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Andrew Jankowski

Editor’s note: The following are photos from three exhibits at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s Time-Based Art Festival (TBA), running now through October 3. Find more of the Mercury’s TBA coverage here and here.

A participant in vanessa german’s THE BLUE WALK responds to the poet-artist’s call for rage in an empty field near Legacy Emanuel Medical Center, where once a Black Portland neighborhood thrived. Behind her, an adult guides and comforts a child participant while women around them cry out and shred flowers with their bare hands. THE BLUE WALK was a ritualistic performance honoring sacred Black presence, broadly on Earth but specific to areas where Black people are still displaced, threatening their futures.

A participant in vanessa german’s THE BLUE WALK responds to the poet-artist’s call for rage in an empty field near Legacy Emanuel Medical Center, where once a Black Portland neighborhood thrived. Behind her, an adult guides and comforts a child participant while women around them cry out and shred flowers with their bare hands. THE BLUE WALK was a ritualistic performance honoring sacred Black presence, broadly on Earth but specific to areas where Black people are still displaced, threatening their futures. Andrew Jankowski