Oregon Contemporary

Biennial Events in June 🔥 Check out the upcoming + ongoing programs⁠
⁠
First Saturday ✨ Saturday, June 6
🕔 5:00–8:00 PM⁠
Performance at 6:00 PM⁠ (RSVP link on website)
📍 Oregon Contemporary⁠
⁠
For this special First Saturday, musician and installation artist, Joe Kye, in collaboration with botanical artist, Theresa Bear, invites the Portland community to join them in creating Portal, a collective ritual to honor our ancestors. This seance event incorporates musical performance, storytelling, letter-writing, and collective making to inspire conversations with our ancestors, and hopefully, conversations between our ancestors.

KSMoCA Opening + Artist Talk 🕰️ Thursday, June 4
🕕 10:00-11:00 AM
📍 KSMoCA
All are invited as KSMoCA presents a forthcoming exhibition and programming with DeepTime Collective working directly with the elementary students of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School.

Hand2Mouth Theatre: HOME/7LAND 🌆 June 18-21 & 25-28th
🕕 7:00 PM
📍 Zydell Yards
🎟️ Ticket link on our website

HOME / LAND is an immersive journey along the paths of personal and collective memories. Within a context of critical instability, when displacement and forced migrations have caused many to leave their homes and everything they hold dear, audience members are each assigned a temporary unit in a fictional government-run shelter village called Lot 6B.

🖼️ Ongoing Programs 🖼️ ⁠
⁠
March 31 - January 31, 2027
Todd McGrain: Debut of York
📍 Portland Art Museum⁠
The Portland Art Museum debuts this bronze bust of York by artist Todd McGrain.⁠
⁠
April 3 - July 5th
Rememory: A Poem
📍 Ori Gallery⁠
Ebony Frison and Stephanie Adams-Santos present an exhibition grounded in memory as a living, persistent force.
⁠
April 4 - July 5th
Invite Hope: Marcelo Fontana + Wave Collective⁠
📍 Multnomah County Central Library⁠
Marcelo Fontana and Wave Contemporary transform the Multnomah County Central Library into a space for poetic resistance, inviting the viewer to see hope as an active power rather than a passive wish.

Biennial Events 🔥 Check out the upcoming + ongoing events happening in May

First Saturday ✨ Saturday, May 2
🕔 5:00–8:00 PM
Performance at 6:00 PM
📍 Oregon Contemporary

For this special First Saturday, interdisciplinary artist Jaleesa Johnston activates her installation Clearing with a performance titled Waiting Amongst the Trees. Created in reverence of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, the work draws on the moment when Baby Suggs gathers the newly emancipated in a clearing to preach love of one’s own flesh. At Oregon Contemporary, Johnston creates her own clearing, inviting us to return to our bodies and find love despite a world that may resist it.

Poetry Reading 📖 Sunday, May 17th�
🕕 4:00–6:00 PM�
📍 Ori Gallery
All are invited to an afternoon poetry reading at Ori Gallery featuring the words of Portland-based poets Ebony Frison, Stephanie Adams-Santos, and Makayla Terrell. Rememory: A Poem is a focused exhibition that incorporates visual art and the written word to reflect on memory as something active and persistent that lingers in image, land, and the body. Join us in creating an open space to recall, reflect, and hold grief.

🖼️ Ongoing Programs 🖼️

March 31 - January 31, 2027�
Todd McGrain: Debut of York�
📍 Portland Art Museum
The Portland Art Museum debuts this bronze bust of York by artist Todd McGrain.

April 3 - July 5th�
Rememory: A Poem�
📍 Ori Gallery
Ebony Frison and Stephanie Adams-Santos present an exhibition grounded in memory as a living, persistent force.��

April 4 - July 5th�
Invite Hope: Marcelo Fontana + Wave Collective
📍 Multnomah County Central Library
Marcelo Fontana and Wave Contemporary transform the Multnomah County Central Library into a space for poetic resistance, inviting the viewer to see hope as an active power rather than a passive wish.