Oregon Contemporary’s Seventh Biennial Cares About Caring

“ablaze with our care, its ongoing song” gives 16 uniquely Oregonian takes on what it means to care for ourselves and others.

Oregon Contemporary Artists’ Biennial, photo courtesy of Oregon Contemporary.
By Andrew Jankowski

Oregon Contemporary’s Artists’ Biennial is back to an in-person format for the first time since the pandemic began.

Biennial curators Jackie Im and Anuradha Vikram selected artists and collectives from around the state to represent what caring means in this moment. Ablaze with our care, its ongoing song opened April 26 at OC’s Kenton neighborhood warehouse gallery, with a reception planned for Saturday, May 4. Biennial artist Epiphany Couch will deliver a poetry reading and artist talk alongside Cliff Taylor, whose poetry features prominently in her selected visual work.

Several of the biennial’s artists interpreted care as inviting collaborators into the exhibition. Many connected care to how they share their space with the world and others.

“They share their space with communities both local and afar, they share their space with the natural world and ecologies, they share their space with their ancestors and those on whose sovereign land we still walk,” the biennial’s curatorial statement reads.

Now in its seventh iteration, the 2024 biennial delivers experiential art that encourages viewers to use all their senses to care, with daring results.

Carla Bengtson’s multimedia installation Other Nations spritzes natural perfume by artisan scent house Cognoscenti—made with real rattlesnake skin sheddings used for top notes—onto squirrel fur, as a beauty-counter take on olfactive camouflage. Srijon Chowdhury’s collaborative Sigil Gate realizes elements of his dark paintings, including ruined pink limestone cornerstones collected from the West Bank by Palestinian collective Jabal Al Risa between 2021 and 2024. Marcus Fischer’s This Map is Not the Territory built 10 channels of cacophonous audio from Portland’s five compass rose sectors.

The biennial will also host events on the first Saturday of each month through August at the Oregon Contemporary space. June goes to performance duo Methods Body’s acoustic celebration of stuttering, and Maxx Katz’s femme, women and nonbinary Yelling Choir. July’s programming includes Tyler Stoll’s anti-erection protest to explore flaccidity.

The Biennial’s other featured artists are Meech Boakye, chimaera/project, Megita Denton, Michael Espinoza, Bean Gilsdorf, Anne Greenwood, Patricia Vázquez Gómez, Bridgette Hickey, Horatio Hung-Yan Law, Rainen Knecht, Morgan Ritter, Sarah Rushford, UwU Collective and Vo Vo.

“Their work in the Biennial acts as portals giving access points to each reflect on our own relationships, our connections to one another, and how we can move through the world with compassion, self-love, and shared responsibility for all,” concludes Im and Vikram’s statement.

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