility of memory, grief, and healing.
Clayborn earned their BFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and their MFA from the Yale School of Art. Clayborn’s work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA); Woonhuis (Amsterdam, NL); Gallery 400, University of Illinois Chicago (Chicago, IL); Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin, DE); Simone Subal Gallery (New York, NY); Morán Morán (Los Angeles, CA); Chapter NY (New York, NY); Emalin (London, UK); and TONE (Memphis, TN), among others.
Their work is in the permanent collections of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, (Los Angeles, CA); Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin, DE); and Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (Detroit, MI).
Learn moreCandace Avalos is a first-generation American “Blacktina”, daughter of Black Americans from the south and Guatemalan immigrants. Mi nombre en español es Candis Ávalos. Originally from Virginia, she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Modern Foreign Languages, with a focus on Spanish and Italian, and Master of Education degree in College Student Personnel Administration from James Madison University. Prior to her current career as a nonprofit executive leader, she started her career as an educator and worked at Portland State University for 8 years providing civic engagement education and advising support for student leaders. She lives in East Portland and is an active member of her community, previously serving as chair of the Citizen Review Committee and Charter Review Commission for the City of Portland, as well as currently on the boards of the Coalition of Communities of Color and Street Roots. Her hobbies include perfecting her Guatemalan recipes, reading social justice literature, playing kickball in her fast pitch league, and exploring Portland's parks.
Learn moreCandace Kita is an enthusiastic arts and cultural worker committed to connecting people of color with creative opportunities. Born in Chicago to Japanese American and Swedish American parents, she has been an artist and arts enthusiast for as long as she can remember. Her multifaceted artistic practice has spanned illustration, sculpture, graphic design, typography, book arts, writing, and performance.
Weaving her creative background with her experiences in social justice organizing and nonprofit administration, Candace currently manages cultural work and strategy at the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO). Previously, she co-founded grassroots collective Arts Workers for Equity, worked in development, marketing, and programs for the Portland Art Museum and Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre, and served as Visual Art Curator for Asian American art and community space Tuesday Night Project. She has participated in multiple initiatives to empower arts professionals of color including the Western States Arts Federation’s Emerging Leaders of Color Fellowship and the Getty Multicultural Internship Program. Candace received her BA in Studio Art from Scripps College and was recently featured as one of Scripps College Magazine’s “30 Alumnæ Under 30.”
In her spare time, Candace co-manages a blog called Asians Doing Everything and reads voraciously. She is a lover of words, cities, and onigiri.
Learn moreCannupa Hanska Luger is a New Mexico-based, multi-disciplinary artist. Raised on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, he is of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota, Austrian, and Norwegian descent. Using social collaboration, and in response to timely and site-specific issues, Luger produces multi-pronged projects that take many forms. Through monumental installations that incorporate ceramics, video, sound, fiber, steel, and cut-paper, Luger interweaves performance and political action to communicate stories about twenty-first century Indigeneity. This work provokes diverse publics to engage with Indigenous peoples and values apart from the lens of colonial social structuring, and oftentimes presents a call to action to protect land from capitalist exploits.
cannupahanska.com
@cannupahanska
Learn moreCarissa Dez: Dedicated advocate for social justice and policing reform. With a background in investigative journalism and involvement in community organizing, Carissa would like to promote accountability, equity, and transparency in law enforcement practices. As a panelist, Carissa brings a wealth of experience and insights to the discussion, aiming to drive positive change and foster safer, more equitable communities for all.
Website: https://carissadez.com/
Learn moreCarlos Gonzalez, 22, is a self-taught performance artist. Gonzalez was born in Portland, OR, and graduated from the Pacific Northwest College of Art(PNCA) in 2010 with a BFA in Painting. He has performed in local project spaces including Appendix Project Space, Carhole, and Kitchen Sink.
Learn moreCarlos Motta | Photo by Cory Rice
Carlos Motta’s (b. 1978, Colombia) multi-disciplinary art practice documents the social conditions and political struggles of sexual, gender, and ethnic minority communities in order to challenge dominant and normative discourses through visibility and self-representation. His work manifests in a variety of mediums including video, installation, sculpture, drawing, web-based projects, performance, and symposia.
Motta's work was the subject of the survey exhibitions Carlos Motta: Formas de libertad at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín (MAMM), Colombia (2017) that traveled to Matucana 100, Santiago, Chile (2018); and Carlos Motta: For Democracy There Must Be Love, Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden (2015). His solo exhibitions at international museums include, The Crossing (2017), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Histories for the Future (2016), Pérez Art Museum (PAMM), Miami; Réquiem (2016), Museo de Arte Latinoamericano the Buenos Aires (MALBA) (2016); Patriots, Citizens, Lovers (2015), PinchukArtCentre, Kiev; Gender Talents (2013), Tate Modern, London; La forma de la libertad (2013), Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, Mexico; We Who Feel Differently (2012), New Museum, New York; Brief History (2009), MoMA/PS1, New York; and The Good Life (2008), Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Philadelphia; among others.
In 2020, Motta will participate in the 11th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art and the Yerevan Biennial, and he will have solo exhibitions at Mary Porter Sesnon Gallery—University of California Santa Cruz, and at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA).
Carlos Motta’s first 20-year career monograph, Carlos Motta: History’s Back Rooms was published by SKIRA in June 2020. He won the Vilcek Foundation’s Prize for Creative Promise (2017); the PinchukArtCentre’s Future Generation Art Prize (2014); and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2008).
Motta received grants from Art Matters (2008), NYSCA (2010), Creative Capital, and the Kindle Project (2012).He was appointed tenure-track Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Practice at Pratt Institute’s Fine Arts Department in 2019.
Learn moreCarlota Ribas, a native of Barcelona, Spain, manages the Client Services group at VIA, a global company focused on facilitating communication across boundaries of language, comprehension, and culture, by delivering services such as eLearning, translation, and localization. Carlota holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in translation, localization and cross-cultural studies and is interested in hybrid solutions of human and automated translation to help meet the ever growing localization needs of the global markets.
Learn moreCarol Hepper is an award-winning sculptor who lives and works in New York. Her work evokes the landscape, wildlife, and indigenous people of the Great Plains. Her prints and sculptures have been exhibited extensively throughout the US and are included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim, the Walker Art Center, the New York Public Library, the Orlando Museum of Art, the Detroit Art Institute, and the Portland Art Museum. She currently (as of late 1996) has a piece on view in the Sculpture Garden of the White House in Washington, D.C. Carol's sculptures often incorporate animal hides and skins stretched over a built structure or form.
Learn moreConsidered one of the most influential contemporary American artists, Carrie Mae Weems has investigated family relationships, cultural identity, sexism, class, political systems, and the consequences of power. Determined as ever to enter the picture—both literally and metaphorically—Weems has sustained an on-going dialogue within contemporary discourse for over thirty years. During this time, Carrie Mae Weems has developed a complex body of art employing photographs, text, fabric, audio, digital images, installation, and video.
In a New York Times review of her retrospective, Holland Cotter wrote, “Ms. Weems is what she has always been, a superb image maker and a moral force, focused and irrepressible."
Weems has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions at major national and international museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Frist Center for Visual Art, Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Seville, Spain.
Weems has received numerous awards, grants, and fellowships, including the prestigious Prix de Roma, The National Endowment of the Arts, The Alpert, The Anonymous was a Woman, and The Tiffany Awards. In 2012, Weems was presented with one of the first US Department of State’s Medals of Arts in recognition for her commitment to the State Department’s Art in Embassies program.
In 2013 Weems received the MacArthur “Genius” grant as well as the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award. She has also received the BET Honors Visual Artist award, the Lucie Award for Fine Art photography, was one of four artists honored at the Guggenheim’s 2014 International Gala, a recipient of the ICP Spotlights Award from the International Center of Photography, The WEB Dubois Award from Harvard University, as well as Honorary Degrees from: California College of the Arts, Colgate University, Bowdoin College, the School of Visual Arts and Syracuse University.
She is represented in public and private collections around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museum of Modern Art, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and The Tate Modern, London.
Weems has been represented by Jack Shainman Gallery since 2008, and is currently Artist in Residence at the Park Avenue Armory. She lives in Syracuse, New York, with her husband Jeffrey Hoone who is Executive Director of Light Work.
Learn moreCartune Xprez is a video label / roadshow / cartoon gang. We organize DVDs, exhibitions, and world tours with the work of many artists and performers. CARTUNE XPREZ 2010 dvd from cartune xprez on Vimeo.
Learn moreCatherine Ming T'ien Duffly is an Assistant Professor in the Theatre Department at Reed College where she teaches courses on race and identity in American theatre, performance studies, and community-based performance, in addition to courses in acting and directing. Kate’s written work has appeared Theatre Journal and Theatre Annual. She is currently researching the use of food in socially engaged performance practices.
Learn moreMickey Pollizatto and Daniel Bidwell (aka DannyDamage & MikkiSpin) are the brawn and brains behind caught in candy, an electro pop duo from Portland, OR. Frequent performers with Breakfast of Champions, Sparkleheart’s Burley-Q Underground, Pho Bang, and Sissyboy, caught in candy use alter-egos and create gender bending characters to perform their music. Their most popular characters are Cabiria Jones & Maximillian Hertzalot, two retro 40’s electro-cabaret performers saturated with drugs, greed and controversy.
Learn moreC Davida Ingram is an award-winning artist who is passionate about beauty and social justice. Her primary subjects are race, gender, and social relationships. Ingram’s impulse is to imagine tactics to get free—not further prescribing Otherness. With this in mind, she uses unorthodox mediums—Craigslist ads, hypnosis, drones, cell phone videos among other things to reshape what is possible in her own identification with being a black queer woman. Her art has been shown at the Frye Art Museum, Northwest African American Museum, Evergreen College, Bridge Productions, Intiman Theater, Town Hall and more. Her writings have been included in Monday, Arcade, Ms blog, James Franco Review and The Stranger. Ingram received the 2014 Stranger Genius Award in Visual Arts. She is a 2016 Neddy art award finalist. She is a former 2016 Kennedy Center Citizen Artist fellow and was recently voted both one of the “20 most talented and most influential people in Seattle” by Seattle Magazine. She is recent Jacob Lawrence fellow at the University of Washington and the winner of the Museum of Northwest Luminary Award in Innovative media.
Learn moreCeleste Camfield is a mixed Muscogee artist living on the settled land of the Nʉmʉnʉʉ Sookobitʉ (Comanche), Ndé Kónitsąąíí Gokíyaa (Lipan Apache), Coahuiltecan, Tonkawa, and Jumanos peoples, currently known as Austin, TX. She works in the mediums of movement, film, and food. She grew up dancing in Texas Hill Country and studied dance at Marymount Manhattan College. Celeste has studied modern dance in Vicenza, Barcelona, Prague, and at ImPulsTanz in Vienna, and was a participant in P.A.R.T.S. (Performing Arts Research and Training Studios) in Brussels, under the direction of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. She is a member of ARCOS and has performed with the company since 2019. Celeste has also performed original works with BLiPSWiTCH and Alexa Capareda. She has been creating and performing in experimental dance films since 2019, with screenings in Austin, Camden, Los Angeles, Ann Arbor, and Portland. In 2022, Celeste co-founded Preheat Fest, a film festival that celebrates the experimental on camera.
Learn moreChanticleer Trü is a musician, performance artist who currently resides in Portland, Oregon. His body of work encompasses music, theater, fringe, dance, visual installation, drag, film, cabaret, and good time instigation. When he's not turning heads the world over as front-man of "Post Phunk" dance outfit Magic Mouth, you can catch him pursuing one of his many other creative efforts. His unique brands of aesthetic storytelling, and expression have made him a mainstay on stages both large and small. His creative direction and performances are in demand across major city hotbeds of the underground and mainstream.
Learn moreAtlas has created work for film, theatre, television, and museums including the Whitney (New York) and the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville (Paris). A pioneer of integrating live video with stage performance, Atlas is best known for his acclaimed collaborations with choreographers, dancers, and performers such as Leigh Bowery, Diamanda Galas, Merce Cunningham, and with Antony and the Johnsons on the audiovisual performance, Turning. Atlas is the recipient of three Bessie Awards and was recently presented with the prestigious John Cage award, by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2006).
Atlas has been active as an interdisciplinary filmmaker and video artist since the 1970s. Over the years he has made pioneering media/dance works, multi-channel video installations, feature-length documentaries, video art works for television, and live electronic performances. In November 2006, London's Tate Modern presented a retrospective of his work, titled Hail the New Puritan.
Learn moreA veteran of the original liberation music scene, Charles Gayle spent twenty years playing for spare change in the streets and subways of New York. Despite a reasonably successful European tour in the early 80's, it wasn't until 1988, when Gayle recorded the first of three albums for the Swedish Silkheart label, that he was recognized as a truly original voice of the avant garde. An unrepentant, out-blowing, in-your-face master of the free jazz style, Gayle attracted the attention of post-punk artists Henry Rollins and Thurston Moore who began showing up regularly at his gigs at the Knitting Factory and introduced him to alternative rock audiences who packed the house when he played. Though often compared with such free-form jazz greats as John Coltrane and Albert Ayler, the largely self-taught Gayle maintains a uniquely original style that is all his own. "Nothing is set," says Gayle. "I just go for the spirit, the Holy Ghost, and push beyond ego consciousness to blow my guts out." Gayle's recordings include Homeless (Silkheart); Spirits Before (Silkheart); Always Born (Silkheart); Touchin' On Trane (FMP); Repent (Knitting Factory); More Live (Knitting Factory); Consecration (Black Saint); Kingdom Come (Knitting Factory, ); and Testaments (Knitting Factory).
Learn moreCHARLES TONDERAI MUDEDE (Director, Screenwriter) is a Zimbabwean-born cultural critic, urbanist, writer, and filmmaker. He collaborated with acclaimed director Robinson Devor on the films Police Beat and Zoo, both of which premiered at Sundance. Police Beat is part of the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection, and Zoo was presented at the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes. Mudede is currently the film editor for Seattle’s The Stranger.
Learn moreCharlie Salas-Humara is a painter and musician living in Portland, OR. Self-taught, he began working with acrylic, oil, charcoal, and collage as a means of expressing his love of dance and music through art. Salas-Humara has toured extensively in the United States, Europe, Russia, and China (with The Planet The and under the moniker of Panther), and has shown his visual work in Portland, OR, Springfield, OR, Los Angeles, and New York.
Learn moreCharlotte Vanden Eynde is a contemporary dancer and choreographer, based in Ghent. In 1999, she graduated at P.A.R.T.S., the renowned school for contemporary dance headed by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. Since, she has been creating highly personal choreographies and performances, focusing on the body with a strong sculptural and imaginative sensibility. Her early works revolved around vulnerability, intimacy and femininity. In ‘Lijfstof’ she explored the body as object/matter and in ‘MAP ME’ video images were projected on the body as on a canvas. She pursued her movement research in the solo’s ‘I’m Sorry It’s (Not) A Story’ and ‘Shapeless’, and in various site-specific performances and improvisation solos. Her last work ‘Deceptive Bodies’ displayed an iconography of the theatrical body and was also shown in exhibition spaces. She often collaborates with other choreographers, theatre makers, film makers and musicians. Additionally, she gives advice to other artists and conducts workshops based on her own artistic practice.
Learn moreChase Biado (b. 1985) is an artist based in his native Portland, Oregon. His varied output including sculpture, video, painting and writing has been exhibited at Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Ulsan; Rocksbox, Portland, OR; sophiajacob, Baltimore, MD; Appendix Project Space, Portland OR; Ditch Projects, Springfield, OR; Gaite Lyrique, Paris, FR; The Front, New Orleans, LA; among others. He received a BFA from Portland State University.
Learn moreChaz Stobbs is a multi media artist currently studying video and sound at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland Oregon. His work focuses on the interaction of synthetic and natural materials in social constructs. Along with a visual arts practice, he is the current director of Veritable Stimulation.
Learn morechelfitsch Theater Company was founded in 1997 by writer and director Toshiki Okada. Named after a deliberate mispronunciation of the English word “selfish,” chelfitsch Theater Company began to refine its textual aesthetic as that of colloquial language representing contemporary youth culture. With Five Days in March (awarded the Kunio Kishida Award for Best Script) the company began to juxtapose a noisy choreography derived from everyday mannerisms to the text. The works of chelfitsch have been presented at premier international theater festivals and venues throughout Europe, North America, and Asia. In 2011, Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech received the critics’ award from the Association québécoise des critiques de théâtre for the 2010-2011 season. The troupe continues to develop its distinct methodology, which revolves around the relationship between speech and body.
Selected Press
"Writing for Foreigners (Americans)," Jason Zinoman, The New York Times, May 21, 2014
"Under the Radar 2012: An interview with chelfitsch's Toshiki Okada," Jeremy M. Barker, Culturebot, December 27, 2011.
"Temp Workers Too Twitchy to Engage in Office Politics," Ben Brantley, The New York Times, January 6, 2012.
"Hot Pepper," Tom Philips, Dance Review Times, January 7, 2012.
Learn moreClemente’s work revolves around questions of identity and cultural contrast. Commissions for the Rai Sat Art Channel in Italy have included documentaries on contemporary artists and architects, including Jim Dine, Frank Gehry and Brice Marden. The documentaries evolved and soon she was collaborating with artists on short art films, such as These Imaginary Boys and Know Yourself with Adrian Tranquilli.
In 2002, Clemente directed and photographed Three Worlds: A Portrait of Francesco Clemente, which premiered on Rai Sat Art and won best new documentary at Corto Circuito Festival in Naples. In 2005, she worked with Richard Tuttle and Mario Sorrenti on a short film commissioned by W Magazine for national distribution with its first Art Issue. Also in 2005, Clemente began work on her first feature documentary, Our City Dreams. After successful openings at Art Basel (where it opened the ArtFilm series), Locarno and Hamptons Film Festivals, and the Film Forum in New York, Our City Dreams will open at the Hollywood Theatre in Portland, Oregon.
Learn moreChisao’s grandmother, Chisao Tajima, came to Oregon as a “picture bride” in 1890. In1942 her mother, Kasae (Kay) Tamiyasu married Tadashi (Ted) Hata in the Poston concentration camp in Poston, Arizona. Arts training and artists teachers in Iowa shaped Chisao’s early life. Moving to Oregon from Iowa, her years at the University of Oregon fueled her Asian American activism, community organizing and pursuits as an artist. Chisao connected to the Portland dance community where she eventually established a school and company. A life changing study in Japan solidified her artistic vision and commitment to exploring how artful practices could address social issues and create change. In the Japanese American community her early leadership led to the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 and inspired her personal research and artmaking. Her studies in the Portland State Dance program, abruptly ended with the decimation of the program. However, new opportunities thrust her into arts in public education where her teaching philosophy as a dance educator influenced curriculum design and integrated arts programming schoolwide and impacted hundreds of students.
Her personal work incorporate community engagement, social action and includes omitted histories on themes of identity, culture, social action and legacies. DrumSouls and We Are You were intercultural and intergenerational works visioning an inclusive America. Harmos, The Human Flag project created for Hiroshima Day performed throughout Portland and Remember Us were community based performances on a citywide scale. Gambatte-An American Legacy, The Assembly Center Project and We are Still Here incorporate Japanese American history, oral histories through the fusion of text, poetry, music, dance and visual storytelling. Additionally Ms. Hata has designed and directed numerous art driven programs like Move Backs and Move On classes.
Her training in modern dance, expressive arts, physical theater, healing through the arts, community facilitation, poetry, taiko drumming and classical Japanese dance integrate with her peace and justice work in diverse communities. Her original choreo poems and artistic collaborations root her artist voice. “There's not one group she hasn’t touched with her activism through art. Her themes are exigent for our times and urge participants to ponder their worldview and take action for change.” Chisao’s vision has consistently created innovative programs, artistic works and shaped community partnerships. Chisao is also an Artist Organizing for Change with the Dance Exchange in Takoma Park, Maryland where the scope of her work develops intergenerational institutes, mentors socially engaged artists, creates cross-cultural programming rooted in the philosophies held at the Dance Exchange. This work continues to inspire her work as an Oregon Humanities Conversation Leader, community activist artist serving multiple organizations throughout the city of Portland and beyond.
Learn moreChisato Minamimura is a Deaf performance artist, choreographer, and British Sign Language art guide. Born in Japan and now based in London, Minamimura has created, performed, and taught internationally and is currently a Work Place artist at The Place. Minamimura trained at Trinity Laban in London and holds a BA in Japanese Painting and an MA from Yokohama National University. Minamimura approaches choreography and performance-making from her unique perspective as a Deaf artist, experimenting with and exploring the visualization of sound and music. By using dance and technology, Minamimura aims to share her experiences of sensory perception and human encounters.
She is currently touring Scored in Silence, and her new work, Mark of A Woman.
Learn moreChloe Alexandra Thompson is a Cree, Canadian interdisciplinary artist and sound designer. Thompson approaches sound as a mode of connection—embracing the kinesthetic agency of sound to compose abstract feats of spatialized audio recording and synthesis. Her work engages tactics of material minimalism to create site-specific installations that sculpt droning, maximalist experiences out of space and sound.
Learn moreChris Riser is a human, husband, father, and educator living and working on the stolen lands of the Chinook, Clackamas, Kalapuya, Kathlamet, Molalla, Multnomah, Tualatin, and other peoples who have been here since time immemorial. He works in the field of education as a means of planting the seeds for a world that does not yet exist. He currently serves as the Administrator of HOLLA School in East Portland, with a mission to change the academic narratives for Black, Brown, and Indigenous youth.
Learn moreCreated by performance artist Paul Soileau, CHRISTEENE has emerged as a pop music artist and anti-icon in its own right. CHRISTEENE is a shameless and sexually infused sewer of live rap and RnB, whose message challenges gender, capitalism, corporate mendacity, complacency, and false celebrity while shattering the American obsession with charm and grace. Providing a much-needed voice for a new society and posing a threat to those who support the current structures, CHRISTEENE is a new, dangerous, and unstable breed of entertainer and “Drag Terrorist.”
Attempts at gathering personal information on CHRISTEENE concerning age, origin, race, religion, and even gender have proven fruitless, leaving the public to rely on a highly stylized collection of music videos released through the singer’s collaborative efforts with award-winning filmmaker and cinematographer PJ Raval. Sightings of CHRISTEENE have been documented in Austin, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, New Orleans, Toronto, Vancouver, Paris, Stockholm, and Berlin.
Selected Press
Don't call him queen: Paul Soileau talks about more-punk-than-drag persona Christeene Vale, Bree Davies, Denver Westword, July 19, 2012.
Learn moreBorn in Cannes, Christian Rizzo took his first steps as an artist in Toulouse, where he started a rock band and created a line of clothing before studying visual arts at the Villa Arson in Nice. In the ’90s, he performed with and created costumes and soundtracks for choreographers including Mathilde Monnier, Hervé Robbe, Mark Tompkins, Georges Appaix, Vera Mantero, Catherine Contour, Emmanuelle Huynh, and Rachid Ouramdane. Since founding “l’association fragile” in 1996, he has created over 30 performances and dance pieces, alternating with other projects or commissions for fashion and visual arts. He was an artist-in-residence at l’Opéra de Lille, and has performed his works around the world at the Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon, the Nouveau Festival du Centre Pompidou, deSingel, the Festival d’Avignon, and On the Boards.
On January 1, 2015, Christian Rizzo took over as the Director of the Centre Choréographique National de Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillion-Midi-Pyrénées, which has been renamed ICI (International Choreographic Institute).
Learn moreChristi Denton is a Portland based composer and sound installation artist who works with found sounds, electronics, and homemade and modified instruments.
Learn moreChristina Najera Started her debut in the sex industry as a stripper in 2008. She has done many things and is passionate about creating true narratives of the people in the industry. She created The Stripper Project in 2016 in the basement of her home, photographing and talking to friends about their experiences in and out of the industry.
“What I love about this job, is the people I work with. I am inspired by the creative ambitious spirits that grace the dark nights and early mornings. I am inspired to create this project because I know that the workers of the sex industry are magical, and I want to help break down the stigma that is heavily piled on top of the term SEX WORKER. This industry has provided for my family. This job has allowed me to spend time doing the things that set my heart on fire and its shown me freedom. I learn from these woman, I grow with them, I cry and laugh with them. I am proud to stand with us. I am proud of the mysticism that runs through our bodies. I feel that the more united we are, the greater we become. Each event we host ties back to our foundational mission, and I consider my contributions to be my small way of helping advance our cause.”
Learn moreChristopher Kirkley is a self-described amateur ethnomusicologist and gentleman explorer of the West African Sahel. His work spans field recording, cultural archiving, experimental ethnography, and the role of new media in West Africa. Under the label Sahel Sounds, he has produced an extensive discography of record releases in conjunction with artists across six countries.
Selected Press
Desert discs: how mobile phones are at the root of Saharan music, Mic Wright, The Guardian, November 1, 2010. Learn moreMiner was born in 1973 and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. His videos address the impact of his upbringing with regard to religion, race, family, and sexuality. He received his MFA at Yale University School of Art and his BA at the University of Tennessee. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), PS1 Contemporary Art Center (New York), the New Museum (New York), and at Tate Britain (London), among other institutions. Miner is represented by Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.
Selected Press
Christopher Miner, Lauren O'Neill-Butler, Artforum.com, January 28, 2009.
Art in Review - Christopher Miner, Ken Johnson, New York Times, February 13, 2009.
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 moreCinema Project is a collectively run, non-profit organization based in Portland, Oregon, and founded in 2003, Cinema Project works to promote public awareness of avant-garde cinema past and present. Featuring artists, curators, and scholars from around the world, Cinema Project’s semi-annual series of screenings, lectures, and discussions function to broaden engagement with, and deepen critical understanding of, innovative experimental film and video art.
Learn moreClaire Barliant is a writer, editor, and teacher based in Brooklyn. She writes or has written for Art in America, Artforum, Icon, Modern Painters, the New Yorker, and other places. This coming academic year, she will be teaching in the MFA program for the Visual Arts at SUNY Purchase, and in the past has been an adjunct professor or visiting critic at Parsons, the New School, NYU, and Yale. For the past several years she has regularly participated in the Writhing Society, a writing workshop based on writing with constraints, led by Wendy Walker and Thomas La Farge.
Learn moreClaire Fontaine is a Paris-based collective artist, founded in 2004. After lifting her name from a popular brand of school notebooks, Claire Fontaine declared herself a “readymade artist” and began to elaborate a version of neo-conceptual art that often looks like other people’s work. Working in neon, video, sculpture, painting, and text, her practice can be described as an ongoing interrogation of the political impotence and the crisis of singularity that seem to define contemporary art today. But if the artist herself is the subjective equivalent of a urinal or a Brillo box—as displaced, deprived of its use value, and exchangeable as the products she makes—there is always the possibility of what she calls the “human strike.”
Claire Fontaine uses her freshness and youth to make herself a whatever-singularity and an existential terrorist in search of subjective emancipation. She grows up among the ruins of the notion of authorship, experimenting with collective protocols of production, détournements, and the production of various devices for the sharing of intellectual and private property.
Recent shows include El Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico D.F.; Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; Air de Paris, Paris; Regina Gallery, London and Moscow; MUSAC Contemporary Art Museu, Castilla y León, Spain; Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture, Baltimore; Bunker Stuzki Contemporary Art Museum, Krakow; Mastermind, Casablanca; and Kunstlerhaus Wien, Vienna. Claire Fontaine is represented by Reena Spaulings Fine Art and Metro Pictures, New York; T293, Napoli and Rome; Galerie Neu, Berlin; and Galerie Chantal Crousel/Air de Paris, Paris. She is now preparing a catalogue with Buchhandlung Walther König.
Learn moreClaire L. Evans is a writer and artist working in Los Angeles. She blogs at Universe, which addresses the synchronicities between art, science, technology, and the cultural world. Her “day job” is as the singer and co-author of the conceptual, multimedia, disco-pop band YACHT. Evans has performed her earnestly cosmic PowerPoint presentations at The Kitchen and MoMA PS1, and has co-authored NA/SA: New Art Science Affinities, a collaboratively written compendium on inter-disciplinarity in the arts.
Learn moreClare Croft is a historian, theorist, and dramaturg, working at the intersection of dance studies and performance studies. She specializes in 20th and 21st century American dance, cultural policy, feminist and queer theory, and critical race theory. In all of these areas, Croft considers how dance is a way of thinking and a mode for asking questions. What does it mean to acknowledge that people have bodies and that they use their bodies to make meaning, create community, and critique social structures?
Croft's current book project, Funding Footprints: Dance and American Diplomacy (Oxford University Press), examines the history of U.S. State Department funding of international dance tours. Croft's approach to writing dance history emphasizes the role of dancers in performance, asking how history might look differently if dancers, audiences, and choreographers were seen as equal partners in the creation of meaning in dance. Croft is also editing the anthology Meanings and Makings of Queer Dance, which brings together artists and print scholars in a written volume of essays and manifestos, as well as a website of performances, documented in Michigan's Duderstadt Video Studio.
Croft's writing about dance has appeared in Dance Research Journal, Theatre Journal, and Theatre Topics, and is forthcoming in Dance Chronicle. From 2002-2005, Croft was a regular contributor to The Washington Post, and from 2005-2010, she covered dance, as well as theatre and musical theatre, for the Austin American-Statesman. Her performance criticism has appeared in other popular press venues, including The Baltimore Sun, Dance Magazine, and The Houston Chronicle.
At the University of Michigan, Croft teaches courses in the BFA and MFA dance programs, as well as in the BFA interarts program. Her courses include Approaches to Dance Dramaturgy, Dancing Women/Dancing Queer, Fantasies and Anxieties of Racial Integration in 20th Century American Performance, Problematizing Theory and Practice, and Reading and Writing Dance Criticism. She also has a keen interest in helping students develop as choreographers and dramaturgs.
Croft holds a PhD in theatre history and criticism with an emphasis in Performance as Public Practice from the University of Texas-Austin and an MA in performance studies from New York University. From 2010-2013, Croft was a postdoctoral scholar in the University of Michigan's Society of Fellows.
Learn moreClark Coolidge (b. 1939) is a poet and experimental jazz musician. He is the author of more than thirty books of poetry. Raised in Providence, Rhode Island, Coolidge, studied geology at Brown University (1956-58) before traveling to Los Angeles, Greenwich Village in New York City, and back to Providence. Among his collaborations are Supernatural Overtones (1990) with Ron Padgett, On the Pumice of Morons (1993) with Larry Fagin, and other pieces with Philip Guston, Bernadette Mayer, and Keith Waldrop.
Coolidge has taught at the Naropa Institute and the American Academy in Rome (1985-85). He has read his work locally and internationally in France, London, Scandinavia, and Russia. In 1993, he co-founded the MIX poetry and jazz group with David and Tina Metzer. After five decades of publishing poetry, Coolidge's work continues to evolve. He is the editor of Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures and Conversations (University of California Press, 2010), and Fence Books published his last two books of poetry, 88 Sonnets and A Book Beginning What and Ending Away. He lives in Petaluma, California.
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 moreMeza is a Portland-based artist and composer who studied music composition and digital music production at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. She has recorded and toured with Japanther and Explode Into Colors, and has performed her own work in clubs, basements, dance halls, ballrooms, art galleries, and music festivals internationally. Meza started the young series New Musics to support new classical music and working avant-garde composers within the Portland music scene.
Learn moreClayton Lee is a Canadian curator, producer, and performance artist. He currently serves as the Artistic Director of Fierce Festival in Birmingham, UK. From 2019–2023, Clayton was the Director of Rhubarb Festival!, Canada’s longest-running festival of new and experimental performance, and previously served as the Curatorial Associate at the Luminato Festival. His performance projects have been presented in venues across Canada, the US, the UK, and New Zealand. He was one of the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Artists-in-Residence in 2023. As part of the Living Room Collective, he represented Canada at the 2025 Venice Biennale of Architecture.
Learn moreCleo Davis started his education in architecture at the University of Oregon further changing to industrial design at San Jose State. He is an artist whose work takes a critical view of the social, political and cultural issues and through his work, he continues to reconstruct the cultural view modernizing while also highlighting traditions. Although he engages with multiple subjects and mediums his methodology remains consistent. He also has started the Screw Loose Studio, the Mayo House Project, and most recently, the archives project in collaboration with Kayin.
Learn moreCloud Eye Control is a collaborative performance group from Los Angeles comprised of three members: Chi-wang Yang, Miwa Matreyek, and Anna Oxygen. We create original works that uniquely combine interactive media with live performance. Since our inception in 2004 we have created three original works that have been presented both nationally and internationally.
Whether through a re-imagining of Charles Lindbergh's trans-Atlantic flight, the discovery of powerful crystals underground, or one woman's interstellar search for a new home, a common theme in our stories is human adaptation in a technological world. To realize these stories, we project pre-rendered animation and live camera imagery onto various surfaces on the stage, and this imagery functions as scenery and virtual actor. Both high and low tech methods are used to allow the live actor to interact with the media. These methods range from custom-built interactive video software to the physical manipulation of video puppets.
Learn moreBorn and raised in Mexico City, Sofia Acosta's introduction to the music world started at university-based radio station Ibero 90.9 where she worked for Mercado Negro, a radio show about underground and independent music from Mexico. Her influences come from a wide variety of electronic genres including house, techno and deep basslines mixed with her favorite Latin American producers. She has been a resident DJ in many venues in Mexico City such as Cultural Center of Spain, Rhodesia, and El Imperial. In Portland she collaborates at the community radio station KBOO with “White Noise Radio” which focuses dance and experimental electronic music from around the globe as well as curating a monthly party Gran Ritmos, a night dedicated to Pan-American dance music.
Learn moreCoco Fusco is a New York-based writer and interdisciplinary artist. She has performed, published, lectured and curated throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, Latin America and South Africa. Her most recent work includes STUFF, a performance collaboration with San Francisco-based artist Nao Bustamante, which premiered in the fall of 1996 at the National Review of Live Art in Glasgow; Better Yet When Dead, a recently completed solo performance installation which will premiere at YYZ in Toronto in 1997; and Corpus Delecti, a retrospective of Latin American performance art which she organized for London's Institute for Contemporary Art which took place in November, 1996. Her latest video project Pochonovela, a parody of Latin American soap operas, received an Honorable Mention at the 1996 Cinefestival in San Antonio and was recently broadcast on KCET (Los Angeles). Her collection of essays on art, media and cultural politics, entitled English is Broken Here, was published in 1995 by The New Press.
Between 1989 and 1995, Fusco created a series of collaborative works with Mexican artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña. They include Norte: Sur, an interdisciplinary arts project involving installation, multi-media, audio art and performance, which was presented at San Francisco's Mexican Museum as part of the Festival 2000; La Chavela Realty Co., a complementary performance to Gómez-Peña's 1991 performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival; 1992: The Year of the White Bear, about the so-called "Discovery of America" which premiered at The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; and Mexarcane International, a performance designed for shopping malls, which premiered at the National Review of Live Art in Glasgow. The Couple in the Cage, (1993) a documentary of their caged performances, aired on KCET and WGBH (Boston). It was also selected for the 1993 New York Film Festival and was named Best Performance Documentary at the Atlanta Film & Video Festival. Fusco and Gómez-Peña's work was also selected for the 1992 Sydney Biennale, the 1993 Whitney Biennial, and the 1995 London International Theatre Festival. Their collaborative radio pieces have been aired on National Public Radio through the Crossroads and The Territory of Art series.
Fusco's writings have appeared in such publications as The Village Voice, The Washington Post, The Nation, Art in America, Afterimage, Frieze, Screen and Third Text (Britain), and La Jornada (Mexico). She has also curated numerous international media exhibitions, including Young, British and Black: The Works of Sankofa and Black Audio Film Collective (1988); Internal Exile: New Films and Videos from Chile (1990); The Hybrid State Film Series (1991) and The Robert Flaherty Seminar (1991).
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 more.Compost Cooperative takes the tossed-out leftovers from digital culture and breaks them down to grow a more lush virtual landscape. In the ease of mass consumption and the gold rush for the supposedly infinite space provided by the Internet, much of our digital infrastructure and the tools used to make it go disconcertingly unexamined. We believe that through cultivating a biome of thoughtful appropriation, re-design, humor, and the surreal we can begin to glimpse a microcosm of new possibility and the recipe to get there. Together we make websites, video games, educational materials, and a range of other media that playfully percolates on our ever-decaying/blossoming digital world.
.Compost Cooperative is: Tabitha Nikolai, Myra Lilith Day, garima thakur, Zan Kerrigan, and Carly Barton. Our work has been shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art in the Maine College of Art and Design in Maine, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art in Oregon, and the Utkal University of Culture in Odisha, India. Learn moreContainer Corps is a publication design studio, printshop, bindery, and exhibition space that serves as a platform for the creation, distribution, and discussion of new arts publications. We publish books-as-projects, or books-as-works in themselves, or primary sources. Our publications use the means of their production as an avenue of expression. The books we publish are collaborations between artists and their ideas and our skills as editors, publication designers, and printmakers. They are works of art in themselves, rather than documentation of works in other media.
Learn moreCool Art is a project by Rob Halverson, an artist and curator whose exhibition Space is a Place was presented at PICA's 2007 Time-Based Art Festival. Cool Art will be on view and for sale at Stand Up Comedy. Future presentations will be held at Art Since The Summer of '69 in New York later this year.
Learn moreCornell Alston is a long time member of Rehabilitation Through the Arts, a not-for-profit that uses the arts as a springboard to teach life skills to individuals both inside and outside of state correctional facilities. He initiated the Youth Empowerment Through the Arts initiative that launched in Queens NY, and he continues to work as an arts-in-education advocate. He is the recipient of a 2016 Creative Capital Award. Alston performed and collaborated with Kaneza Schaal on PLEASE, BURY ME at Baryshnikov Arts Center and GO FORTH during a Performance Space 122 RAMP residency. Other performance highlights include: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 12 Angry Men, and the title role in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.
Learn moreCory Arcangel is a Brooklyn-based fine artist (b. 1978, Buffalo, NY) who makes work in a wide range of media, including composition, video, modified video games, performance, and the Internet. During the past two years, Arcangel has completed several diverse projects. He worked extensively with a team of computer experts from the Carnegie Mellon Computer Club, in collaboration with The Andy Warhol Museum, The Carnegie Museum, and the Carnegie STUDIO for Creative Inquiry to unearth and preserve Warhol's lost digital experiments, which he wrote about for the summer edition of Artforum. This past May, he launched a publishing and merchandise imprint, Arcangel Surfware. In July, he released his debut novel, Working On My Novel, published by Penguin. Recent exhibitions include “Masters” at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2012–13), “Pro Tools” at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2011), “Beat the Champ” at the Barbican, London (2011), and “Here Comes Everybody” at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2010–11). Recent performances include “Dances For The Electric Piano” at the ICA London, and “Selected Notes on Creativity” at nyMusikk, Oslo, Norway. His work is included in many public collections, including the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, MoMA in New York, the Tate in London, Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington D.C. And the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zürich.
Learn moreCourtenay Collins is the owner and Executive Producer of Dirty Angel Entertainment. The company currently produces The Real Comedy Spot Open Mic at Eastside Bar and Grill on Tuesday’s. DAE also produced an open mic at Harvey’s Comedy Club in Portland, OR. The company has produced showcases at Triple Nickel in Portland, Oregon and Pub 26 in Welches, OR. It also produces the NW Black Comedy Festival which is in its fifth year. The company manages comic The Real Hyjinx, who has appeared around the country and hosts all Dirty Angel Entertainment productions. He’s been on AMC and also co-produces the Festival. She also performs as DJ Wildchild and is the resident DJ for all Dirty Angel Entertainment Productions including The Real Comedy Spot Open Mics and the NWBCF. She also co-hosted the Portland Radio Project show Soulfull Saturdays.
Learn moreCraig Stephens was born in Sacramento, California in 1963. He grew up in the foothill town of Weimar. He attended American River College and later transferred to UC Davis where he received his B.A. in art studio in 1993. During his undergraduate years he had the privilege of taking classes from Gary Pruner, Roy DeForest, David Hollowell and Wayne Thiebaud. In 1996 Mr. Stephens began teaching high school art classes at Chana High School in Auburn, California.
Since 2006 he has completed a small painting on a nearly daily basis, which he shares through Instagram feed. He has found that the practice of completing a painting a day suits his disposition and aesthetic.
Mr. Stephens currently resides in Auburn, California with his wonderful wife and amazing children. His works can be found in private and corporate collections throughout North America and Europe.
Learn moreC. Riley Snorton is a scholar, author, and activist whose work focuses on historical perspectives of gender, sexuality, and race. His publications include Nobody is Supposed to Know: Black Sexuality on the Down Low (U Minn Press, 2014) and Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity (U Minn Press, 2017). Snorton is Professor of English and Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Chicago.
Learn moreCrispin Spaeth offers private coaching, workplace trainings, and group classes that champion the beauty of our human design and its intrinsic relationship to confidence, connection, and freedom.
Her work is deeply informed by Integrative Alexander Technique (IAT), an experiential learning process that allows you to access your natural coordination so that you can move, think, and communicate more effectively and in line with your true wishes.
Learn moreIncorporating irony and humor into her work, Cristina Lucas focuses on the irrationality of human actions and ethics within contemporary aesthetics. She was born in Jaén, Spain, and earned her BFA from Complutense University, Madrid, followed by an MFA from the University of California, Irvine. Lucas has recently participated in Dominó Canibal II Bienale PAC Murcia and the Liverpool Biennial. Her work has also been seen in solo exhibitions such as Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo, Móstoles an Carrillo Gil, Mexico DF; Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, The Netherlands; and Galería Juana de Aizpuru, Madrid; as well as in group exhibitions at NMAC Foundation, Cádiz; Aldrich Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; 28 Bienal de Sao Paulo; and X Istanbul Bienale. Lucas lives and works in Spain, where she is represented by Juana de Aizpuru Gallery, Madrid.
Selected Press
Cristina Lucas, Touch and Go, 2010, Arthur Roberts and Barbara Jones, all my colours, November 7, 2010.
Learn moreCrystal Baxley and Stefan Ransom are Portland-based artists who make events, videos, sounds, posters, prints, books, blogs, sculptures, playlists, drawings, emails, and food, individually and collaboratively. In 2012 they created a compilation album of 35 songs based on Sol LeWitt's Sentences on Conceptual Art, titled Songs on Conceptual Art. It is available for free online at http://songsonconceptualart.com. Baxley and Ransom have organized events and exhibited projects at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, the Open Engagement Conference and Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, and the Kadist Foundation in San Francisco.
Learn moreCrystal Quartez (Cortez) is a Portland based musician & creative technologist. Through field recording, synthesis and self-built instruments they create “Restorative Noise”; sculpting drones and rhythms of mechanical life, natural voices, and digital timbres to form a texture rich electronic dance music. The resulting sonic landscapes offer windows into shared networks of reality, often separated by borders of space, time, and perception. Recently, their work has involved the collection of live biodata from plants and static data from climate change, to translate these numbers and electrical impulses into sound.
Learn moreThe Master of Arts in Critical Theory and Creative Research (CT+CR), the first of its kind in the U.S., is an accelerated (45-credit), seminar-based program that prepares students for opportunities at the intersection of art, theory, and research. Students admitted to the program work toward an MA, which they complete within one calendar year. Through rigorous training in critical theory, research design and methods, cultural and institutional critique, and ethics, students develop skills and modes of thinking that cross the boundaries between the visual and verbal, linear and nonlinear, digital and analog, theory and practice.
Located in the heart of Portland, a center of creative risk-taking and social experimentation, the program combines the study of critical theory as a mode of socio-political critique and creative research as a process-driven form of inquiry, pushing both theory and research in new directions within the context of a 21st-century art school. The program is devoted to people and ideas and to a rethinking of the present and future of cultural production; of arts-based research and research-based arts; of curatorial practice, documentary, and the Archive; and of social and political reconfiguration in relation to major sites of contemporary contestation. These sites range from social media to biotechnology, surveillance to sustainability, political terror to revolutionary social and economic practices.
The foundation of the program is a complex of seminars and roundtables on interlocking themes led by PNCA faculty as well as by visiting artists, designers, critics, theorists, poets, and filmmakers. Past visitors to the school include Jacques Rancière, W.J.T. Mitchell, Art Spiegelman, James Turrell, Heike Kuehn, Ellen Dissanayake, Sue Coe, Susan Szenasy, David Shipley, Kurt Andersen, Joe Sacco, Laurie Anderson, Lewis Hyde, and Mel Chin.
Learn moreCVLLEJERX is the product of our multicultural inbetweenness as second generation immigrants and the violent colonization and subsequent diaspora of colombia, mexico, and africa, which informs our mestizx and black experiences in america. CVLLEJERX was born in the whitest city in america, portland, that has deep-seated white supremacist roots. with this and other historical and contemporary circumstances in mind, it is urgent for us to reclaim space in this city. we merge fashion, performance, and poetry as a form of resistance. through the engagement of voice, clothing, and physical movement, we are reclaiming authorship. Choosing what we wear, what we say, and how we move, we are amplifying ourselves with tools accessible to us.
Learn morePart country, part Lou Reed, part Patti Smith, part performance artist. —The Washington Post Cynthia Hopkins is an internationally acclaimed musical performance artist. Hopkins writes and sings songs, records albums, and creates groundbreaking multi-media performance works that intertwine truth and fiction—blurring the lines between edification and entertainment. Through the process of making performances, she attempts to alchemize disturbance into works of intrigue and hope that simultaneously stimulate the senses, provoke emotion, and enliven the mind. Hopkins has produced six performance works and eight albums of original music. Her work has been honored with many awards, including the 2007 Alpert Award in Theater and a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship. Hopkins most recently premiered A Living Documentary and is currently at work on a screenplay, Alcoholic Movie Musical (a tale of self-destruction and redemption). Selected Press "In Debt to Art? So Actor’s Piggy Bank Attests: ‘A Living Documentary,’ a Solo Show at New York Live Arts," The New York Times, March 7, 2014 "Cynthia Hopkins on How to Earn a Living as a New York City Artist," The Wall Street Journal, March 5, 2014
Learn moreCynthia Lathi’s work resonates with honesty and reflects the beauty and chaos of this world. Lathi combines references to art of past centuries with her own personal visual language. Her work reflects a collective conscience with imagery that is deeply referential of Lathi’s own personal experience and emotions. Her sculpture, drawings and photographs become relics made from real materials, methods and symbols that hope to offer an explanation of reality. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at PDX Contemporary Art, the Laura Russo Gallery, Marylhurst Art Gym and the Nine Gallery in Portland, Oregon. She is represented by PDX Contemporary Art where she will have a solo exhibition in April 2009.
Learn mored.a. carter is a writer, teacher, and cognac sipper. He is co-editor of The Iconic Obama, 2007-2009: Essays on Media Representations of the Candidate and New President (2012). He is currently completing Obscene Material, a book examining black girlhood and scandal in 1919 Washington, D.C. and is also a member of the Queering Slavery Working Group, an interdisciplinary scholarly collective that uses Tumblr to place black queer studies in conversation with the history of enslavement: http://qswg.tumblr.com and http://qswgremix.tumblr.com. He is an assistant professor of Black Studies at Portland State University, with research interests in 20th Century African American History, gender and sexuality studies, and black cultural studies.
Learn moreDakota Camacho is a Matao•CHamoru multi-disciplinary artist / researcher working in spaces of Indigenous lifeways, performance, musical composition, community engagement, and education.
Learn moreLike an explosion, DBC unleashes on assault of screaming synthesizers, demonic beats, laser lit fog and passionate singing akin to a Black Mass given by Morrissey.
The Dangerous Boys Club is the baby birthed by Aaron Montaigne (singer), Mac Mann (Synth/electronique Organ) of the legendary 90′s harcore bands Antioch Arrow and Get Hustle. Started in the fog of Portland Oregon in 2009, DBC adopted Mark Burden (bass) of Silentist / Glass Candy and Sam Ott (electronique drums) of Year Future to create a very Unique experimental / pop / noise / dark wave inspired by Roxy Music, Soul Side, Suicide the Misfits and David Bowie.
in 2010 DBC released “VRIL” on Nathan Howdeshell of the GOSSIP’s Portland lable Fast Weapons and toured the west coast numerous times and tour of the east coast playing with bands such as Cold Cave, Salem, The Soft Moon and Bronze.
DBC’s second full release “PRIS” will be released on DAIS records in spring 2012 and will be touring the states and Europe.
Learn moreDavid Commander’s In Flight questions the reliability of two modern comforts: airplanes and news media. Aboard a crashing airliner, a banal drama unfolds as the puppet passengers relax with daytime talk show reruns and SkyMall infomercials. In Flight mocks our cultural embrace of misinformation and our limitless potential for mass apathy, even in the face of immediate danger. Commander has been a member of Big Art Group for 12 years, working as a performer, assistant director, videographer, and miniature set/prop builder. Outside of the group, he has written, directed, and performed in his own works at the NYC International Fringe Festival, the 2007 Philadelphia Fringe Festival, and the Toy Theater After Dark Festival in Minneapolis
Learn moreDeelay Ceelay is a collaboration between video artist/musician Chris Lael Larson and percussionist Delaney Kelly, fusing live instrumentation with synched projected visuals. Deelay Ceelay blur the divide between music, experimental film and performance while emphasizing the creation of a two-way exchange with audiences.
The duo have performed/screened in over 30 cities across the U.S., with work appearing at the Berkeley Museum of Art, the Portland Documentary and Experimental Film Festival, the Experimental Media and Movement Arts Lab, PICA and the Northwest Film Center. Deelay Ceelay live in portland, oregon.
Learn moreArgentine director, dancer and choreographer Diana Szeinblum began her career with the prestigious contemporary Ballet of the San Martin General theatre under the direction of Oscar Araiz. On a Goethe Institute scholarship, she studied at the Folkwang Tanz Schule and danced with the FTS company under the artistic direction of Pina Bausch, where she worked with choreographers such as Bausch, Susanne Linke and Urs Dietrich, among others. Her award-winning independent dance theatre work Secreto y Malibú toured across Europe, Asia and the US in 2003 including performances at PICA, The Walker Art Center, Dance Theatre Workshop and the Fresh Terrain Festival in Austin. ALASKA, her last piece, premiered in 2007, in the Konex Art Center, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and toured through the NPN Performing Americas Program in 2008. ALASKA will also be included in the Teatro a mil Festival (Chile) CINARS (Canada) the Feria de San Sebastian (España) and he Festival in Madrid 2009. Szeinblum is a sought-after teacher of composition and improvisation classes in Buenos Aires and throughout Argentina.
Lucas Condro began his studies in Argentina in 1997. In 1999 he was invited by the teacher and choreographer David Zambrano to take a seminar at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam, where he studied for three years and received the degree of "Dance Maker." In Amsterdam he worked with the choreographers Red Peace, Hooman Sharifi; Nicole Butler and David Zambrano. In 2004 he improved his skills in the Montpellier Choreographic Center, under the direction of Mathilde Monnier. Condro is one of the key performers of Diana Szeinblum's work, appearing in her play 34 Metros, Homage to Kagel and ALASKA. He teaches Improvisation and technical courses in Argentina and throughout Latin America.
Learn moreHailed by Ms. Magazine’s end of the century issue as “a choreographer making great leaps forward into the 21st century,” Donna Uchizono is the Artistic Director of Donna Uchizono Company, a New York-based company established in 1990. Since her choreographic debut in 1990, Uchizono rapidly emerged from the “downtown scene” as a choreographer known for her spicy movement, wit, and rich invention. Donna Uchizono Company has toured throughout the United States, Europe, South America, Asia and Australia and has created work for notables Mikhail Baryshnikov, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Playwright, Paula Vogel, MacArthur Fellow, David Hammons, and neurologist/writer Oliver Sacks.
In 2011, after decades of critically-acclaimed dance works that toured nationally and internationally, Donna Uchizono was identified by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and Dance Heritage Coalition as a master choreographer whose works require preservation. Donna Uchizono Company received a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts award for Phase 1 of the archival and preservation of her work.
In addition to being a Unites States Artist, Guggenheim Fellow and a “Bessie” award winner, Uchizono has been recognized by many awards including United States Artist Award in dance, an Alpert Award in Dance, Rockefeller, the National Dance Project, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, Creative Capital Foundation, Altria Group, Inc., the Jerome Foundation, Dance Magazine Seed Grant, the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, Arts International, Foundation for Contemporary Performance, Metropolitan Life Foundation/ADF Commission, the National Performance Network, the Suitcase Fund, the Harkness Foundation for Dance, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the Greenwall Foundation, Meet the Composer, and the Bossak Heilbron Charitable Foundation. Uchizono has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and five New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship.
Learn moreCulp is an associate professor in the Communications Department at Universidad Iberoamericana, and he is currently working through his PhD thesis in art history at the UNAM. He is also one of the organizer-curators of Re-positionings: Contemporary Performing Arts Forum in Mexico City. He was the assistant curator at the Mexican Pavilion of the 54th Venice Biennale and is one of the founding partners of Conejoblanco Galería de Libros. His publications include film criticism articles in Nexos (Mexico) and as part of the book Cine Mexico 1970-2011 (Gran NumeronceProducciones, Mexico).
Learn moreEmily Johnson is an artist who makes body-based work. Originally from Alaska, she is currently based in Minneapolis. Since 1998 she has created work that considers the experience of sensing and seeing performance. Her dances function as installations, engaging audiences within and through a space and environment—interacting with a place's architecture, history, and role in community. Her work is currently supported by Creative Capital, Map Fund, a Joyce Award and The Doris Duke Residency to Build Demand for the Arts. Emily is a 2013 Institute for Advanced Study Fellow at the University of Minnesota, a 2012 Headlands Center for the Arts and MacDowell Artist in Residence, a Native Arts and Cultures Fellow (2011), a MANCC Choreographer Fellow (2009/2010/2012), a MAP Fund Grant recipient (2009/2010/2012/2013), and McKnight Fellow (2009). She received a 2012 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Performance for her work, The Thank-you Bar, at New York Live Arts. Her current work, Niicugni, is touring to Florida State University/MANCC/Seven Days of Opening Nights, Coil Festival/PS122/Baryshnikov Arts Center (NYC), Redfern Arts Center at Keene State (NH), Arizona State University, Tigertail (Miami), Northrop Auditorium (MN), PICA (Portland, OR) and Bunnell Street Gallery (AK).
Selected Press
"Shedding Light on the Last Frontier," Gia Kourlas, The New York Times, January 4, 2013.
"Emily Johnson in Conversation with Ain Gordon," Movement Research Critical Correspondance, January 9, 2013.
Call & Response: Spandex and Basketballs, Emily Johnson, Mental Contagion, July/August 2008.
Learn moreExplode into Colors is a band from Portland that won’t do it unless it’s fun. Heather Treadway, Claudia Meza, and Lisa Schonberg play heavy rhythms, pulsing bass, and melodic echo that has been described as “gritty dance-punk,” “the late-night love child of Fela Kuti and ESG,” and “completely unclassifiable.” Whether performing in basements, living rooms, galleries, or stages, their intention is to positively affect their audience with music that will make them dance. They are fond of celebrations and collaborations with talented local artists that have inspired them. They are also known to make clothes, videos, pictures of all kinds, and studies of insects.
Learn moreFin de Cinema is a recurring live film score series curated by Gina Altamura of Portland music venue and nightclub, Holocene. This series, established in 2009, allows local pop and experimental musicians to reinterpret the soundtracks to classic art films. FIN DE CINEMA returns to TBA for the third year in a row, and celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the series. This year’s edition will be an original live score of Black Orpheus (1959), composed and performed by visionary local musicians.
Learn moreThe Flash Choir was founded in July 2007 in the service of TBA:07’s opening celebration piece, composed by Rinde Eckert. The Choir has kept on keepin’ on led by Sarah Dougher and Pat Janowski. They continue to experiment and find both traditional and experimental ways to sing together.
Learn moreFrancesca Capone is an artist working at the confluence of visual art and experimental literature. Her last solo exhibition, Oblique Archive took place at Peninsula Art Space in Brooklyn in 2014 and was reviewed by The Brooklyn Rail and The Wild Magazine. Capone recently co-curated Interrupt 3, a conference that highlights intersections of art, literature and digital media at Brown University.
Kristen Mueller is an artist and publisher (& So) whose works often intervene with existing texts, pages and books. Recent publications include 3b (ongoing); Partially Removing the Remove of Literature (Feb 2014); and Language to Cover a Page (Jan 2014). Her work has been exhibited in shows at Artists Space (New York), LUMA Foundation (Zurich) and Motto (Berlin).
Laura Warman is a performance poet based in Amherst, MA. She is the author of How Much Does It Cost? (Cars Are Real Press), DRONE LOVE (Gauss PDF), and WILL GO FAST (Hysterically Real). She is the founder of GLASS PRESS, a publisher of art and poetry on flash drives. Warman has had work in shows at MOCA Cleveland, Flying Object, and Open Engagement.
Learn moreHeidi Cody is an artist and climate activist. She has a B.A. from Wesleyan University ('91) and and M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago ('96). Her art makes fun of American consumer culture.
Learn moreBecoming Mexican, Helday de la Cruz | Photo credit Carly Diaz
Heldáy de la Cruz is an artist and community organizer. Through illustration and design, his work explores the identities that are lost and found within the queer and latinx diaspora. This, alongside his undocumented status, are at the very core of his community work. Heldáy's artwork and story has been shared in Milk X Magazine (Hong Kong), The Huffington Post, AIGA Portland, She Shreds Magazine, Ecotrust, Street Roots, East Oregonian, The Oregonian, ACLU of Oregon, Design Week Portland, Brand New Podcast, Social Justice League Podcast, Talking with Ghosts Podcast, Homebase Gallery, CultureStrike, and the Define American Film Festival. He also co-leads a collective called UndocuPDX that provides resources, education, and news for the undocumented community.
Learn more"Cole invites us into other people’s minds – and in doing so switches on new lights within our own” - The Guardian
Helen Cole is the Artistic Director and CEO of In Between Time. In 2001, she created the In Between Time Festival in Bristol, UK. In 2009, after three editions, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation awarded Cole a Breakthrough Award to establish In Between Time (IBT) as an independent company. In 2011, In Between Time became a National Portfolio Organization of the Arts Council of England. In 2015, IBT delivered its 6th International Festival to over 130,000 people and changed its name to IBT Bristol International Festival. In addition to her work with In Between Time, Cole is an artist. In 2008 she created the critically acclaimed installation and digital archive, We See Fireworks, described as ‘exquisite’ by the Guardian. We See Fireworks continues to tour across the world as installations, films, live performances and publications.
In December 2016, Cole will premiere her new work, Breathe at the III Venice Performance Art Festival. Breathe will gather hundreds of intimate private dances played out alone in spaces across the world. Instructed to ‘move from exuberance to exhaustion’ these dances are captured as audio and experienced as an installation of echoes. In theaters, galleries and found spaces suffused with hot white light these anonymous ‘ghost dances’ emit the tangible, poignant traces of bodies pushed to their limits, lives lived, time passing, to conjure the presence of those long since gone.
Cole mentors artists and producers, works as a writer, curator and producer and contributes to symposia and commissioning panels nationally and internationally.
Learn moreHowie Chen is a New York-based curator involved in collaborative art production and research. Chen is a founder of Dispatch, a curatorial production office and project space founded in New York City, later transitioning to a peripatetic exhibition model. Dispatch offers a model for curatorial production: an office for receiving and originating exhibitions, projects, and concepts treated as time-sensitive transmissions. He has organized exhibitions and programs at the Whitney Museum of American Art, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, The Kitchen, Circuit (Switzerland), IMO (Copenhagen) among others.
In 2003, with artist Mika Tajima, he formed New Humans, a moniker for collaborations with musicians, artists and designers. New Humans was included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial—a collaboration with Vito Acconci and musician C. Spencer Yeh—and more recently projects at SFMOMA and South London Gallery with collaborator Charles Atlas.
In 2010, Chen co-founded JEQU, a research project to assess how sociological and cultural economic approaches to art world debates can augment artistic critique. Past program presentations include a lecture by Olav Velthuis, seminar with Luc Boltanski, and exhibitions at USC Roski School of Fine Art and Formalist Sidewalk Poetry Club. Chen also launched Collectionof, a new online platform for presenting the diverse creative productions of international artists, art producers and art spaces.
In addition to curatorial activities, Chen has been a Critic at the Rhode Island School of Design in the Painting Department and is currently teaching at the New York University Steinhardt School. He holds a degree in economics from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program as a Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow.
Learn moreIsabelle Cornaro is a multi-material artist who grew up in post-colonial Africa, and studied 16th century art history before studying art at the Royal College of Arts in London and Beaux-Arts de Paris. She is currently based in Paris and represented by Balice Hertling Gallery. Recent solo exhibitions include The Whole World is Watching at Le Magasin, Grenoble (2012), FRAC-Aquitaine, Bordeaux, France (2012), and group exhibitions include Vide-Poche at Sculpture Center, New York (2011) and Rotary Connection at Casey Kaplan (2012). Cornaro was the recipient of the Ricard Foundation Prize (2010), a resident at ISCP New York (2009), and is included in the collections of Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville, Paris and Centre Pompidou, among many others.
Learn moreGooniyandi/Gija languages. Born c.1918. Died 2OO9.
Jananggoo Butcher Cherel’s career was defined by restless innovation. Cherel was born around 192O at Jalnganjoowa, near the homestead at Fossil Downs Station. His mother was Gija, his father Gooninyandi. Like many Indigenous people, Cherel was a polyglot, speaking his parents’ tongues, as well as Walmajarri and Bunuba. Working for most of his life as a cowboy, Cherel began painting regularly in the early 199Os, following the establishment of the Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency in Fitzroy Crossing. As one of the most senior elders of the Gooniyandi, he was instrumental in the revival of ceremony at the Muludja community where he spent his final years. Cherel was passionate about traditional culture and law, but he was also a committed and reflexive artist, challenging himself to find new ways to express his heritage and experiences in pictorial form. A master of turning complex designs into coherent visual statements, Cherel’s attention to detail can be seen through delicately detailed recurring elements, such as bush plums (girndi), which work in concert to create exquisite tapestries of motion. In Cherel’s hand, these graphically idiosyncratic experiments in color and form become the sublime device for combining deep cultural knowledge with astute observation of the natural world. In 2OO5, he was declared a Living Treasure by the Western Australian State Government, and in he 2OO6 he was selected as a finalist in the prestigious Clemenger Contemporary Art Award at the National Gallery of Victoria. His works are held in the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of Western Australia, along with numerous important collections in Australia and the U.S.
Learn moreJayne Cortez was a poet, who spent much of her life and career in New York City. During her life, she published widely, and has works included in collections such as 1977's Mouth on Paper and 1996's Somewhere in Advance of Nowhere.
Cortez died in 2012.
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