About The Residency PRogram
During the 2020–21 school year, we are hosting a virtual artist residency program that will continue our ongoing, immersive arts programming with K-5th grade students at Dr. MLK Jr. School. Invited artists-in-residence will develop and present artworks made in collaboration with cohorts of elementary school students. These works and images of their collaborative process will be featured in a printed publication at the end of the residency. Artists-in-Residence will also give public, live-broadcast artist talks on a rotating schedule throughout the year.
2020–21 artists-in-residence
Intisar Abioto / Afro Contemporary Art Class (Master Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr) / Soheila Azadi / BRENDA ARTS (Spencer Garland) / KSMoCA’s International Acquisition Committee (Illia Yakovenko) / Lucia Monge / RECESS! (Kim Sutherland and Jordan Rosenblum) / Paula Wilson
Spring Lectures (thursdays at 10am on YouTube)
April 1 — International Acquisition Committee (Illia Yakovenko)
April 8 — Intisar Abioto
April 15 — Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr
April 22 — Soheila Azadi
April 29 — BRENDA ARTS (Spencer Garland)
May 6 — Lucia Monge
May 13 — Paula Wilson
May 20 — Chemi Rosado-Seijo *visiting guest lecture curated by the MFA Art + Social Practice program
May 27 — Akasha Lawrence-Spence *visiting guest lecture
June 3 — Recess! (Kim Sutherland, Jordan Rosenblum)
View the entire lecture schedule here.
In case you missed it…
Visit the archive on our YouTube channel to view past artist talks in this series.
2020-2021 Artists-in-Residence
Intisar Abioto
Intisar Abioto (b. Memphis, TN. 1986) is an artist working across photography, dance, and writing. Moving from the visionary and embodied root of Blackgirl Southern cross-temporal cross-modal storytelling ways, her works refer to the living breath/breadth of people of African descent against the expanse of their storied, geographic, and imaginative landscapes. Working in long-form projects that encompass the visual, folkloric, documentary, and performing arts, she has produced The People Could Fly Project, The Black Portlanders, and The Black.
[photo by Renee Lopez]
Afro Contemporary Art Class (Master Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr)
Master Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr. is black, non-binary, and practices primarily in America. Their collaborative approach results in artwork by and for the people. Stevenson’s practice has been dedicated to supporting young people ages 4 to 18 in developing the necessary skills to encourage advanced imaginative thinking and self-confident expression. They have spent the last year developing the Afro Contemporary Art Class at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School. Stevenson also has a robust portfolio of artist projects centering food and gathering around it, and new work in collaboration with currently and formerly incarcerated folks such as Gallery Blue, a curation and exhibition project, as well as Tin Can Phone, a forthcoming radio show on KBOO Community Radio. They pursue these professional and creative goals passionately because they believe that empowered and open-minded young people are the best and most direct way toward ensuring a sustainable and prosperous future for all.
Soheila Azadi
Soheila Azadi is an interdisciplinary visual artist, writer, educator, and a mother based in Portland, OR and Iran. Born in the capital of Islamic cities, Esfahan, Azadi absorbed story-telling skills through Persian miniature drawings and Islamic architecture since she was nine. Azadi’s inspirations come from her experiences of being a woman of color living under Theocracy and Democracy. Now residing in the U.S. Azadi is dedicated to Transnational Feminism with a passionate devotion to the ways in which gender, sex, race, culture and religion intersect. Azadi uses different media to both investigate, materialize, contextualize, and narrate stories of women as minorities.
Her use of fabric in her works is deployed critically and sensually to amplify customs that serve to classify, separate, oppress, and potentially / unknowingly liberates those obfuscated by such a tradition.
BRENDA ARTS (Spencer Garland)
Spencer Garland is a visual artist. Both influenced and alienated by the blockbusters of his upbringing, he is interested in creating new Black narratives and showcasing Black experiences. Garland runs BRENDA ARTS, an after-school film program geared towards POC youth and involves film production, theory, and exploration.
KSMoCA International Acquisition Committee (Illia Yakovenko)
Illia Yakovenko is a precarious cultural worker, a self-proclaimed artist, curator, poet and spectator, and an informally-appointed cultural ambassador to Portland. Illia is an MFA student in Art and Social Practice at PSU who came to study in the U.S. from Kyiv, Ukraine. Illia spent his childhood in Mariupol, eastern Ukraine. This region is currently dealing with war caused by the unresolved past and present contradictions exacerbated by the imperial geopolitical ambitions of its neighboring state. To address that—heal, imagine, and build a more equitable, inclusive, and safe future—Illia is learning to collectively explore histories, memories, cultures, identities by means of participatory production of art.
Lucia Monge
Lucia Monge is a Peruvian artist whose work focuses on interspecies relationships. Some of her recent projects include adapting and re-performing Darwin's experiments, mycoremediation rituals in urban tree pits, and a "fungi broadcast" about deforestation in Peru. For the past ten years she has organized Plantón Móvil, a yearly “walking forest” performance that leads to the creation of public green areas in cities such as Lima, Providence, Minneapolis, London, and New York. Monge has shown her work internationally, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lima, Whitechapel Gallery, Queens Museum, and the United Nations Climate Change Conference.
Recess! (Kim Sutherland and Jordan Rosenblum)
RECESS! Design Studio is a creative agency, design class, and artist project housed inside the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Northeast Portland. In collaboration with KSMoCA, RECESS! works with third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade designers. The studio explores the role design holds in shaping our lives, and uses graphic design as a tool to interpret and reinterpret our environments. RECESS! is co-directed by artists Jordan Rosenblum and Kimberly Sutherland, in collaboration with visiting artists and designers.
Paula Wilson
Paula Wilson is a multimedia artist whose densely layered, colorful, and often monumental works utilize a variety of painting, collage, filmic, installation, and print techniques. As a black biracial woman born in Chicago, IL and living in the American desert, Wilson’s multifaceted work resists a singular viewpoint. Her layering of image, pattern, and materials acts as a visual metaphor for the complex stratum of histories and cultures, both real and imagined, that inform her work. Wilson is based in Carrizozo, New Mexico where she is co-founder of the artist organizations MoMAZoZo and the Carrizozo Artist in Residency (AIR).
[photo by Angie Rizzo]