A Conversation on Power and Access
A Conversation on Power and Access
With Jovencio De La Paz, Tannaz Farsi, Christine Miller, and Xia Zhang, Moderated by Carmen Brewton Denison
October 2, 2021, 1:00 p.m. Pacific (Zoom)
Free and open to all
Register here
Recognizing underlying systems of power is crucial when addressing more specific issues around access. “Habits Of Denial” begins with a conversation confronting exclusionary systems that are embedded in the ways we communicate with one another.
Portland-based writer, educator, artist, and activist Carmen Brewton Denison will moderate a think-tank conversation with artists Jovencio de la Paz, Tannaz Farsi, Christine Miller, and Xia Zhang. Discussions will examine how the systemic and embodied elements of colonialism and white supremacy are experienced in these visual artists’ studio practices and, more broadly, how it impacts the words we speak and how we think.
This conversation is a culmination of Describing Language: Thinking Through Access and Communication, an exhibition-as-laboratory at New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art, University of Southern Indiana, which exists online as well.
This program is organized as part of Habits Of Denial: A Series of Programs on Access curated by Tiffany Harker and Iris Williamson, CFAR’s 2021-22 Curators-in-Residence. Programs are made possible by the Ford Family Foundation.
Carmen Brewton Denison is a writer, educator, artist, and activist who resides in Portland, Oregon. She currently serves as the Executive Director at racial justice and educational equity-focused non-profit organization, Campus Compact of Oregon. In this role, she supports the development and implementation of racial justice programming in partnership with 2- and 4-year colleges and universities, K-12 schools, government, and nonprofit entities across the state of Oregon. She also coordinates, designs, and facilitates Campus Compact community accountability and collaboration and institutional equity initiatives with campus and community partners across the country. Beginning her career as a visual artist, Denison’s early work drew heavily upon histories of social intervention, anti-colonial and anti-racist pedagogy, and Black Feminist critique. Denison’s practice led to non-profit work with the co-founding of the Creative Activism Lab in 2013 with an Innovation Award from the Pacific Northwest College of Art. From there, Denison went on to work with the Portland Community College Community-Based Learning department to support community engagement methodologies that center critical race theory and community wisdom. Since then, Denison has worked on collaborative projects with Portland’s houseless community, BIPoC youth, and students. As a teacher and facilitator, Denison supported the development of interdisciplinary and socially engaged-programming in Marylhurst University’s art department, where she taught critical theory and interdisciplinary thesis research and writing. She currently works with students in Portland State University’s University Studies Program and Pacific Northwest College of Arts Critical Studies Program where she designs and facilitates applied theory curriculum. Denison’s partner Alex, and her dog, Pinto, are the center of her world. Her top ten favorite things are: travel, movies/tv, books, politics, art, music, food, plants, the forest, and conversation about the aforementioned topics with good company.
Jovencio de la Paz (they/them) works in a space between digital technology and hand weaving. Focused on creating specialized designed software and drawing tools, de la Paz collaborates with algorithms, self-generating patterns, and computational creativity to explore the related histories of technology and the loom. The resulting textiles, hand-woven on a computerized Thread Controller loom, display a tension between the physical world and the digital, the organic and technological, and the haptic quality of cloth versus the perceived rigidity of the numerical. De la Paz is an artist, weaver, and educator and their work explores the intersection of textile processes such as weaving, dye, and stitch-work as they relate to broader concerns of language, histories of colonization, migrancy, ancient technology, and speculative futures. Interested in the ways transience and ephemerality are embodied in material, de la Paz looks at how knowledge and experiences are transmitted through society in space and time, whether semiotically by language or haptically by made things. They received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, an MFA in Fiber from Cranbrook Academy of Art, and has exhibited internationally. De la Paz is currently Assistant Professor and Curricular Head of Fibers at the University of Oregon.
Tannaz Farsi’s practice is a configuration of objects and images that address the complicated networks around the conception of memory, history, identity, and geography. Drawing from historic cultural objects, feminist histories, and theories of displacement evidenced by long-standing colonialist and authoritarian interventions into daily life, her project-based works propose a different means of representation regarding non-western subjects and objects that obstruct singular and conventional means of identification. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and supported through residencies including Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, MacDowell Colony, Santa Fe Art Institute and the Rauschenberg Foundation. Her work has been acknowledged by grants and awards includings a Hallie Ford Fellowship in 2014 and a Bonnie Bronson Fellowship in 2019. Born in Iran, Farsi lives and works in Eugene, OR where she is on the faculty at the University of Oregon.
Christine Miller (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.
Xia Zhang is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator who was born in southern China, grew up in suburban Maryland, and came into adulthood in Appalachia. Much of her work has evolved based on her observations and experiences from living in white-dominated communities from coal country to wine country. Since 2012, she has exhibited in China, Thailand, and nationally. Xia was the 2016-2017 Alice C. Cole Visiting Artist at Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA), a 2017-2018 resident artist at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts (Gatlinburg, TN), and was an artist in residence summers 2018 & 2019 at The Growlery (San Francisco, CA). She is presently an Assistant Professor of Fine Art at the University of Cincinnati.