an end of the year email from your friend martha and grapefruits

hi again! i am back with a holiday-season edition of the grapefruits sometimes art mail. not that there is really anything unusually festive about this one, i just happen to be sending it out right now because this is when i had the time for it lol ⛄️

anyway, here's a mini-smorgasbord of art things i've been looking at lately!

Imagining a new future: ‘Make Banana Cry’ at PICA | Oregon ArtsWatch

The much anticipated finale of PICA's "Time-Released" programming is the work of Andrew Tay and Stephen Thompson. The performance engages with representations of Asian identity with a sense of play, recognition and, ultimately, reclamation.

i was supposed to go see this show, called "make banana cry," at PICA's time released festival last month with a friend, but i made the mistake of thinking i would be able to buy tickets at the door. there were none left!!! :( sold-out shows aren't necessarily the norm for performance art, so obviously this one was special. fortunately, oregon artswatch has a terrific review in case you also missed out.

portland, like many cities around the country, has been trying to figure out what to do with the monuments that got pulled down or damaged and later removed during the black lives matter protests that started in 2020. there are a lot of reasons people wanted to see them gone, but since they're public property, the question of "what to do with them" is kind of complicated. the city of portland commissioned a study by some academic types at lewis and clark college (ironic) to suggest ways they might handle this issue. it's really interesting! i don't love all the ideas (augmented reality? 🙄) but i think it is important and empowering to understand what kind of ideas are influencing our civic landscape. in what i guess is the next phase of this project, the city has released a survey to gather input from the public. the questions and design of this survey are totally underwhelming, but this is what's being offered so why not participate? if you live in portland and care about this kind of thing, let them know what you think.

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micro review: "black artists of oregon" at portland art museum

i took my parents to the portland art museum a few weeks ago, and we found out that most of the building is currently closed for renovations! there were only three exhibitions on view. but luckily for us, one of those exhibitions was "black artists of oregon," a massive group show curated by artist intisar abioto. the show aims to highlight "both the presence and absence of Black artists" in the state, in an effort to "deepen our awareness of the talented artists who have shaped and inspired" their community. it also claims to be the first exhibit to consider black artists in oregon as a group. even if this had been the only exhibition on view, we would have been happy. the scale alone---69 artists, 200+ artworks, something like 6 enormous gallery rooms---is impressive, but the sense of depth and the connections across artists/artworks really stuck with me.

this show is intergenerational and diverse in a multitude of ways, featuring artists born in the 1990s all the way back to the 1800s, intricately carved wood sculpture, elegant black-and-white photography, hand-knitted sweaters, monumental history paintings, comic book pages, hard-to-describe conceptual art, etc. the ways artworks were grouped and arranged wasn't chronological or thematic: a small woven tapestry from 1940 by thelma johnson streat caught my eye in a room otherwise filled with contemporary works, and i was excited and surprised to find several more of her works later on in the largest gallery. my initial encounter with this small example of streat's work made the discovery of her more ambitious painting feel especially thrilling. i felt as though i were really getting a sense of the actual individuals and relationships that define the subject of the exhibition. this feeling was amplified after i listened to the exhibition podcast produced by the museum and local radio station the numberz fm, in conjunction with the show. in episode 6, fiber artist adriene cruz described her path, both from new york to oregon, and to becoming a professional artist, including her mentors in the arts and her perspective on being a parent and an artist.

in addition to streat's paintings and fiber work, some of my favorite moments in the exhibition were the domestic alchemy of sidony o'neal's plumbing fixture pieces, a dream-like early painting by robert colescott, samantha wall's delicate aquatint etchings, and willie little's multimedia sculptures. when i spoke with my parents to get their review, they agreed that they liked "pretty much everything in the show," singling out mickalene thomas' colorful photomontage as a particular favorite.

"black artists of oregon" offers an invaluable window into part of portland's art landscape that hasn't gotten nearly as much attention as it deserves, especially in historically exclusionary/gatekeep-y institutions like the art museum. (of course oregon, like all of the united states, has a long record of officially endorsed systemic racism that continues to this day and extends to our arts scene.) it was also just a beautifully curated and consistently engaging show, probably my favorite that i have ever seen at pam. i have already been back to see it again and will probably visit once more before the show closes on march 17 (it helps that i have a membership to the museum---if you don't have one, you might want to visit on a free day! or check out the library's discovery pass, which lets you reserve two free admissions with your library card once per year. otherwise it's $25 to get in.)

Gaza Gallery That Was in Documenta Was ‘Destroyed by Israeli Forces’ – ARTnews.com

The Question of Funding reported that Gazans had entered the gallery and burned artworks to create heat.

continuing from my last email's focus on the intersections between the arts and the ongoing genocide in gaza, the palestinian art collective called question of funding (qof) reported via instagram that gaza gallery eltiqa has been destroyed by israeli attacks. qof has also been sharing stories from/about eltiqa and more generally what it's like to be involved in contemporary art in occupied palestine on their social media. the reality is that artworks are just material objects when survival is at stake. but cultural genocide is also a part of colonization, and preventing a people from creating and sharing their own culture through artistic expression is a potent form of oppression.

the sad news about eltiqa gallery reminded me of the frustrating reports of "controversy" over last year's documenta, a long-running german art festival that takes place every five years. eltiqa and qof were included at the invitation of the indonesian collective ruangrupa, who curated the 2022 event. accusations of antisemitism led to multiple open letters, resignations, investigations, and artists pulling out of the exhibition. the whole thing was confusingly and unfairly reported in the press, but i found momus' podcast and essay "review of the reviews" to be a helpful explainer on the whole situation. it's particularly interesting to revisit this subject now, in light of all the messed-up rhetoric surrounding antisemitism and pro-palestinian speech.

In the Shadow of the Holocaust | The New Yorker

How the politics of memory in Europe obscures what we see in Israel and Gaza today.

masha gessen's thoughtful essay on the new yorker website is extremely relevant to the problems that emerged from documenta, in that it discusses germany's issues with antisemitism and its own genocidal past. ironically, gessen was basically disinvited from receiving a literary award because of the fear of censure this essay provoked.

related: if you are an artist or writer (or both!) and you want to express something about to the situation in gaza in a web-based modality, experimental web-poetry project ORAL.pub is waiting for you to reach out! they are accepting submissions through january 6 (they extended the original deadline!). if you don't have coding experience or need other help realizing your idea, they are happy to work with you on the tech side of things. message them on ig if you have questions or want to submit.

Olga Balema at Hannah Hoffman Gallery

Olga Balema’s second solo show at Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Loon, inspired an almost immediate sense of suspicion.

maybe in part because of how chaotic and corrupt the world feels, i found these transparent sculptures by ukrainian-american artist olga balema to be incredibly refreshing. i remember a lot of talk about "demystification" in art school that never seemed to bring about the results it promised, so it is super satisfying to see art that has literally nothing to hide. it feels open and light, with the potential to hold so much but also to let things go. it's also kind of funny. i saw this work first through bridget donahue's instagram, and later found this review of another show balema had in l.a.

one last note for portland people: xhurch's annual NTVTY installation is at the lloyd center mall this year! if you aren't familiar, NTVTY is an immersive-style art installation that typically features outdated technology, glitchy visuals, and quasi-religious imagery, as though a family of robots were graciously sharing their origin story with us humans. they are open kind of regularly? but i would recommend checking their instagram and/or messaging them before you head over. not that there isn't plenty to do at the mall even if they are closed!

wow, that's plenty for now! i will leave you with a new installation of the grapefruits music corner:

i have been interested in hildegard von bingen for a while ever since seeing this cool illustration of her being struck by a vision. i found a cassette of her music at a local record shop and was surprised to find out that instead of straight up medieval music it was a bunch of 90s dance-y remixes of her choral arrangements lol! i ended up loving it, hope you do too : )

i will be back next year! please send me suggestions/events/content you think i should feature, and let me know what you think of all this stuff if you get the urge. xoxoxo