Ebony Frison and Stephanie Adams-Santos, both Portland-based artists and poets, come together to create a space to recall, reflect, and hold grief. Working in distinct visual languages, both artists engage memory as something active and persistent that lingers in image, land, and the body.

Bringing together printmaking, installation, photography, and the written word, the exhibition takes its title from the concept of “rememory” in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, where memory is understood as experiential. Memory can live and breathe, love and admonish. Haunt.

The use of common Ghanaian foods, cloths, and material items serve as a ‘proxy’ to the spectrum of (non)(multi)(trans)(a)gendered African identities serves as a satiric rebuke of the fear that transphobic/queerphobic Ghanaians have of the Trans/Queer community.

Digital somatics connects the body to technology through immersion and practices of slowness in relation to our bodies and technology. How can we use technological mediums such as VR, AR, and immersive technologies to slow down time?

In wiri wiri bird’s eye,  Zoë Gamell Brown invites us to explore yonder, asking us to enter the portal of our dreams. Deeply rooted in the knowledge and wisdom of her matriarchs, Brown creates a multi-medium experience of moving images, ceramic sculptures and paintings, asking you to consider your environment, history, present, and future potency.

In ROOM-innate, Lady Tournament privileges us into an immersive experience - a recreation of her childhood home - a womb where her trans-womanhood began. Through the reproduction of domestic space, paintings from her biological mother and sculptures from her daughter, Jzl Jmz maps matrilineal connections of creative expression and troubles the Black domestic as a place of solace, imagination & birth.

Opening reception: July 6, 2019, 6-9pm
Show duration: July 6 - 28, 2019

As an exhibition Stratum explores the practice of tattooing through the lens of race and gender in an industry dominated by misogyny, racism and colonization. By focusing on the work of those with multiple marginalized identities and those with direct cultural ties to the practice of body modification, we begin to deconstruct how the industry and practice have manifested. We carve out a place for artists who make a transformative place for healing, reclamation of self and ancestry. Stratum seeks to reveal the multitudes that tattooers are capable of as artists, storytellers and activists outside of the physical act of tattooing.

This photography exhibit celebrates those who claim, reclaim and/or disrupt traditional constructs of black femininity in its many forms. The images captured mark an occasion where black women/femmes were seen, counted, loved and valued. This in and of itself is a political act.

Informed by traditional cell animation, questions of family and belonging, all topped with a heaping spoonful of dark humor, Carmi “Spicyyeti” TB, beckons us to explore the world of The Damonia Family.

Opening reception: Feb 2, 2019 6 - 9pm
Show duration: Feb 2 - 24, 2019

In "strategies for displaying unknown variables" Alan Page invites us to navigate decontextualized visual disturbances. Using variations of the screen, they implore us to engage with the unrecognizable, challenge us with various barriers to seeing, and beckon us to explore in a playground of digital glow, broken files, & machine learning.

Curated by Maya Vivas

In Alien ate d Rhy thm* Hiba Ali and Jonathan Chacón disrupt the traditional white-wall gallery with the color orange, bubbles, a train set, and foam tiles.

Opening reception: Oct 4, 2018, 6-10pm
Show duration: Oct 4 - Nov 18, 2018

Inheritance weaves together the talents of April Felipe, Habiba El-Sayed and Natalia Arbelaez, whose work engages ideas of selfhood, be it constructed or obligatory. Each of theses artists use ceramics as a tool to question: who is hyper visible and who goes unseen? Whose identities are anchored and who is left with a sense of loss in search of belonging? And finally, how much power do we truly have in correcting the course of our inherited paths? Through personal narrative, they challenge us to reflect inward and explore how our complicated pasts affect our present understanding of the self.

Curated by Maya Vivas

Opening reception: Sep 1, 2018

6-10pm Show duration: Sep 1 - 27, 2018

Bringing together the work of Raychelle Duazo, Lilian Dirrebes, Emma Kates-Shaw & Adam Ponto: Stratum explores the practice of tattooing through the lens of race and gender in an industry dominated by misogyny, racism and colonization. By focusing on the work of those with multiple marginalized identities and those with direct cultural ties to the practice of body modification, we begin to deconstruct how the industry and practice have manifested. We carve out a place for artists who make a transformative place for healing, reclamation of self and ancestry. Stratum seeks to reveal the multitudes that tattooers are capable of as artists, storytellers and activists.

Curated by Leila Haile.

Ori Gallery is pleased to announce: Emergent. This exhibition features the work of ten young queer/trans/artists of color who are taking their place in wider conversations of the art world. Emergent will facilitate and continue the dialogue in what it means for our youth to cultivate an artistic practice and share their opinions, ideas, dreams & talents.

Over a two week period, artists Lo Smith & Nadia Wolff, meditated on 'exotic' bouquets of live flowers to uncover methods of responding to the prompt “how does a flower become a pattern?”.

Works by Alisa Sikelianos-Carter

Carter takes us on a journey in Femme, future-sent divinity. Examining black hair as armor, weapons and symbols of royalty.

Ori Gallery is pleased to present our inaugural art exhibition Elements of Reclamation!