Abigail DeVille’s installation at PICA features Street Roots papers, vendor artwork
Portland’s Institute for Contemporary Art’s 16,000-square-foot exhibition space in Northeast Portland is the site of Bronx-based artist Abigail DeVille’s massive installation piece. And thousands of back issues of Street Roots, as well as the art of many Street Roots vendors, are an intentional element.
DeVille’s commissioned work has a purpose deep and wide. She has long been perfecting her craft as an archaeologist who unearths a dark, invisible America with massive installations created from detritus, often trash gleaned from local dumps, bins and recycling centers. With these cast-off objects, DeVille creates meticulous and immersive installations designed to reveal a site-specific past.
“History is deep; it’s dark and affects everything happening in this very moment,” DeVille said. “History is the tale of the victor. And it’s garbage.”
DeVille’s work repeatedly references the victor’s tale with structures that are associated with the systemic racism and oppression that have defined America for centuries.
DeVille calls the exhibit “The American Future.” She used Thomas Jefferson as her entry point for this reflection on the Portland experience. It was Jefferson, after all, the father of Manifest Destiny, who commissioned the Lewis and Clark expedition that opened up the Oregon Territory to white settlers.
DeVille said Jefferson “is an interesting figure but fraught because he had all these aspirations and high-minded ideals that never really translated. He said all men are created equal, but I’m going to own over 250 people. These things I feel have proliferated and filtered down into the way Americans think of themselves. I read a housing statistic (from Portland) that said the families that are the most vulnerable to being homeless are Native Americans and African-Americans.”
The exhibit, which runs through Jan. 12, features a massive representation of the stepped Pyramid of Djoser in Egypt, saturated in a blue light that suggests memory. The foundational “stones” of this pyramid are made up of 20 years of back issues of Street Roots newspapers.
Nothing is accidental in DeVille’s work. She chose to incorporate the newspapers, stored in the basement beneath Street Roots’ offices at 211 NW Davis St., because Street Roots is a voice for the voiceless and marginalized. Intermingled throughout the bricks of the Street Roots bundles are hundreds of crumpled copies of the Declaration of Independence.
The pyramid is topped with a flickering black and white montage of the once-thriving African-American neighborhood where PICA resides. The area continues to see a steady forced attrition of the black families who once built a deep community here.
DeVille’s art works powerfully on an intuitive level. We can stand beside her massive cardboard columns and sense how this neo-classical architecture was designed to add an immortal aura of power to government buildings by America’s forefathers. We can look down at the disembodied black feet huddled beneath a twisting black plastic tornado and sense the lives sucked into anonymity. And as we pass through a tunnel lined with shattered mirrors through the center of the pyramid, we can catch a glimpse of our broken image and become silent witnesses to our own mysterious accident of ancestry, of privilege or lack thereof. Meanwhile, the soundtrack of Lawrence Welk’s “200 years of American Music” plays stealthily in the background.
There is an open pentagon in the center of the exhibit. It is built of benches, like an amphitheater that seems to invite people to gather, learn and share. Suspended above it, however, is an oppressive, tilted edifice representing the roof of Pioneer Courthouse, the center of downtown Portland and the oldest federal building in the Pacific Northwest.
The architecture is swathed in black plastic and riddled with small tears. It feels like an ominous storm cloud overhead, one that could bring life-giving rain or destruction. This black roof creates an uneasy feeling inside the gathering place. Who can really assemble here? Who is welcome? It seems safer to move to the corners, where chain-link fences festooned with discarded, shabby stuffed toys wall off a separate area for observers and those who aren’t quite welcome in the center. Here there are old couches and flickering films that loop the history of Portland’s civil rights movement. DeVille in her short time here was able to mine the Oregon Historical Society’s archives for these seldom-seen gems.
Along the only wall flooded with light – the rest of the installation is lit with muted color – is a collection of artwork framed and presented in traditional gallery style. These are pieces by Street Roots vendors, artwork completed during open art sessions at the vendor office, as well as borrowed from the private collections of vendors. Artists include Aileen McPherson, P. Oaks, C.W. Witt and Eric Stayer. There are no name tags or explanations, only the exhibition guide explains the presence of these works of art.
DeVille’s desire to include the voices and art of the houseless was originally sparked by Street Roots vendor Michone Nettles.
“I was there in the Pioneer Courthouse Square,” DeVille said. “I encountered someone who told me he was homeless, and he was selling his poetry, so I bought his poetry. Later, I saw his face on the cover of one of the Street Roots zines. That’s what sparked it for me. I knew I wanted to feature homeless artists.”
Roya Amirsoleymani is artistic director and curator of public engagement for PICA. She has been collaborating with the visual art team around community engagement and partnerships over the two-month span of this exhibition.
Amirsoleymani said DeVille’s exhibition is a platform for historically marginalized artists, “specifically the black community and houseless community.”
“We have a mandate to share the space with artists and community groups who don’t usually have access,” said Kristan Kennedy, PICA’s artistic director and curator. “We want to share the space with populations experiencing displacement in a number of ways. The show is a good way to put those values together.”
To that end, PICA is planning a series of events, free and open to all:
• Street Roots will kick off the events with the 2018 zine launch party and vendor poetry reading from noon to 4 p.m. Dec. 9. The zine – which features original poetry, essays and artwork by Street Roots vendors – will be sold at vendors’ usual sales turfs after Thanksgiving.
• A screening of “Arresting Power, Resisting Police Violence in Portland” will be held Jan. 10. Filmmakers Julie Perini, Erin Yanke and Jodi Darby will be on hand for a conversation.
• Finally, at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 12, Outside the Frame will screen the films of youths who have experienced homelessness, followed by an interview with the filmmakers.
PICA
Portland’s Institute for Contemporary Art
15 NE Hancock St., Portland
Hours: Noon-6 p.m. Wednesday-Friday; noon-4 p.m. Saturday
Street Roots is an award-winning, nonprofit, weekly newspaper focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. Our newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Learn more about Street Roots
