2024 Oregon Contemporary Artists’ Biennial
April 26- August 4 of 2024
Curated by Jackie Im and Anuradha Vikram
Participating artists:
Carla Bengtson | Meech Boakye | Srijon Chowdhury | Epiphany Couch | Megita Denton | Michael Espinoza | Marcus Fischer | Bean Gilsdorf | Patricia Vázquez Gómez | Anne Greenwood | Bridgette Hickey | chimæra/project | Horatio Hung-Yan Law | Maxx Katz | Rainen Knecht | Methods Body | Morgan Ritter | Sarah Rushford | Tyler Stoll | UwU Collective | Vo Vo
Photos by Mario Gallucci / Video by Eric Mellencamp
We will have programs and receptions on First Saturdays of May, June, July, and August.
The Artists’ Biennial is a survey of works by visual and performing artists who are defining and advancing Oregon’s contemporary art landscape. Jackie Im and Anuradha Vikram are the curators of the 2024 Biennial, which is focused on themes of networks, community, care, and support. Rather than a hierarchical approach to artists' works, the curators' goal is to present work that is timely and relevant to the communities of Oregon.
The Artists’ Biennial is a selection of artists who are working within the curatorial themes. The artists included range in age from 25 to over 65 years old. Over 50% are BIPOC, including artists that identify as Asian American, Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and multiracial. Over 50% are LGBTQ+, and the group includes artists identifying as transgender, non binary, or gender diverse. Our choice of curators also supports these demographics.
This will be the seventh biennial in Oregon Contemporary’s series, which began in 2010. Previously focused on Portland artists—as a continuation of the program initiated by the Portland Art Museum in 1949—the biennial expanded to an Oregon-wide selection of artists in 2016. Curator-led each time in its scope and themes, the biennial has been housed in art venues throughout the city, art and community spaces throughout Oregon, and back to the 12,000 square-foot home of Oregon Contemporary in North Portland’s Kenton neighborhood. With more space designated for public arts programming at Oregon Contemporary than ever before, this biennial will utilize the spaces for the exhibitions and our First Saturdays for performances and programs, with occasional partner venues presenting works as fitting for the artists. The programs will run May–August of 2024.
Programs:
August 3rd
Artist: Chimæra/Project
Event: Webs for Holding: Art Market
Location: I♡Youth2
Description: For our final @oregoncontemporary Artists Biennial event, @chimaera.site is collaborating with our sweet host @ilyouth2 to present an intergenerational arts market! This arts market features work by Chimæra/Project collective members, artists from previous Chimæra iterations, and members of our larger network.
Artist: Maxx Katz of Yelling Choir
Event: Solo Performance
Description: Experience and audience involved event led by Maxx Katz. Their performance reimagines voice, presence, gender, and power, embracing a spectrum of emotions and innovative vocal techniques.
Artist: Tyler Stoll
Event: The Future is Flaccid - A Participatory Protest
Description: ATTENTION: Calling all milquetoast mollies, detumescent daddies, softbois, tenderqueers, and any other flimsy folk and lovers of limpness! (and allies).
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July 20th
Artist: Anne Greenwood
Event: Shapes of Land
Location: Albina Green
Description: The merging of Raymains Blanket Co. textiles with Shapes of Land paper book edition and the Albina Green create this experiential connective narrative and participatory installation activating the unique fabric book on view at Ox. The Albina Green and the Raymains blankets provide a resting place while the book reproductions and music by Marisa Anderson extends an opening into expansive landscapes that focus on themes of community, care, support, and networks.
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Saturday, July 13th
Artist: Marcus Fischer + David Chandler
Event: Working with Audio Tape - Looping + Splicing (workshop)
Description: In this workshop, we will begin by exploring the anatomy of a tape recorder and the technique of splicing tape of pre-recorded sound We will experiment with splicing strips of 1/4” tape at different lengths into loops in order to create rhythmic patterns and learn how playback speed and direction has an effect on the sound.
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Saturday, July 6
Artist: UwU Collective
Event: Public Conversation + Community Event in Cafe
Description: In your dream you were basking in the sun, sipping tea. There was music, and there were friends, that made you feel euphoric. No phone on site, just vibes. There was a talk, a public one, where you got to exchange your shared struggles and some cute ideas for the communal future you’ve been longing for. When you wished your lucid dream could last a bit longer, the universe blesses you and suddenly, you’re transported to a temporal kitchen, making food with your besties old and new. In your dream the world is built of flowers and building blocks called empathy. Collaborators include: Adam A. Lucero, Andrés López, Ava, Bianca AE Mack, cay horiuchi, Haevyn, Jack Malstrom, Jen Tam, Jesse Rawlins, Laura Bread Kitten, Lillyanne Pham, Ryan Bunao, Zi Zabalerio
Artist: Chimæra/Project Presents
Event: OFF SITE: An All Ages Drag Revue
Location: I♡Youth2
Description: Kick off Portland's Pride Month with chimæra/project's all-ages drag revue at Lloyd Center Mall! Featuring members of the chimæra/project collective and performers from the broader community, including a 12-year-old drag performer. Performances by the Eggboy, Boy Ditzy, Iram, The Weaver, Chuck the Farts, Mona Chrome, Anna Karenema, and PAL Robotron will explore themes of networks, community, and care, as well as chimæra/project's ongoing inquiry into incongruity, mutation, and existence on the margins. This event also showcases our collective's ever-changing installation in the windows of I♡Youth2.
Artist: Sarah Rushford
Event: Elk Woke Here Once (Aware of the World Already)
Description: Reading, discussion, and generative writing exercise with guests Juleen Johnson, Briseida Pagador, and Sarah Rushford. The event will delve into Rushford's textual video work "Elk Woke Here Once (Aware of the World Already)" through a reading, discussion, and participatory writing exercise.
Artist: Carla Bengtson (in collaboration with composer Juliet Palmer, choreographer Darion Smith, and perfumer Dannielle Sergent)
Event: Other Nations: Scent-Sharing Ritual and Performance
Description: Other Nations explores the life worlds of other creatures and our own animal-related modes of being. The event features a scent-sharing ritual followed by a dance performance choreographed by Darion Smith and music composed by Juliet Palmer.
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May 4
Artist: Horatio Law
Event: Residency Closing Reception
Location: Portland Chinatown Museum
Event: Oregon Rising Above Hate
Location: Lan Su Chinese Garden
Description: Join together to celebrate Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month and the AANHPI (Asian, Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander) community, its resilience, and commit to combat the continued rise anti-Asian hate.
Artist: Epiphany Couch
Event: Burdened With More Beautiful Things: An Artist Talk and Reading with Epiphany Couch and Cliff Taylor
Description: As seekers, storytellers, and sensitive souls, Couch and Taylor will discuss their inspirations and the connections between their respective works and practices.
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June 1, 2024
Artist: Vo Vo
Description: Over six months into an escalation of an ongoing occupation and genocide, some of us are in deep grief. Vo Vo provides direct care sessions for those whose lives are impacted by settler colonialism and/or imperialism on any continent.
Artist: chimera/project
Event: Love That Sustains: Art Market
Location: I♡Youth2
Description: chimæra/project presents: Love That Sustains: Art Market, an arts market featuring work by chimæra/project collective members, artists from previous chimæra iterations, and members of our larger network.
Artist: Maxx Katz
Event: Yelling Choir
Description: Yelling Choir is a femme, women, and nonbinary performance ensemble, created by Maxx Katz, that reimagines voice, presence, gender, and power. The choir is a vehicle of experimental relational technology, using play, somatic awareness, and vocal practice to reimagine community organization. This performance is a collaborative composition which calls for a socially aware aesthetic of listening and seeing, that includes social relationship as a moving element of the internal composition of the piece.
Artist: Methods Body
Event: Covert/Overt
Description: Covert/Overt is a new sound art composition by Portland duo Methods Body—Luke Wyland and John Niekrasz. This piece celebrates speech diversity through the lens of people who stutter, Wyland being a person who stutters himself. Methods Body interviewed people from Portland and abroad, drawing musical inspiration from the rhythmic fingerprints and cadences of different individuals’ disfluencies. Covert/Overt employs technological refraction and acoustic syllabic mirroring to share and expand upon some aspects of what it’s like communicating with different forms of verbal disfluency. Special thanks to the National Stuttering Association's Portland, OR, chapter and SPACE (Stuttering, People, Arts, Community, Education).
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Saturday, June 8th
Artist: Marcus Fischer
Event: Contact Microphones Basics + Extended Techniques (workshop)
Description: This workshop will be an introduction to building and using contact microphones - what they are, what can they be used for and how we make them as well as a deeper look at creative uses for them. It is a hands-on introduction to making contact microphones which includes background history, demonstrations, time to solder and reinforce the connections, and time to experiment with amplifying different materials. Dedicated time to share with others what each person discovered.
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Saturday, June 15
Artist: Bean Gilsdorf
Event: Epistemics for Artists
Location: Portland Institute for Contemporary Art
Description: “Epistemics for Artists” will unpack the concept of being “epistemically adrift”—a term originally coined for mood disorders, but which could also be used to illuminate how artists have become patently alienated from the fruits of their own labor. Engaging with current research on the effects of artistic production, Gilsdorf invites the audience to consider the relationship between artist, community, and city.
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Curator Biographies:
Jackie Im is a curator, writer, and editor based in Oakland, CA. She currently serves at the Associate Curator of the San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries. She is also the co-founder and Director of Et al. and Et al., etc. in San Francisco. Im has organized exhibitions at the Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art (SF), Queens Nails (SF), The Lab (SF), Important Projects (Oakland), Holiday Forever (Jackson Hole, WY), and SFAC Galleries. Her writing has appeared in Fillip Magazine, Art Practical, Curiously Direct, and various exhibition catalogues. She holds a BA in Art History from Mills College and an MA in Curatorial Practice from California College of the Arts.
Anuradha Vikram is a Los Angeles-based writer, educator, and curator of the upcoming Getty Pacific Standard Time Art and Science exhibition Atmosphere of Sound: Sonic Art in Times of Climate Disruption (September 2024-March 2025) at UCLA. They recently curated the mid-career survey exhibition Jaishri Abichandani: Flower-Headed Children at Craft Contemporary (January 30–May 8, 2022) and the series Illuminate LA for the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture (September 2022-January 2023). Their book Decolonizing Culture is a collection of seventeen essays that address questions of race and gender parity in contemporary art spaces (Art Practical/Sming Sming Books, 2017).
The Artists’ Biennial is supported by The Ford Family Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Oregon Cultural Trust, Marie Lamfrom Charitable Foundation, The Robert Lehman Foundation, and Autzen Foundation.
Thank you to our partners ILY2, the Portland Chinatown Museum, PICA, Albina Green, Stelo, and Friends of Noise.
Oregon Contemporary is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the James F. & Marion L. Miller Foundation, Regional Arts & Culture Council, Oregon Community Foundation, Prosper Portland, the Henry Lea Hillman, Jr. Foundation, and the Maybelle Clark Macdonald Fund. Oregon Contemporary also receives support from the Oregon Arts Commission, a state agency funded by the State of Oregon and the National Endowment for the Arts. Other businesses and individuals provide additional support.