Featured Artists:
AnAkA, Annabelle Araya, Julia Bond, J’reyesha Brannon, Amirah Chatman, Steven Christian, Baba Wagué Diakité, Sadé DuBoise, Austin Gardner, Leila Haile, Elijah Hasan, Edmund Holmes, Willie Little, Latoya Lovely, Aiyana Monae McClinton, Jessica Mehta, Christine Miller, Annie Schutz, Sharita Towne, and Kyra Watkins
The Black Lives Matter Artist Grant Program is a multi-university granting project established by Jordan Schnitzer that has awarded funding to 60 emerging, mid-career, and established artists whose practices demonstrate a commitment to social justice. This granting initiative, which categorically references the Black Lives Matter movement(s), gestures towards the germinating financial and intellectual investment in artwork borne out of a continuing, centuries-long fight for Black autonomy, freedom, and most notably, life.
The 20 artists selected for the Portland State University Black Lives Matter Artist Grant Exhibition stretch the notion of ‘socially engaged artwork’ beyond its cursory definition, resulting in a collection of objects which require multiple shifts in perspective. Through installation, photography, video, painting, performance, textiles, sculpture, poetry, and printmaking, this exhibition is a microcosm of allied and conflicting political, social, and aesthetic approaches.
Some awardees find it imperative to use art as a vehicle to depict the horrors of white supremacy by swelling the effects to an unignorable size, asking their audience not to turn away. The artwork of other awardees tends to the intricacies of their individual craft, or the richness of material culture. To joy and pleasure, illustrating and narrating a better world than this, to the intersections of Blackness, indigeneity, and queerness, to secrecy, and to abstraction.
This exhibition is not only in the wake of a global pandemic, nor the two years of increased global uprisings and protests in defense of Black life, or even centuries of enslavement and imprisonment, but also; in the spirit of Black creativity, ingenuity, and collectivity.
To learn more about the exhibition and artists visit the exhibition website:
https://sites.google.com/pdx.edu/winter-2022-exhibition/black-lives-matter-artist-grant-exhibition
Content for the exhibition was written by Ella Ray, a Portland-based art historian, cultural worker, and curator. Editorial support by Nia Pipkin-Glover.
The Black Lives Matter Artist Grant Program was established by Jordan Schnitzer in partnership with the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at PSU. The program is funded through a generous grant from the Harold & Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation/Jordan Schnitzer.
The Black Lives Matter Artist Grant Exhibition was organized by the JSMA at PSU. Additional funding for this exhibition is provided by Portland State University President's Office and the Oregon Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Image Credit: Amirah Chatman, Heaven’s Probably in Phoenix (detail), 2020, pastel on chipboard, Diptych, 44 x 56 inches