Black Portlanders, Black Portlands | Intisar Abioto

November 4 - 30, 2017 | Littman Gallery

Reception and Artist Talk: Friday, November 10, 2017 | 6 - 8pm

Curated by Jude Boatman

Storytelling, dreams, history, geography, and choreography are at the root of my practice. The medium is cross-disciplinary. The tools are what can be found at hand. I was a dancer first, a writer second, a photographer third, and a human body wending her way through life always. This sense of the informational body in space, a body full of information both sensing and effecting the landscape is my way. Photography is currently the most prominent practice, but that too is a
choreography. This too, is the body turning on all its sensors. It is a form of precognition, to hear the story that could be from all that is around you. If a photograph is a stamp, a packet of knowledge, then my arts practice is a weaving across geographic and temporal spaces of Black
existence. The chance is to connect and embolden us through our own image.

Intisar Abioto is an adventurer, dancer, photographer, and writer. With a research focus on the global African Diaspora, her unique form of story inquiry as a way of life has taken her from Memphis to Berlin to Djibouti, seeking the authentic stories of people within the diaspora. She's the creator of The Black Portlanders, an ongoing photo essay and exploratory blog imaging people of African descent in Portland, Oregon. This work led into field research around Black life in Oregon as lead photographer for the Urban League of Portland’s State of Black Or-
egon 2015. She released her first publication, Black Portlands, in 2016.