Experience + Matter + Collaboration
If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.
— Toni Morrison
From directing Killjoy Collective to co-founding and leading Fuller Rosen Gallery, I approach curating as an extension of my artistic practice rather than a parallel profession. Working closely with artists and developing exhibitions are creative processes that mirror my own interests in community, materiality, and space. I view exhibitions as time-based compositions where audiences can engange with contemporary artwork in significant ways. Maintaining a gallery where artists can experiment, exchange ideas, and reach new viewers has profoundly shaped my thinking as a maker; just as my studio practice has informed the way I curate.
Curation and Documentation
More information available at Fuller Rosen Gallery
2018
Sun Kittens and Moon Puppies
Killjoy Collective
PSU Littman + White Gallery Installation
July 09, 2018 - August 02, 2018
“It has been years since I dropped kicked the patriarchy in the head. Boots blackened by the midnight sun, waxy permutations of silken delights; a paradise. Transfixed by cooperation and collaboration, society has turned its back on competitive capital to create worlds of equity and bliss. Hang on to artifice and apathy no more, for I have become caretaker of a renewed planet.”
— Sun Kittens and Moon Puppies: Radiant Futures
— Sun Kittens and Moon Puppies: Radiant Futures
What happens when the patriarchy falls? Sun Kittens & Moon Puppies envisions a free and open future wherein united human society compassionately and sustainably co-exists with planet Earth and beyond. Inspired by queer and womanist utopias, Killjoy Collective embarks on a collaborative and interdisciplinary exhibition honoring the visionaries of the past and the leaders of tomorrow. Featuring new works by E.M. Fuller, Maggie-Rose Condit, BriAnna Rosen, and Rachel Rosenkoetter.
Killjoy Collective: our collective goal is to increase the visibility of women, women-identifying, and gender non-conforming artists in Portland and beyond by curating public visual art exhibitions and events representing a community-minded and interdisciplinary approach. We seek to provide a platform for artists exploring urgent, contemporary issues via our artist-run gallery space in SE Portland.
We view Killjoy as a site of resistance and a space for collaborating voices.
Killjoy Collective celebrates and seeks to engage women — women of color, women of all ages, women of all shapes and sizes, women with visible and invisible disabilities, immigrant women, indigenous women, queer women, trans women, and those who refuse to be put in a box. Our organization is feminist, non-hierarchical, unmotivated by profit, and deeply committed to sustaining relationships with artists and audiences. Our artist-run space strives to connect emerging creatives with intrigued audiences in a fun and intimate environment. Killjoy Collective is located inside the Troy Laundry Studios at 222 SE 10th Ave #102B Portland, OR 97214 across the street from Century bar.
Projects hosted by Killjoy Collective are free and open to the public.
Mururoa Mururoa: Big Lies
Kanani Miyamoto
Installation + Opening Performance
June 30, 2018 - July 21, 2018
“Indeed, I saw in the district young women and young girls tranquil of eye, pure Tahitians….
All indeed, wish to be taken literally, brutally taken, without a single word.”
— Excerpt from Noa Noa, Tahiti journal of P. Gauguin
All indeed, wish to be taken literally, brutally taken, without a single word.”
— Excerpt from Noa Noa, Tahiti journal of P. Gauguin
In 1769, the population of Tahiti was approximately 35,000.
By the time Paul Gauguin arrived in Papeete in 1891, European disease had killed off two-thirds of the population.
In the same year, colonialism had successfully destroyed the Maori people. Calvinist, Mormon, and Catholic religions replaced the indigenous beliefs and European thought and products replaced the handicrafts, barkcloth, the art of tattoo, music, and dance.
Mururoa Mururoa: Big Lies, is the start to a new dialog on the art and life of Paul Gauguin. A challenge to art institutions, art historians, and curators to recognize the true perspective of the indigenous.
#Repost @mamakanani
・・・
I have been thinking about this for years... In 2012 I saw an exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum, Gauguin and Polynesia: An Elusive Paradise. I could not believe the ignorance of this show; the write up was absolutely ridiculous...they said “through a balanced and contextual analysis of Polynesian art alongside Gauguin’s works, this exhibit brings Polynesian arts and culture into the center of Gauguin studies”.
Gauguin is the face of colonialism: the face of a patriarchal society. There was no balance in the curation of this show. There was no Polynesian voice in this show. Polynesian art and culture was stolen, fetishised, and taken advantage of by Gauguin.
Moruroa Moruroa: Big Lies
@killjoypdx
#fuckgauguin
・・・
I have been thinking about this for years... In 2012 I saw an exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum, Gauguin and Polynesia: An Elusive Paradise. I could not believe the ignorance of this show; the write up was absolutely ridiculous...they said “through a balanced and contextual analysis of Polynesian art alongside Gauguin’s works, this exhibit brings Polynesian arts and culture into the center of Gauguin studies”.
Gauguin is the face of colonialism: the face of a patriarchal society. There was no balance in the curation of this show. There was no Polynesian voice in this show. Polynesian art and culture was stolen, fetishised, and taken advantage of by Gauguin.
Moruroa Moruroa: Big Lies
@killjoypdx
#fuckgauguin
Kanani Miyamoto was born and raised in Hawai`i and now lives in Portland, Oregon. She is a recent graduate of the Pacific Northwest College of Art MFA in Print Media program and has shown work in Oregon, Idaho and Hawai`i. Mururoa Mururoa: Big Lies, is the start to a new dialog on the art and life of Paul Gauguin. A challenge to art institutions, art historians, and curators to recognize the true perspective of the indigenous
Children of Revulsion
Curated by Tabitha Nikolai
Performance + Installation
May 26, 2018 - June 16, 2018
Featuring the work of: Alan Page (aka [sic][redacted]), Arisa Leisure, deSolid State, akira sakai leisure, #femmebreak - Seanna Musgrave with Erika Anderson, aka EMA, Garima Thakur and Autumn Knight, Laurence Myers Reese, Lysandra Frex, Rani Baker, Porpentine and Rook, and Stephanie Mendoza
Opening Night Performances by: Rani Baker and #femmebreak - Seanna Musgrave with Erika Anderson, aka EMA
Closing Night Performances by: Laurence Myers Reese and VR by Stephanie Mendoza
Children of Revulsion is about living inside media when you can't go home again.
Or never could.
Or would never want to.
Or can't wait to leave.
It's about making a house from virtual trash, lashed together with scraps of code, and uploading it to your dear ones, wherever they are. Big enough for everyone, you dwell in it together, replay and reply. Every pixel a good night kiss on the forehead. Every beat a tender hand-squeeze in the dark.
A Melon Baby's Falsetto Sounds Better in the Bathroom
Amy Chiao
Performance + Installation
March 23, 2018 - April 11, 2018
Photography by Ricardo Hiro Nagaoka
Vitas, a Russian Popera star's falsetto empowers a production of weaponized watermelon babies. Written, directed, and designed by Amy Chiao. Performed by Sascha Blocker, Amy Chiao, Jeff Desautels, and Emily Newton.
Amy Chiao is an artist and designer working in material exploration, costume, props, performance, and video. Based in Portland, Oregon and Los Angeles, California, Chiao comes from an eccentric family of Cantese musicians and composers, Opera singers, and mannequin manufacturers. She holds a BFA in textiles from Rhode Island School of Design 2014, where she also dabbled in performance at Brown University. Her work examines spectacle in the everyday through a transformation of cultural symbols and characters.
Pop-Up Comedy + Open Mic Night
Performances by That's What She Said
One Night Only Event
February 24, 2018
Join host Katie Piatt as she leads us through an evening of laughter and absurdity with our favorite queer comedy troupe That's What She Said; Brooks, Shannon Sales, Berlyn Lee, and Katie Piatt.
Special guests include recent graduates of Deep End Theater's comedy class Case West, Ashley Padron, Annie Leverich, Whitney Jacobson, Mary Barrett, Nina Zuraspi, Theresa Carmody, and David Weed.
BROADCAST II
Videos by Amy Chiao, Eden Misenmacher with Rebecca Tritschler, B. G-Osborne, Vanessa Renwick, Kari Robertson, Victoria Roccaforte, CC Teakell, and Carmen Tiffany
Screening
January 27-28, 2018
A Good Pink
Killjoy Collective + Friends
PCC North View Gallery Installation
January 10, 2018 - February 10, 2018
In A Good Pink, a collective of six artists join forces to explore the ambiguity and power of pink’s many diverging identities, participating in an inquisitive dialogue around these idiosyncratic relationships. Utilizing mediums such as painting, sculpture, light, video, drawing and textiles, Killjoy Collective creates a cohesive energetic space, examining how pink accentuates and isolates at once. As polarizing as it is promiscuous, pink occupies a liminal space of repulsion and attraction, sensuality and morbidity, luxury and kitsch. Explore, celebrate, and complicate the color pink in all of its glorious significations and contradictions.
Pink is fruity sweetness dissolving on the tongue, a drift of fragrant blossoms, an evocation of the sensitive, the youthful, the pleasurable. Pink is sunsets and reveries and flamingos, the unreal, the eccentric, the dreamlike. Pink is silky hair ribbons and frothy Rococo painting, a glut of femininity, excess and exaggeration. Endlessly mutable in its gradations and connotations, pink is loaded with cultural signifiers which transcend the hue’s slice of the color spectrum.
2017
Laugh Your Panties Off!
Performances by Brooks, Stephanie Buckner, Shannon Sales, Maggie Condit, and Katie Piatt
One Night Only Charity Event
May 05, 2017
Please join Killjoy Collective on Friday May 05 from 6:00 - 9:00 pm for Laugh Your Panties Off, a donation drive event benefitting the Salvation Army Female Emergency Shelter! We will be collecting donations of new underwear, bras, and feminine hygiene products. Panty drive!
Comic and artist Katie Piatt will be hosting the event with other special guests making us laugh all night with screenings of RuPaul's Drag Race in between. Donate your new underpants!
BROADCAST
Curated by Jodie Cavalier and BriAnna Rosen
Video Screening
January 21, 2017
Featuring videos by Úna Rose, Kayley Berezney, Lou Wood, Maura Campbell-Balkits, Megan Hattie Stahl, Melissa Tvetan, Erin Law, Megan Bourn, Stephanie Hough, Yara Mekawei, Zoe Bullock, Layla Rodriguez, Mikayla Carpenter, Arianna Gazca, Chanel Adair, and Maggie-Rose Condit.
Killjoy Collective is proud to present B R O A D C A S T works from women video artists in Portland, OR and beyond. Video screening begins at 6:30 PM with a brief intermission. B R O A D C A S T highlights the creativity, insight, and expertise of makers working within the medium of video.
Killjoy Collective promotes the National Women's March on Washington, D.C. and our local Women's March on Washington: Portland. "We stand together in solidarity with our partners and children for the protection of our rights, our safety, our health, and our families recognizing that our vibrant and diverse communities are the strength of our country," National Organizers Women’s March on Washington.