SaveArtSpace has partnered with Expression Against Oppression to bring more public art to Portland, OR!

Expression Against Oppression is a space for Black, brown, indigenous people and all oppressed people to take up space in Portland, the whitest city in America. It is a space for BIPOC creatives to have the tools to the creative and be connected to projects happening around social justice. Our mission is to elevate Black and POC creatives to see the power in their work and art and to build a community that fights for justice and equality. We must create and design safe playground spaces in marginalized communities and elevate black and brown creatives all over the world.

The SaveArtSpace x Expression Against Oppression selected artists are Dread Scott, Paola De La Cruz, Liam Woods, Kari Rowe, Tomás Karmelo Amaya, Christine Miller, Loren Toney, and HezronH.

Curated by Salomée Souag, founder of Expression Against Oppression, Bernadette Little, and Xiuhtezcatl.

We’ve been told to stay silent,
To blend in,
To sit down and listen,
To not take up too much space,
Play a role.

Our time is now,

Time to be loud,

Bold,
Unapologetic about taking up space.
We are here to reclaim what’s ours.
This city needs us more than ever before.
Our voice, our vision has power.
It holds the power of a thousand ancestors and warriors.

This is art for the revolution, art for change. It brings power to the people. Power to the creatives, power to the youth.

It is more than a billboard or a mural, each space is a deep story, a struggle, a history, a celebration, a fight.

This is our fight for justice, for equality, for black and brown liberation.

We have to make write and draw our own narrative.

Growing up, we didn’t see ourselves as the people who inspired us.
We have to be the inspiration, the pioneers, and the creators. 

Change culture. 

This is an expression against oppression. 

We have so many more stories to tell,

We are the future. 

During the week of September 6, 2021, SaveArtSpace will launch public art installations for each selected work on billboard ad spaces in Portland, OR. The public art will be on view for at least one month.

Founded in 2015, SaveArtSpace is a non-profit organization that works to create an urban gallery experience, launching exhibitions that address intersectional themes and foster a progressive message of social change. By placing culture over commercialism, SaveArtSpace aims to empower artists from all walks of life and inspire a new generation of young creatives and activists.

Selected Artists

Location: No Location Available. All ad space companies rejected Dread Scott’s artwork. We stand by this work wholeheartedly, however, at this time we have failed at being able to wheat-paste or contract a billboard for this important work.

Dread Scott is a visual artist whose works is exhibited across the US and internationally. In 1989, his art became the center of national controversy over its transgressive use of the American flag, while he was a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Dread became part of a landmark Supreme Court case when he and others defied the a federal law outlawing his art by burning flags on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. He has presented at TED talk on this.

His work has been included in exhibitions at MoMA PS1, the Walker Art Center, Jack Shainman Gallery, and Gallery MOMO in Cape Town, South Africa, and is in the collection of the Whitney Museum and the Brooklyn Museum. He is a 2021 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow and has also received fellowships form Open Society Foundations and United States Artists as well as a Creative Capital grant.

In 2019 he presented Slave Rebellion Reenactment, a community engaged project that reenacted the largest rebellion of enslaved people in US history. The project was featured in Vanity Fair, The New York Times, Christiane Amanpour on CNN and highlighted by artnet.com as one of the most important artworks of the decade.

Connect wit Dread on Instagram at @DreadScottArt.

Location: NE Cully Rd & NE Prescott St, Portland, OR

Paola De La Cruz spent her most impressionable years in the Dominican Republic alongside the warm sun and singing wind. Upon moving to Boston at the age of nine, she was inspired by the activist movements happening around her.

Think of the Romanticism art movement featuring Black and Brown folks; picture ethereal black and brown femmes bathing in the warmth of nature and her motherly embrace. Paola interweaves digital and analog media, patterns, stitching and shape-based illustrations to evoke intimacy while challenging the themes of cultural identity, coming of age, and Black / Brown enlightenment as revolutionary.

Paola currently resides in Portland, OR.

“You Deserve To Take Up Space”

For Black, Brown and Indigenous people, taking up space is an act of resistance. It is easy to be made to feel like one doesn’t belong, it’s hard to find comfort in that. You Deserve To Take Up Space refers to finding comfort and peace in uncomfortable spaces- elbowing your way in because you deserve it.

Connect with Paula on Instagram at @happynappystudio.

Location: SW Harvey Milk St & SW 3rd Ave, Portland, OR

Liam Woods is a Black Trans + Non Binary analogue photographer based between Portland, OR, Los Angeles, CA and Charlotte, NC. Their work is characterized by the vulnerable, candidly intimate storytelling of Queer people, Black and Brown people and other marginalized communities. Within Liam’s work, they uplift and preserve the history of people often erased.

In their 5 year experience as a photographer, Liam has partnered with brands such as Apple, Adidas and Warby Parker. They shot publications with Vogue Paris, Vogue Italia, The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, and Playgirl Magazine. Liam was also a spokesman for the 2020 Fashion Awards and has worked alongside actors and musicians such as Ari Lennox, Lachlan Watson (Netflix Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), Ariela Barer and Allegra Acosta (Marvel’s Runaways).

With their brand experience, Liam has formed over 35 creative job opportunities (and counting) for BIPOC and Queer People both in front of and behind the camera. They continue their work out west with their home base in Portland, Oregon. 

Connect with Liam on Instagram at @analoguepapi.

Location: SE Foster Rd & SE 76th Ave, Portland, OR

Kari Rowe may stand at only 5’3″ but the energy she brings into any room makes her seem to stand taller than most grown men. She is a natural born artist; driven to create moments in time, exudes beauty behind a lens, and truly creates experiences through photography. Through her talent, heart, authenticity and raw, unfiltered personality, she makes subjects feel completely comfortable in front of the lens which is another talent in and of itself.

With mixed indigenous and Irish blood, Kari is comfortably nomadic, traveling the world as a commercial photographer, art director, and indigenous activist. She has created global campaigns, worked with some of the most respected brands in the world and received international acclaim for her photography. Passionate about contributing her visual direction and creative services to help native businesses, she dedicates time to work with small businesses and artists, helps tell personal stories for indigenous people in and around the communities she lives in, participates in native led events and documenting untold stories of modern indigenous people.

Connect with Kari on Instagram at @karirowephoto.

Location: SE Division St & SE 41st Ave, Portland, OR

Connect with Tomás on Instagram at @tomaskarmelo.

Location: NE MLK Jr Blvd & NE Morgan St, Portland, OR

Christine Miller (b. 1990, New York, NY, she/her) is a conceptual artist and curator currently based in Portland, OR. Her work centers around racial imagery, products and histories while simultaneously reframing her own cultural identity. In addition to her own work, Christine’s curatorial practice centers on bringing underrepresented contemporary artists to the front of the Portland art community and beyond.

Miller holds B.A from Hunter College (2013), and AA in Textile Surface Design from the Fashion Institute of Technology (2016). She has been the recipient of various artist grants along with participating in select artist talks and grant panels. Miller is currently working on her curated magazine Black Playground and preparing for her solo show in November.

Connect with Christine on Instagram at @sincerelychristinemiller.

Location: E Burnside St & NE 10th Ave, Portland, OR

Loren Toney is a published fine art and portrait photographer based in Chicago, Illinois. She was raised in the south suburbs of Chicago and received a BA from Columbia College Chicago as a Cinematography major and Photography minor. Her work focuses on the complexities of interpersonal relationships and identity, particularly the experiences of black men and women. She has been featured in “The Art Of Blackness,” exhibition in 2019 as well as Columbia College's Library for an installation entitled "The Americans Now". She was an Artist in Residence for Latitude Chicago in April 2018.

Connect with Loren on Instagram at @lorens.lens.

Location: NE Sandy Blvd & NE Wasco St, Portland, OR

We are all blended with a swath experiences; walking, breathing, thinking creatures full of insight and emo- tions expelled through every single pore. Our aura illuminates spaces of darkness and drives ideas through vision, endowing minds with fragments of personality shimmering through a kaleidoscope of colour.

Turks and Caicos Islands' based artist Hezron Henry's work is an exploration of this, via fine art and illustra- tion. His body of work consists of acrylic on paper, canvas and digital painting; adapting traditional paint- ing mediums to his signature style. His art is laden with vibrant colours and a link is established highlighting the emotive power of colour.

He believes that it is most important that artists make no apologies for their work; his passion is honest artistic expression, creating an experience people can enjoy and connect with on an ethereal level. Surpassing over 2000 entrants worldwide as the Wacom “The Next Level” finalist Hezron has exhibited in cities across Australia, New Zealand, Trinidad & Tobago for CARIFESTA 2019 and at Art Takes 2021 (NYC); a juried competition hosted by SeeMe. Hezron has also had the pleasure of being featured in international publications; Wacom’s “The Next Level” and “Drawn Vol. 4: Leaders in Contemporary Illustration.”

Artist Statement: As an artist my aim is to delve into the concept of identity via the depiction of figurative portrait art. Using focal points of the face to bring across the emotions of the subject in relation to the idea I seek to project. This idea however is not one that is preached; it is a conversation, a dialogue between the subject, the viewer and myself.

The art explores facets of identity through the lens of colour, culture, individuality in society and the community as a whole. Through the use of colours in my art I present a visual language that appears chaotic and disorienting but as a whole the precision can be realized through a macro view and its scale revealed.

It is a work that beckons the viewer to be invested in the subject, in the idea, in the heart of the narrative presented visually. It also creates an avenue by which they (the viewer) project facets of their own character into the work, and it becomes a reflection of their lived experience. I capture their essence and show it to the world, the struggles and the hope of the spirit‘s undying chase.

Connect with HezronH on Instagram at @hezron_1 and Twitter at @hezron1.

Curators

Salomée Souag is a muralist, designer, and creative from Switzerland who holds her Peruvian and Algerian ancestors closer to her heart, her community and her work. She currently lives in Portland & prides herself in her multi-cultural identity and encourages others to step outside of the box society has created for them.

Salomée AKA Chroma has shifted from the corporate advertising world to fully immersing herself in the push for a revolution. In her consistent and continuous evolution and artistic practice, she curates revolutionary work to give power to the people, the youth, and artists. By taking up space in all forms, whether through projection mapping and large-scale painting, wheat pasting and installations, or workshops for Black, Brown, and Indigenous artists and the next generation, Souag’s bold and powerful work encourages everyone to break down boundaries and borders, and to imagine expression.

Art and design are able to change perspectives; one wall at a time, one poster at a time, one message at a time. Expression is a weapon for change, we the creatives can fight all that is of hatred in the world. The system wants us to be oppressed and complacent, to not question everything. With art, we are able to fight against that by bringing all perspectives to the surface and creating a culture that pushes for equality and justice.

Connect with Salomée on Instagram at @c.hroma.

Location: SE Grand Ave & SE Morrison St, Portland, OR

Bernadette Little

Currently, you can find me working as a designer and art director on the Adidas Global Brand Design team where we help shape the overarching voice and image of the brand.

While working I am also pursuing my Masters in Organizational Leadership. I’m hoping to one day combine my passion for the arts and these organizational skills to help others in my community pursue their dreams in the arts.

I believe vehemently in the transformative power of education, the arts, and the promotion of creative thinking in all fields. As Dr. Rudine Sim Bishops writes, the arts can serve as both a window into possibilities and a mirror of realities. I believe this kind of expression is so important for communities to visualize their potential, to process the now, and lay the fertile ground to get from one to the other.

When I am not working or studying you can find me painting murals around the PDX area, sketching, experimenting with photography, engulfed in music, and collaborating with other artists.

Connect with Bernadette on Instagram at @youcancallmebernie.

Xiuhtezcatl bridges many worlds through his art and his voice. As an Indigenous creative, his vision comes to life at the intersection of art, storytelling and community organizing. A multifaceted performer and Hip Hop artist, Xiuhtezcatl’s music serves as a vehicle to reclaim space, build community and engage his generation in reimagining our future.

Xiuhtezcatl is deeply rooted in his connection to his community, walking in the footsteps of his Mexica ancestors. Whether through his creative releases, his work in the climate space or the work he’s done in amplifying Indigenous Youth leadership spaces, X’s work is fiercely anti-colonial, and rooted in the struggle for Indigenous sovereignty.

Becoming a student of hip hop at an early age, and watching performance videos of his siblings on tour in the 90’s, X came up seeing the power of music to shape culture, and be a voice for the most marginalized and exploited communities. Now in his early 20’s, X has carried on his families legacy, touring the world and sharing his voice while releasing creative projects and albums that fuse the many perspectives he grew up around.

His exploration of language takes place beyond songwriting and speaking as he navigates the reclamation and preservation of his culture, relearning his traditional language and teachings. X’s work and creative evolution is grounded in the belief that “As artists, we are the painamitl, the Voice Runners, the carriers of the stories that will shape the future. It is our job to lift one another up and use our art to advance the liberation of our communities above all else.”

Connect with Xiuhtezcatl on Instagram at @xiuhtezcatl.