2016 Contemporary Northwest Art Awards
Feb 13, 2016 – May 8, 2016
The Museum’s fourth biennial awards exhibition, 2016 Contemporary Northwest Art Awards features eight outstanding artists including a two-person artist’s collaborative. Four of the eight artists are immigrants, coming to the Northwest from Asia and Europe and contributing to the exhibition’s conceptual strength with a fresh view of America. Works in the exhibition address global and regional humanist issues —prejudice, belonging, war, the evolution of power, omnipresent technology, and the environment. Ranging from large-scale installations to intimate ceramic portraits, the multimedia exhibition showcases works in combinations of neon, video, glass, drawing, painting, and clay with innovative approaches to both new and traditional media.At the opening reception one artist will receive the $10,000 Arlene Schnitzer prize selected by the Museum’s curatorial staff. From nomination to final prize, the biennial awards process delivers a two-fold benefit: It allows the Portland Art Museum to identify a number of the Northwest’s exceptional talents, and it provides the museum with a far deeper understanding of the new work taking place in the region by both established and emerging artists. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog, artists’ lectures and other exhibit related programs.Bonnie Laing-Malcolmson, The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Northwest Art, and invited curatorial advisor Jessica Hunter-Larsen, curator of IDEA Space, Interdisciplinary Experimental Arts, at Colorado College, received over 200 nominations from respected regional arts professionals of outstanding contemporary artists from Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. Nominees were selected on the basis of quality, innovation, relevance to community or global issues, continuity of vision and dedication to studio practice. Hunter-Larsen and Laing-Malcolmson reviewed the applications to select 24 four finalists, from which the group of seven award winners was chosen.
Organized by the Portland Art Museum and curated by Bonnie Laing-Malcolmson, The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Northwest Art.
Using drawing and video, Haven employs words and geometric spatial relationships to illustrate the fragmented bombardment of technology on the human psyche in the new millennium. With language and mixed media, she binds together two- and three-dimensional imagery to create elegant modernist objects that suggest unanswered questions.
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Lead Pencil Studio, Seattle, Washington
Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo use video, sculpture, drawing, installation and photography to reveal spatial qualities of the built environment that influence human behavior. This combination of styles expands the understanding of the constructed surface, which scripts a large portion of human movement and perception.
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Dana Lynn Louis, Portland, Oregon
Louis is inspired by the human body and its connection to timeless and fascinating systems of the natural and constructed worlds—linking time, space, and energy through dynamic multimedia installations. Creating spaces with intimate and large-scale drawings, light projections, and sculptural objects, she uses glass, light, and shadow to achieve a glitteringly magical environment.
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Helen O’Toole, Seattle, Washington
O’Toole creates a prolonged moment where the painting’s vast space evokes an image with a resonating emotional depth. Metaphorically employing the moody landscape of rural Ireland, she channels a deep-seated pain and misery resulting from a past lived amidst a compilation of grudges, suspicion, and violence.
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Akio Takamori, Seattle, Washington
Takamori’s new, 40-foot-long, lyrically painted clay installation addresses the war torn world through the faces of its threatened children. In our contemporary society of a great mix of people, these diverse faces remind us that life begins unblemished by clashing ideologies. Additionally, a series of serene ceramic landscapes quoted from historic Japanese and European paintings provide a hopeful and contemplative view of the natural environment.
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Willem Volkersz, Bozeman, Montana
Volkersz has an immigrant’s fascination with America. Arriving in Seattle from Amsterdam shortly after World War II, he began photographing a newly discovered landscape of billboards, vernacular architecture, and neon signs. Over time, he became fascinated with roadside art and pop culture: larger-than-life advertising figures, postcards, and travel souvenirs. Volkersz creates a charmingly critical narrative around his Dutch heritage and American citizenship.
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Samantha Wall, Portland, Oregon
Wall seeks to communicate the interior emotional state that separates one’s sense of self from their body. Growing up as an ethnically diverse child in South Korea and the American South, she learned to navigate between social and cultural boundaries. Her quietly powerful work utilizes modest materials, such as graphite or charcoal, to build a supple, interlaced texture of marks which are suspended on the surface of paper.
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Register on Zoom or join on Facebook Live
Join IDEAL PDX artists Jessica Lagunas, William Hernandez, Romina del Castillo, José Solis and Daniel Santollo in a panel discussion that talks about the process and the reflections that inspired the artists to create their mural for Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Mexican Modernism. Established in 2010, IDEAL PDX is a collaborative group of Latino artists that accomplish new projects displaying individual Visual and Performing Artists in the Northwest. In creating their mural in the Museum’s Schnitzer Courtyard, the artists envision Frida Kahlo and Diego coming from the Mictlan – the Mexican-infra world, to visit the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Arriving to the Multnomah, Cathlamet, Clackamas, Chinook, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla, and other tribe territories, they bring with them their beloved México. Like in a dream, Frida and Diego open and enlighten their way to the PNW to explore other forms of life and see themselves within the people’s lives. This panel discussion highlights the artists’ special attention to collecting and studying details of Frida and Diego’s life together and their process of reflecting these details in their mural work.
IDEAL PDX‘s mission is to expand and include artists from Latinoamerica around the State of Oregon to provide professional development to strengthen the artists’ integration into the local economy. The origin of IDEAL PDX began in July 2010, when Milagro invited leaders representing a variety of disciplines to meet and share their advice, networks, and leadership, planting the seed for a collaborative creative group. Over the years, IDEAL PDX has received commissions and support from different organizations. One of the principal sponsors is The Center for the Arts P’5, who has supported over 50 local artists from Latinoamerica by exhibiting their work in this space. Each year artists have the opportunity to sell and present their work from different disciplines at IDEAL’s annual festival and market, EL TRUEQUE. IDEAL PDX is committed to elevating the community values by humanizing and invigorating shared spaces through the transformative power of public art.
Jessica Lagunas, Co-Founder and Creative Artistic Director of IDEAL PDX. Lagunas is a Mexican-born Certified e.i- Artistic Life Coach, a multidisciplinary artist, a teaching artist, and an Arts and Culture Program Manager. Lagunas has worked tirelessly to strengthen the growing network of artists of all disciplines, finding unique opportunities to socialize, receive professional and artistic training, and showcase their work in different parts of the city. As committed as she is to exploring and strengthening her skills in other disciplines, she is passionate about fortifying the Latino Artistic Community of Oregon.
William Hernandez, IDEAL PDX Curator and Lead Project Art Director, is a Portland-based painter whose artwork creates a bridge spanning his traditions and memories to his life today as an artist, family man, and Peruvian living in the Pacific Northwest. Trained as a painter at Lima’s Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes (1995-2002), Hernandez worked as a fine artist and graphic designer for public and international institutions in Lima before settling in Portland in 2009. His surreal, graphic, and illustrative style creates layered narratives infused with lingering emotions from whimsy to melancholy. Hernandez is an active artist, teacher, and organizer in the Pacific Northwest.
Romina del Castillo was born in Lima, Peru, raised in Santiago de Chile, and has been an immigrant in the United States since the age of 16. She obtained her Bachelors of Fine Arts with an emphasis on Drawing and Painting at California State University Long Beach. She relocated to Portland, Oregon in 2018. Her artistic practice remains close to her roots with South American fauna and landscape as recurring themes. She works in various media, including drawing, painting, and straw marquetry. She’s a new member of IDEAL PDX, currently collaborating in their mural series around town.
Jose Solis is a Portland mural artist & designer/art director for film & television, with over 30 years of experience. Jose’s work has been recognized for his unique style with awards including: Silver Medal Award at the International Film & Television Festival of New York, Best Spiritual Documentary Judge’s Award winner, People’s Choice Award Winner, & more. Jose was born in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. An Oregonian since1969, he founded Creative Art Services in Portland, OR in 1983, offering services in set design & scene shop, as well as the production of murals, signs & custom prop fabrication.
Daniel Santollo is a Portland- based, indigenous/Chicano, self-taught visual artist. He was born in Michoacan, Mexico, and raised in Portland. He is a creative person by nature. Daniel loves to bring ideas to life, and is very passionate about what he does. The vibrant colors, detailed patterns, and rich history of his indigenous Mexican culture play a big role in his life and work. Daniel’s artwork ranges from digital illustrations, printmaking, logos, traditional paintings to murals.
Presented in conjunction with Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection.
Join Portland Art Museum docents for a slow looking, interactive virtual tour experience. We will look closely at art and engage in group discussion. Come along as we create space together for a deeper understanding of artworks currently on view at the museum.
This program is free and will be presented on Zoom. Closed Captioning will be available.
June 14, 21, 28, 2022
Saturdays | 6:00 – 7:30 p.m. | 3 Sessions
Online via Zoom
Instructor: Donal Mosher
$180
Please note: Issues of sexuality, race, and some violent imagery are part of the class.
Centered on the heyday of practical special effects in 1980’s horror and science fiction, this 3 week online seminar will examine the history of bodily transformation from the earliest days of cinema through contemporary films and visual arts. Through comparative viewings, short readings, and weekly discussions we will examine the concepts of the cinematic body; representation of disease, bodily dissolution, and reparation; and the viewer relationship to on-screen physicality.s Discussion sessions will take place once a week. The third and final session will contain a special guest presentation by Nelson Lowry who has worked as head production designer for Danny Boyle, Tim Burton, Wes Anderson, as well as recent Portland based Laika films.
The 1980’s are considered the golden era of gore, goo, and cinematic bodies in transformation. Censorship was looser than it had been in decades; physical special effects technologies were advancing rapidly; and both low budget and massive genre spectacles were in high demand. At the same time the AIDS crisis was raging, fears of nuclear war pervaded culture, and the world was rushing into the digital age. The bodily images from the era not only reflect its particular contradictions and fears, they also carry within them a history of representation and cultural conceptions of the body that go back to beginning of cinema. We may have left latex skin and rubber organs behind but in these times, when the vulnerability and strength of the body are the primary global issues, there is a greater need than ever to examine the ways we have shape and are shaped by images of the transforming body.
Donal Mosher is a filmmaker, writer, and musician. He is the co-director with Mike Palmieri of the award-winning documentaries October Country and The Gospel of Eureka. Their live cinema work NIGHT WIND REMEMBERS premiered at the Museum of The Moving Image’s First Look Festival in 2019. His written work has been published in the LAMBDA award-winning Portland Queer anthology, Talk House, and the U.K based Failed States Journal. Most recently he is the creator and co-director with Mike Palmieri of Spectral Transmissions, an ongoing audio broadcast and multi-media exhibit made in partnership with the Co:Laboratory at the Northwest Film Center. Spectral Transmissions Onstage had its world premiere at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam 2021.
Register now
Performance dates
June 16, 17, 18, and 19
June 23, 24, 25, and 26
Portland-based choreographer and artist Takahiro Yamamoto’s new collaborative dance installation Opacity of Performance investigates the physical and emotional effects that both dancers and viewers undergo when visibility, activity, and attention vary over an extended duration.
In the Portland Art Museum’s Laura & Roger Meier Family Gallery of European art, viewers will encounter three performance areas divided by three movable curtains, which dancers will move to obscure, reveal, and shape viewers’ experiences of the solo performances coexisting in these distinct spaces. Yamamoto’s choreography centers states of visibility and invisibility, created collaboratively with the performers. Both in design and movement, the durational performance explores the tension inherent to being seen, which both validates the performer’s subjectivity and objectifies the individual as a member of a specific group. Resisting such visibility counteracts society’s drive to control and empowers otherness in the face of cultural repression.
Curated by Sara Krajewski, the Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Lead support provided by the Oregon Community Foundation’s Creative Heights Initiative with additional support from the Museum’s Art Gym Endowment. Creative development supported by MacDowell, lumber room, the Henry Art Gallery, Velocity Dance Center, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and the Bogliasco Foundation.
The performers Intisar Abioto,Roland Dahwen, Nolan Hanson, Garrick Imatani, Sydney Jackson, Irene June, Stephanie Schaaf, Emily Squires, and Takahiro Yamamoto will be on a rotational schedule. Thank you to Ben Evans as the project’s dramaturg.
About the Artist
Takahiro Yamamoto is an artist and choreographer based in Portland, Oregon (on the ancestral lands of Cowlitz, Clackamas and Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde). His artistic approach is relational and observational. Starting his conceptual investigations with questions—currently about the phenomenological effects of time, the mutability of identity, and the social/emotional implications of visibility—he often invites collaborators to bring their own perspectives into the creation. He has received support from Bogliasco Foundation, Oregon Community Foundation, MacDowell, National Performance Network, Japan Foundation, Regional Arts & Culture Council, Africa Contemporary Arts Consortium, danceWEB scholarship program, and others. His performance and visual art works have been presented at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA); Diverseworks, Houston; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; and GoDown Arts Centre, Nairobi, among other venues. He co-directs the performance company madhause with Ben Evans and is part of the Portland-based support group Physical Education with Allie Hankins, keyon gaskin, and Lu Yim. Yamamoto holds an MFA in Visual Studies from the Pacific Northwest College of Art.
Performance dates
June 16, 17, 18, and 19
June 23, 24, 25, and 26
Portland-based choreographer and artist Takahiro Yamamoto’s new collaborative dance installation Opacity of Performance investigates the physical and emotional effects that both dancers and viewers undergo when visibility, activity, and attention vary over an extended duration.
In the Portland Art Museum’s Laura & Roger Meier Family Gallery of European art, viewers will encounter three performance areas divided by three movable curtains, which dancers will move to obscure, reveal, and shape viewers’ experiences of the solo performances coexisting in these distinct spaces. Yamamoto’s choreography centers states of visibility and invisibility, created collaboratively with the performers. Both in design and movement, the durational performance explores the tension inherent to being seen, which both validates the performer’s subjectivity and objectifies the individual as a member of a specific group. Resisting such visibility counteracts society’s drive to control and empowers otherness in the face of cultural repression.
Curated by Sara Krajewski, the Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Lead support provided by the Oregon Community Foundation’s Creative Heights Initiative with additional support from the Museum’s Art Gym Endowment. Creative development supported by MacDowell, lumber room, the Henry Art Gallery, Velocity Dance Center, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and the Bogliasco Foundation.
The performers Intisar Abioto,Roland Dahwen, Nolan Hanson, Garrick Imatani, Sydney Jackson, Irene June, Stephanie Schaaf, Emily Squires, and Takahiro Yamamoto will be on a rotational schedule. Thank you to Ben Evans as the project’s dramaturg.
About the Artist
Takahiro Yamamoto is an artist and choreographer based in Portland, Oregon (on the ancestral lands of Cowlitz, Clackamas and Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde). His artistic approach is relational and observational. Starting his conceptual investigations with questions—currently about the phenomenological effects of time, the mutability of identity, and the social/emotional implications of visibility—he often invites collaborators to bring their own perspectives into the creation. He has received support from Bogliasco Foundation, Oregon Community Foundation, MacDowell, National Performance Network, Japan Foundation, Regional Arts & Culture Council, Africa Contemporary Arts Consortium, danceWEB scholarship program, and others. His performance and visual art works have been presented at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA); Diverseworks, Houston; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; and GoDown Arts Centre, Nairobi, among other venues. He co-directs the performance company madhause with Ben Evans and is part of the Portland-based support group Physical Education with Allie Hankins, keyon gaskin, and Lu Yim. Yamamoto holds an MFA in Visual Studies from the Pacific Northwest College of Art.
Perhaps museums need performance…but does performance need the museum? This in-person roundtable conversation will explore issues of presenting performance in museums from the curatorial and artistic perspectives. Participants are Los Angeles–based artist taisha paggett, Associate Professor in Dance at University of California Riverside, Ben Evans, artist, designer, dramaturg for Opacity of Performance, Opacity of Performance director/choreographer Takahiro Yamamoto, and Sara Krajewski, The Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Questions from the audience will be invited to further the discussion. Audience members will be invited to stay for Opacity of Performance beginning at noon.
Participant bios
taisha paggett makes things and is interested in what bodies do. They/she believes language is tricky, thoughts are powerful and that people are most beautiful when looking up. paggett received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ Merce Cunningham Award in 2019 and is an Associate Professor in Dance at UC Riverside.
Ben Evans works as a director, writer and designer across the realms of the physical and virtual. He has worked with Takahiro Yamamoto and the performers over the past two years as the dramaturg of “Opacity of Performance.”
Takahiro Yamamoto is a multi-disciplinary artist, and the director/choreographer for Opacity of Performance.
Sara Krajewski joined the Portland Art Museum in 2015 and has expanded the contemporary program through exhibitions, performances, and publications.
Performance dates
June 16, 17, 18, and 19
June 23, 24, 25, and 26
Portland-based choreographer and artist Takahiro Yamamoto’s new collaborative dance installation Opacity of Performance investigates the physical and emotional effects that both dancers and viewers undergo when visibility, activity, and attention vary over an extended duration.
In the Portland Art Museum’s Laura & Roger Meier Family Gallery of European art, viewers will encounter three performance areas divided by three movable curtains, which dancers will move to obscure, reveal, and shape viewers’ experiences of the solo performances coexisting in these distinct spaces. Yamamoto’s choreography centers states of visibility and invisibility, created collaboratively with the performers. Both in design and movement, the durational performance explores the tension inherent to being seen, which both validates the performer’s subjectivity and objectifies the individual as a member of a specific group. Resisting such visibility counteracts society’s drive to control and empowers otherness in the face of cultural repression.
Curated by Sara Krajewski, the Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Lead support provided by the Oregon Community Foundation’s Creative Heights Initiative with additional support from the Museum’s Art Gym Endowment. Creative development supported by MacDowell, lumber room, the Henry Art Gallery, Velocity Dance Center, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and the Bogliasco Foundation.
The performers Intisar Abioto,Roland Dahwen, Nolan Hanson, Garrick Imatani, Sydney Jackson, Irene June, Stephanie Schaaf, Emily Squires, and Takahiro Yamamoto will be on a rotational schedule. Thank you to Ben Evans as the project’s dramaturg.
About the Artist
Takahiro Yamamoto is an artist and choreographer based in Portland, Oregon (on the ancestral lands of Cowlitz, Clackamas and Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde). His artistic approach is relational and observational. Starting his conceptual investigations with questions—currently about the phenomenological effects of time, the mutability of identity, and the social/emotional implications of visibility—he often invites collaborators to bring their own perspectives into the creation. He has received support from Bogliasco Foundation, Oregon Community Foundation, MacDowell, National Performance Network, Japan Foundation, Regional Arts & Culture Council, Africa Contemporary Arts Consortium, danceWEB scholarship program, and others. His performance and visual art works have been presented at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA); Diverseworks, Houston; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; and GoDown Arts Centre, Nairobi, among other venues. He co-directs the performance company madhause with Ben Evans and is part of the Portland-based support group Physical Education with Allie Hankins, keyon gaskin, and Lu Yim. Yamamoto holds an MFA in Visual Studies from the Pacific Northwest College of Art.
Performance dates
June 16, 17, 18, and 19
June 23, 24, 25, and 26
Portland-based choreographer and artist Takahiro Yamamoto’s new collaborative dance installation Opacity of Performance investigates the physical and emotional effects that both dancers and viewers undergo when visibility, activity, and attention vary over an extended duration.
In the Portland Art Museum’s Laura & Roger Meier Family Gallery of European art, viewers will encounter three performance areas divided by three movable curtains, which dancers will move to obscure, reveal, and shape viewers’ experiences of the solo performances coexisting in these distinct spaces. Yamamoto’s choreography centers states of visibility and invisibility, created collaboratively with the performers. Both in design and movement, the durational performance explores the tension inherent to being seen, which both validates the performer’s subjectivity and objectifies the individual as a member of a specific group. Resisting such visibility counteracts society’s drive to control and empowers otherness in the face of cultural repression.
Curated by Sara Krajewski, the Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Lead support provided by the Oregon Community Foundation’s Creative Heights Initiative with additional support from the Museum’s Art Gym Endowment. Creative development supported by MacDowell, lumber room, the Henry Art Gallery, Velocity Dance Center, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and the Bogliasco Foundation.
The performers Intisar Abioto,Roland Dahwen, Nolan Hanson, Garrick Imatani, Sydney Jackson, Irene June, Stephanie Schaaf, Emily Squires, and Takahiro Yamamoto will be on a rotational schedule. Thank you to Ben Evans as the project’s dramaturg.
About the Artist
Takahiro Yamamoto is an artist and choreographer based in Portland, Oregon (on the ancestral lands of Cowlitz, Clackamas and Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde). His artistic approach is relational and observational. Starting his conceptual investigations with questions—currently about the phenomenological effects of time, the mutability of identity, and the social/emotional implications of visibility—he often invites collaborators to bring their own perspectives into the creation. He has received support from Bogliasco Foundation, Oregon Community Foundation, MacDowell, National Performance Network, Japan Foundation, Regional Arts & Culture Council, Africa Contemporary Arts Consortium, danceWEB scholarship program, and others. His performance and visual art works have been presented at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA); Diverseworks, Houston; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; and GoDown Arts Centre, Nairobi, among other venues. He co-directs the performance company madhause with Ben Evans and is part of the Portland-based support group Physical Education with Allie Hankins, keyon gaskin, and Lu Yim. Yamamoto holds an MFA in Visual Studies from the Pacific Northwest College of Art.
Join Portland Art Museum docents for a slow looking, interactive virtual tour experience. We will look closely at art and engage in group discussion. Come along as we create space together for a deeper understanding of artworks currently on view at the museum.
This program is free and will be presented on Zoom. Closed Captioning will be available.
Performance dates
June 16, 17, 18, and 19
June 23, 24, 25, and 26
Portland-based choreographer and artist Takahiro Yamamoto’s new collaborative dance installation Opacity of Performance investigates the physical and emotional effects that both dancers and viewers undergo when visibility, activity, and attention vary over an extended duration.
In the Portland Art Museum’s Laura & Roger Meier Family Gallery of European art, viewers will encounter three performance areas divided by three movable curtains, which dancers will move to obscure, reveal, and shape viewers’ experiences of the solo performances coexisting in these distinct spaces. Yamamoto’s choreography centers states of visibility and invisibility, created collaboratively with the performers. Both in design and movement, the durational performance explores the tension inherent to being seen, which both validates the performer’s subjectivity and objectifies the individual as a member of a specific group. Resisting such visibility counteracts society’s drive to control and empowers otherness in the face of cultural repression.
Curated by Sara Krajewski, the Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Lead support provided by the Oregon Community Foundation’s Creative Heights Initiative with additional support from the Museum’s Art Gym Endowment. Creative development supported by MacDowell, lumber room, the Henry Art Gallery, Velocity Dance Center, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and the Bogliasco Foundation.
The performers Intisar Abioto,Roland Dahwen, Nolan Hanson, Garrick Imatani, Sydney Jackson, Irene June, Stephanie Schaaf, Emily Squires, and Takahiro Yamamoto will be on a rotational schedule. Thank you to Ben Evans as the project’s dramaturg.
About the Artist
Takahiro Yamamoto is an artist and choreographer based in Portland, Oregon (on the ancestral lands of Cowlitz, Clackamas and Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde). His artistic approach is relational and observational. Starting his conceptual investigations with questions—currently about the phenomenological effects of time, the mutability of identity, and the social/emotional implications of visibility—he often invites collaborators to bring their own perspectives into the creation. He has received support from Bogliasco Foundation, Oregon Community Foundation, MacDowell, National Performance Network, Japan Foundation, Regional Arts & Culture Council, Africa Contemporary Arts Consortium, danceWEB scholarship program, and others. His performance and visual art works have been presented at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA); Diverseworks, Houston; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; and GoDown Arts Centre, Nairobi, among other venues. He co-directs the performance company madhause with Ben Evans and is part of the Portland-based support group Physical Education with Allie Hankins, keyon gaskin, and Lu Yim. Yamamoto holds an MFA in Visual Studies from the Pacific Northwest College of Art.
Performance dates
June 16, 17, 18, and 19
June 23, 24, 25, and 26
Portland-based choreographer and artist Takahiro Yamamoto’s new collaborative dance installation Opacity of Performance investigates the physical and emotional effects that both dancers and viewers undergo when visibility, activity, and attention vary over an extended duration.
In the Portland Art Museum’s Laura & Roger Meier Family Gallery of European art, viewers will encounter three performance areas divided by three movable curtains, which dancers will move to obscure, reveal, and shape viewers’ experiences of the solo performances coexisting in these distinct spaces. Yamamoto’s choreography centers states of visibility and invisibility, created collaboratively with the performers. Both in design and movement, the durational performance explores the tension inherent to being seen, which both validates the performer’s subjectivity and objectifies the individual as a member of a specific group. Resisting such visibility counteracts society’s drive to control and empowers otherness in the face of cultural repression.
Curated by Sara Krajewski, the Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Lead support provided by the Oregon Community Foundation’s Creative Heights Initiative with additional support from the Museum’s Art Gym Endowment. Creative development supported by MacDowell, lumber room, the Henry Art Gallery, Velocity Dance Center, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and the Bogliasco Foundation.
The performers Intisar Abioto,Roland Dahwen, Nolan Hanson, Garrick Imatani, Sydney Jackson, Irene June, Stephanie Schaaf, Emily Squires, and Takahiro Yamamoto will be on a rotational schedule. Thank you to Ben Evans as the project’s dramaturg.
About the Artist
Takahiro Yamamoto is an artist and choreographer based in Portland, Oregon (on the ancestral lands of Cowlitz, Clackamas and Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde). His artistic approach is relational and observational. Starting his conceptual investigations with questions—currently about the phenomenological effects of time, the mutability of identity, and the social/emotional implications of visibility—he often invites collaborators to bring their own perspectives into the creation. He has received support from Bogliasco Foundation, Oregon Community Foundation, MacDowell, National Performance Network, Japan Foundation, Regional Arts & Culture Council, Africa Contemporary Arts Consortium, danceWEB scholarship program, and others. His performance and visual art works have been presented at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA); Diverseworks, Houston; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; and GoDown Arts Centre, Nairobi, among other venues. He co-directs the performance company madhause with Ben Evans and is part of the Portland-based support group Physical Education with Allie Hankins, keyon gaskin, and Lu Yim. Yamamoto holds an MFA in Visual Studies from the Pacific Northwest College of Art.
Philosopher and poet Édouard Glissant’s ideas have been influential in political thought, social critique, creative inquiries, and cultural criticism in various corners of the world ever since his English-translated publication of Poetics of Relation became available in 1997. One influential idea he describes is opacity: what cannot be known in identity, phenomena, and human relationship. Glissant’s thoughts and propositions are vital to the foundational research for Takahiro Yamamoto’s Opacity of Performance. For this public conversation, he invites writer and performance theorist Joshua Chambers-Letson to join him in reflecting on what makes Glissant’s proposition so resonant yet so ungraspable.
Joshua Chambers-Letson is a writer and performance theorist who researches and teaches courses in performance studies, critical race theory, and queer of color critique. He is Associate Professor of Performance Studies at Northwestern University, and currently a visiting professor of Theater and Performance Studies at Yale University.
Takahiro Yamamoto is a multi-disciplinary artist, and the director/choreographer for Opacity of Performance.
Performance dates
June 16, 17, 18, and 19
June 23, 24, 25, and 26
Portland-based choreographer and artist Takahiro Yamamoto’s new collaborative dance installation Opacity of Performance investigates the physical and emotional effects that both dancers and viewers undergo when visibility, activity, and attention vary over an extended duration.
In the Portland Art Museum’s Laura & Roger Meier Family Gallery of European art, viewers will encounter three performance areas divided by three movable curtains, which dancers will move to obscure, reveal, and shape viewers’ experiences of the solo performances coexisting in these distinct spaces. Yamamoto’s choreography centers states of visibility and invisibility, created collaboratively with the performers. Both in design and movement, the durational performance explores the tension inherent to being seen, which both validates the performer’s subjectivity and objectifies the individual as a member of a specific group. Resisting such visibility counteracts society’s drive to control and empowers otherness in the face of cultural repression.
Curated by Sara Krajewski, the Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Lead support provided by the Oregon Community Foundation’s Creative Heights Initiative with additional support from the Museum’s Art Gym Endowment. Creative development supported by MacDowell, lumber room, the Henry Art Gallery, Velocity Dance Center, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and the Bogliasco Foundation.
The performers Intisar Abioto,Roland Dahwen, Nolan Hanson, Garrick Imatani, Sydney Jackson, Irene June, Stephanie Schaaf, Emily Squires, and Takahiro Yamamoto will be on a rotational schedule. Thank you to Ben Evans as the project’s dramaturg.
About the Artist
Takahiro Yamamoto is an artist and choreographer based in Portland, Oregon (on the ancestral lands of Cowlitz, Clackamas and Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde). His artistic approach is relational and observational. Starting his conceptual investigations with questions—currently about the phenomenological effects of time, the mutability of identity, and the social/emotional implications of visibility—he often invites collaborators to bring their own perspectives into the creation. He has received support from Bogliasco Foundation, Oregon Community Foundation, MacDowell, National Performance Network, Japan Foundation, Regional Arts & Culture Council, Africa Contemporary Arts Consortium, danceWEB scholarship program, and others. His performance and visual art works have been presented at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA); Diverseworks, Houston; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; and GoDown Arts Centre, Nairobi, among other venues. He co-directs the performance company madhause with Ben Evans and is part of the Portland-based support group Physical Education with Allie Hankins, keyon gaskin, and Lu Yim. Yamamoto holds an MFA in Visual Studies from the Pacific Northwest College of Art.
Join Portland Art Museum docents for a slow looking, interactive virtual tour experience. We will look closely at art and engage in group discussion. Come along as we create space together for a deeper understanding of artworks currently on view at the museum.
This program is free and will be presented on Zoom. Closed Captioning will be available.
Performance dates
June 16, 17, 18, and 19
June 23, 24, 25, and 26
Portland-based choreographer and artist Takahiro Yamamoto’s new collaborative dance installation Opacity of Performance investigates the physical and emotional effects that both dancers and viewers undergo when visibility, activity, and attention vary over an extended duration.
In the Portland Art Museum’s Laura & Roger Meier Family Gallery of European art, viewers will encounter three performance areas divided by three movable curtains, which dancers will move to obscure, reveal, and shape viewers’ experiences of the solo performances coexisting in these distinct spaces. Yamamoto’s choreography centers states of visibility and invisibility, created collaboratively with the performers. Both in design and movement, the durational performance explores the tension inherent to being seen, which both validates the performer’s subjectivity and objectifies the individual as a member of a specific group. Resisting such visibility counteracts society’s drive to control and empowers otherness in the face of cultural repression.
Curated by Sara Krajewski, the Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Lead support provided by the Oregon Community Foundation’s Creative Heights Initiative with additional support from the Museum’s Art Gym Endowment. Creative development supported by MacDowell, lumber room, the Henry Art Gallery, Velocity Dance Center, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and the Bogliasco Foundation.
The performers Intisar Abioto,Roland Dahwen, Nolan Hanson, Garrick Imatani, Sydney Jackson, Irene June, Stephanie Schaaf, Emily Squires, and Takahiro Yamamoto will be on a rotational schedule. Thank you to Ben Evans as the project’s dramaturg.
About the Artist
Takahiro Yamamoto is an artist and choreographer based in Portland, Oregon (on the ancestral lands of Cowlitz, Clackamas and Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde). His artistic approach is relational and observational. Starting his conceptual investigations with questions—currently about the phenomenological effects of time, the mutability of identity, and the social/emotional implications of visibility—he often invites collaborators to bring their own perspectives into the creation. He has received support from Bogliasco Foundation, Oregon Community Foundation, MacDowell, National Performance Network, Japan Foundation, Regional Arts & Culture Council, Africa Contemporary Arts Consortium, danceWEB scholarship program, and others. His performance and visual art works have been presented at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA); Diverseworks, Houston; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; and GoDown Arts Centre, Nairobi, among other venues. He co-directs the performance company madhause with Ben Evans and is part of the Portland-based support group Physical Education with Allie Hankins, keyon gaskin, and Lu Yim. Yamamoto holds an MFA in Visual Studies from the Pacific Northwest College of Art.
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