The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) is a contemporary performance and visual arts organization in Portland in the U.S. state of Oregon. PICA was founded in 1995 by Kristy Edmunds. Since 2003, it has presented the annual Time-Based Art Festival (TBA) every September in Portland, featuring contemporary and experimental visual art, dance, theatre, film/video, music, and educational and public programs from local, national, and international artists. As of November 2017, it is led by Executive Director Victoria Frey and Artistic Directors Roya Amirsoleymani, Erin Boberg Doughton, and Kristan Kennedy.
The Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) is an art school of Willamette University and is located in Portland, Oregon. Established in 1909, the art school grants Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees and graduate degrees including the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) and Master of Arts (MA) degrees. It has an enrollment of about 500 students. The college merged with Willamette University in 2021.
Claudia Rankine is an American poet, essayist, playwright and the editor of several anthologies. She is the author of five volumes of poetry, two plays and various essays.
David Biespiel is an American poet, critic, memoirist, and novelist. He was born and raised in the Meyerland section of Houston, Texas. He is the founder of the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters in Portland, Oregon and Poet-in-Residence at Oregon State University.
The Oregon Book Awards are presented annually by the Portland, Oregon, United States–based organization Literary Arts, Inc. to honor the "state’s finest accomplishments by Oregon writers who work in genres of poetry, fiction, graphic literature, drama, literary nonfiction, and literature for young readers."
Kristan Kennedy is an American artist, curator, educator and arts administrator. Kennedy is co-artistic director and curator of visual art at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA). She is based in Portland, Oregon, and has exhibited internationally, working with various media including sculpture and painting.
Juliana Huxtable is an American artist, writer, performer, DJ, and co-founder of the New York–based nightlife project Shock Value. Huxtable has exhibited and performed at a number of venues including Reena Spaulings Fine Art, Project Native Informant, Artists Space, the New Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and Institute of Contemporary Arts. Huxtable's multidisciplinary art practice explores a number of projects, such as the internet, the body, history, and text, often through a process she calls "conditioning." Huxtable is a published author of two books and a member of the New York City–based collective House of Ladosha. She is on the roster of the talent agency Discwoman, a New York based collective and talent agency that books DJs for parties and events around the world. She previously lived and worked in New York City, and has been based in Berlin since 2020.
Martine Syms is an American artist residing in Los Angeles, specializing in various mediums including publishing, video, installation, and performance. Her artistic endeavors revolve around themes of identity, particularly the representation of the self, with a focus on subjects like feminism and black culture. Syms frequently employs humor and social commentary as vehicles for exploration within her work. In 2007, she introduced the term "Conceptual Entrepreneur" to describe her artistic approach.
Danielle Cadena Deulen is an American poet, essayist, and academic. She is also the host of the Literary radio program and podcast Lit from the Basement.
Susan Seubert is an American fine art and editorial photographer based in Portland, Oregon and Maui, Hawaii. She has exhibited internationally, photographing subjects from Canada to Thailand.
Justin Hocking is an American essayist and writer of memoir, literary nonfiction, and short stories.
Hannah Black is a British visual artist, critic, and writer. Her work spans video, text and performance.
Intisar Abioto is an artist and storyteller currently living and working in Portland Oregon. Working within and between the forms of dance, photography, collaboration, prose, and poetry, Abioto explores the meaning of time, space, and belonging within the construction of who, where, and what composes the African diaspora. Abioto has travelled across North America, Europe, and Africa to tell stories of personal identity and collective belonging. Her work interprets the tradition of Africans who can fly into contemporary and local landscapes, highlighting the fluidity of migration across national and natural boundaries. With the five women artists in her family, she is a cofounder of Studio Abiotto.
Rindon Johnson is an American artist and writer. Johnson has based his work on language and its slippery nature. He uses animal hides, animation, virtual reality, wood and vaseline to consider capital accumulation and the systemic violences that maintain it. Johnson has exhibited and performed internationally, and is a published author. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York and Berlin, Germany.
Aria Dean is an American artist, critic, and curator. Until 2021, Dean served as Curator and Editor of Rhizome. Her writings have appeared in various art publications including Artforum, e-flux, The New Inquiry, Art in America, and Topical Cream. Dean has exhibited internationally at venues such as Foxy Production and American Medium in New York, Chateau Shatto in Los Angeles, and Arcadia Missa in London. Dean also co-directs As It Stands LA, an artists project space that opened in 2015. Dean lives and works in New York City and Los Angeles. She is represented by Greene Naftali.
Elizabeth Mputu is an artist based in Orlando, Florida. Mputu is a "multiplatform, multimedia artist who engages in work which relates to sex, gender, race and queerness". Mputu works within a space of feminist net art to understand the whiteness and privilege on the internet. Mputu constructs projects using interactive media, video, sculpture and installation.
Matthew Minicucci is an American writer and poet. His first full-length collection, Translation, won the 2015 Wick Poetry Prize. His second collection, Small Gods, was published in 2017 and won the 2019 Stafford/Hall Oregon Book Award in Poetry. Having received numerous fellowships and residencies, including with the National Park Service, the C. Hamilton Bailey Oregon Literary Fellowship, the Stanley P. Young Fellowship in Poetry from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the James Merrill House, Minicucci was named the 2019 Dartmouth College Poet-in-Residence at the Frost Place.
Demian DinéYazhi' is a Native American artist and activist. Their work and advocacy focuses on indigenous and LGBTQ+ people and "consists of photography, sculpture, text, sound, video, land art performance, installation, street art and fabrics art."
Zoé Whitley is an American art historian and curator who has been director of Chisenhale Gallery since 2020. Based in London, she has held curatorial positions at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Tate galleries, and the Hayward Gallery. At the Tate galleries, Whitley co-curated the 2017 exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, which ARTnews called one of the most important art exhibitions of the 2010s. Soon after she was chosen to organise the British pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale.
