BLACK LOAVES: NOV 4 2023

A COLLABOrATIVE ASSEMBLAGE PROMPTED BY NAT TURNER PROJECT

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 and breadth of people of African descent against the expanse of their storied, imaginative, and geographic landscapes. Working in long-form projects encompassing the visual, folkloric, documentary, and performing arts, she has produced The People Could Fly Project, The Black Portlanders, and The Black. She is the guest curator of Black Artists of Oregon, exploring the history of Black artists in Oregon, opening at Portland Art Museum in 2023. With the five women artists in her family, she is the co-founder of Studio Abioto, a multivalent creative arts studio.

maximiliano b.1989 Dayton, OH lives and works in  Portland, OR.

mononymously named, maximiliano, is a conceptual artist crafting BLKwvv (BLACKWAVE); Black reclamation rococo multimedia mythos of multiplicity, fluidity, race, blackness, pleasure, desirability, innocence, & imagination; digitally, physically, & communally. A generative multimedia practice of ideation & visualization, of embodied mythos & narrative. Expressed as self portrait, performance, installation, video, GIF, sculpture, thought, sound, movement, fabrique trapestries, collaboration, publications, my body, objects, & choreography; as changing the past, present, future. To transform space; echoing frequencies into & through the viewer experiencing the ineffable, chthonic, profane & pleasurable.  My practice is varied and diverse, making art and making space for others in my communities, my medium is radical redistribution of resources and disruption of white supremacist, colonialist, capitalist norms. My process is research based; straddling mythologies, eschaton, cosmology, internet creations, Glitch Feminism, & Black nihilistic futures. 

My artistic practice is ritual.

kiki nicole is an agender, disabled, and neurodivergent poet and artist. Through antidisciplinary artforms, they archive, prioritize, and nurture the realms of the Black Interior. Their poetry has been published in Scalawag Magazine, The Studio Museum in Harlem, beestung mag, Frontier Poetry, and more. Kiki is the co-founder of the first and the last, a new media project specializing in uplifting work by Black trans and queer experimental artists. In 2021, they served as the Citizen Literary Fellow at Graywolf Press. Kiki is an editor at Muzzle Magazine and member of the arts collectives, Goodyear Arts and Saltwater Sojourn. They live in Charlotte, NC.

Sadé DuBoise is a painter who considers her practice as a sacred place to reflect on her identity, existence, and life experiences. Keeping close to her birthplace and roots of North Portland, DuBoise resides in Tigard, OR where she tends to her growing family and studio practice. DuBoise is currently a BFA candidate of Painting at the Willamette University/Pacific Northwest College of Art, expecting to graduate in Fall 2023.

In her earlier years, she painted small portraits from references collected on Pinterest which served as pseudo-self-portraits and vessels to cope with trauma in her adolescence. Currently, her course works edge towards the large, surreal, and figurative–exploring changes to her identity, self-concept, and physical body through pregnancy into motherhood. 

DuBoise was recently highlighted in OPB Oregon Art Beat, and has exhibited at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. She has work acquired throughout the region, including the Portland Art Museum, Regional Arts and Cultural Council, North Clackamas School District, and King School Museum of Contemporary Art.

Jodie Cavalier is an artist living in Portland, Oregon. She earned a BA from the University of California, Berkeley and an MFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon. Her work has been exhibited with Converge 45’s Portland’s Monuments & Memorials Project in Portland, OR; the Schneider Museum in Ashland, OR; the deYoung Museum in San Francisco, CA; the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA; CoCA in Seattle, WA; Practice in New York, NY; and Städelschule in Frankfurt, Germany; among others. She has participated in residencies at ONCA in Brighton, England; the Center for Land Use Interpretation in Wendover, UT; Wassaic in Wassaic, NY; and AZ West in Joshua Tree, CA.

Ansâr El Muhammad is a conceptual artist, with work ranging from performance, painting, illustration, sculpture, installation, video, and photography, they feel a calling to archive the experiences of their vulnerable community(ies).

Through experimentation, collaboration, and curiosity they utilize aesthetics to have deep and often painful discussions with the viewer. They aim to change the way art can impact communities often left out or exploited by art institutions and build platforms and pathways for internal communal wellness.

Sharita Towne A true grandchild of the Great Migration, Sharita Towne’s practice is multi-voiced, poetic, and didactic. Born and raised along I-5 from Tacoma to Sacramento, her work is steeped in collaborative cultural organizing that engages local and global Black geographies, histories, and possibilities. Her media include printmaking, video, installation, textile, photography, youth workshops, sculpture, public art, print media, and community conversation; so too, the venues she collaborates with vary from museums and galleries to refugee camps, schools, and family backyards.Throughout her projects, the values of family and survivance persist, gathering and binding many artists, organizers, audiences, civic structures, sisters, cousins, and landscapes in collective grief, catharsis, and joy. 

Towne holds a BA from UC Berkeley, where she studied languages, Interdisciplinary Studies, and Art Practice; and an MFA from Portland State University with a focus in Socially Engaged Art. Alongside her work as an artist, she has taught at the Pacific Northwest College of Art for seven years.

Christine Miller is a conceptual artist currently based in Portland, OR. With a background in Product Development and an extensive understanding of manufacturing processes, Miller's work focuses on the design intentionality of physical products, literature, and advertisements that have been used to dehumanize African Americans. Her art centers around racial stereotypes and histories, while simultaneously reframing cultural narratives.

Melanie Stevens is an artist, illustrator, and writer. She is the creator of the graphic novel series, WaterShed, and the co-founder and co-curator of Nat Turner Project, a fugitive gallery space that provides funding and spaces for artists of color to create or express their own language within and without the parameters of racial commodification or designation. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree for Political Science from Yale University and her Masters of Fine Arts degree for Visual Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art, where she currently teaches.