Portland, Oregon – The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s 17th Annual Time-Based Art Festival (TBA: 19) gathers artists and audiences from around the world for ten days, September 5-15, of contemporary performance, music, visual art, film, workshops, lectures, food, drink, conversation, and celebration. This year, four Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF) Fellows are performing during the festival including Raven Chacon, Anthony Hudson/Carla Rossi, Cannupa Hanska Luger, and Laura Ortman.
This internationally renowned performing arts festival elevates the work and voice of each artist, and is attended by thousands of audience members and artists from around the world. Each NACF Fellow’s work delves into the changing narratives around Native peoples on a global stage. Invitations to perform on these platforms demonstrate the vitality of Native arts practices and the desire by the greater society to better understand Native peoples, bringing Native thought and perspectives to the world.
CANNUPA HANSKA LUGER
2016 NACF National Artists Fellow
Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota
“A Frayed Knot, AFRAID NOT”
Performance: September 5, 5:00 – 8:00pm
Exhibit: September 5 – October 18
@ c3:initiative, 412 NW 8th Ave
LAURA ORTMAN
2016 NACF National Artists Fellow
White Mountain Apache
September 6 & 7, 8:30pm
Joined by 2014 NACF National Artist Fellow Raven Chacon (Navajo) September 7 only
@ PSU Lincoln Hall
Conversation with Reuben Roqueñi (NACF’s Director of Artist Fellowships)
September 7, 2:00 – 3:00pm
PICA Patio – 15 NE Hancock St
ANTHONY HUDSON / CARLA ROSSI
2018 NACF National Artists Fellow
Grand Ronde
Conversation with Kate Bredeson
September 11, 12:30pm – 1:30pm
@ PICA Patio, 15 NE Hancock St
“Looking for Tiger Lily”
Performance: September 12, 13 & 14, 6:30 pm
Anthony Hudson/Carla Rossi (Grand Ronde), 2018 National Artist Fellow
Anthony Hudson/Carla Rossi will perform Looking for Tiger Lily (Solo) utilizing song, dance, drag, and video to put a queer spin on the ancestral tradition of storytelling. Asking what it means for a queer, mixed Native person to experience their heritage through white normative culture as they recount growing up watching the 1960 production of Peter Pan featuring Sondra Lee’s blonde, blue-eyed, ‘Indian Princess’ Tiger Lily, Anthony (and Carla) draw from a songbook stretching across Disney’s Pocahontas to Cher’s “Half- Breed.” Not just autobiography, Looking for Tiger Lily (Solo) is a coming-of-age story that’s more than cowboys versus Indians.
Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota), 2016 National Artist Fellow
Cannupa Hanska Luger will tie a physical line from the tools of ar-ti-fa-ct to their task. “There is a line, that spans across time in a continuum. This line is the record of our existence and is woven into the very fabric of being. But this line, through tension or abrasion or brute force, has been cut. The edge of this line is broken and unraveling. In order to connect to our past we must take up that line in both hands and tie it to our present in order to guide us into the future. Our stories are a long worn line and the effort to maintain them has left an artifact of that care in the form of A Frayed Knot.”
Raven Chacon (Navajo), 2014 National Artist Fellow
Sound artist Raven Chacon explores the range of sound to compose unique chamber music, experimental noise music and sound installations. The Chinle-born artist transforms analog sounds into fantastically eerie soundscapes through digitization and masterful feedback loops of handmade instruments.
Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache), 2016 National Artist Fellow
With varied natural and urban instrumentation, including violin, Apache violin, piano, electric guitar, keyboards, and pedal steel guitar, Laura Ortman showcases the wide range of her practice as a composer and visual artist. Ortman is joined on both nights by Portland musician and interdisciplinary artist Marcus Fischer, and by 2014 NACF National Artist Fellow Raven Chacon (Navajo), a composer, performer, and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation, for one night only on Sept 7th.