Despite the chaos caused by last year’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) funding cuts, The Price of the Ticket—Oregon Contemporary Artists’ Biennial exhibition—opened on schedule. Crowds of art lovers—spectators, neighborhood residents, and working artists, et al.—cycled through the Kenton gallery’s three room layout to see how Oregon-tied artists responded to curator TK Smith’s prompt about the United States’ 250th anniversary. The biennial’s programming, on view through July 4, tells a richly multicultural story about the cost of claiming the US as home, especially when this country’s dominant culture does not value all American dreams equally.
The Price of the Ticket deserves to exist outside a Trump administration funding fiasco, but the relationship does feel resonant. After the National Endowment for the Arts pulled back $30,000 already guaranteed to Oregon Contemporary, supporters like the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology stepped in to bridge the gap. Oregon Contemporary remains the anchor for the exhibit’s citywide programming, with Portland Art Museum (PAM), Ori Gallery, KSMoCA, Hand2Mouth Theatre, and Collins Gallery at the Multnomah County Central Library hosting performances, installations, and other programming to continue the conversations Smith’s curatorial prompts started.
“This exhibition is so important right now,” says Blake Shell, Oregon Contemporary’s executive director. “[It’s] so really of the moment and of the artists responding to the moment, and TK saw a great opportunity for us to reflect on this moment in time in America.”
The biennial’s centerpiece is Todd McGrain’s Bust of York, which anonymously assumed the former pedestal of a toppled statue of Oregonian founder Harvey W. Scott in Mt. Tabor Park, in 2021, and which was itself toppled approximately five months later. Oregon Contemporary displays the to-scale wood and plaster prototype— the actual piece installed in the park—and PAM temporarily houses the completed bronze sculpture. Both depict an enslaved Black man who accompanied Lewis & Clark’s continental expedition. As part of a partnership with the City of Portland, those viewing the exhibition can complete a survey to share thoughts on where the bronze bust could be placed permanently.
Smith says that Bust of York attracted him to Portland, due to his professional interest in monuments, but McGrain’s sculpture had been removed by the time he arrived. He says Mount Tabor’s views were of no consolation to have missed seeing Bust of York in nature: “It felt like, this is always what happens: Someone tries to do something, for whatever demographic—be it queer people, women, disabled folks, the elderly. The system does not set us up to support each other, so when we have to be radical about it, they get suppressed, silenced, reduced, co-opted. Demian DinéYazhi’’s work is about that: it’s painful because you want to be seen, and for a lot of people, regardless of Todd’s race, they felt seen and considered.”
The Price of the Ticket, which takes its name from James Baldwin’s anthology, is divided into three sections: Promise, Place, and Power. Bust of York’s prototype occupies Place. Smith notes the bust seems to observe almost every work from its placement.
Promise, which is devoted to US potential, contains two large-scale installations: Bean Gilsdorf’s Glory Glory is a sagging textile tapestry propped up by wooden poles. Depicting a sublime patriotic scene on one side and red fabric on the other, Glory Glory features the word “uhh” stitched in play with the pronunciation of “America.” The other work, Fifty Clocks Made to Strike Together, is a collection of 50 vintage clocks tuned by DeepTime Collective members Amanda Leigh Evans and Tia Kramer to chime all at once—it’s a play on a James Adams quote about 13 clocks striking the same time. Though the 50 clocks didn’t all go off exactly as planned during the biennial’s opening reception, it’s far more interesting to hear how they sound in motion together, chugging and babbling like a river. This is more audible when Oregon Contemporary has fewer visitors.
The other bust in The Price of the Ticket stares up at Bust of York. Ash Stone, a multidisciplinary Latine artist, molded her likeness from a staunchly American product: Velveeta cheese. Stone’s sculpture will inevitably change throughout the months of the biennial’s exhibition, discoloring and rupturing as the work putrefies. Fortunately for the audience, the cheese was encased in a thick plastic box.
Other Place-based standouts include a text-based neon sculpture by DinéYazhi’, an immersive archive installation by Don’t Shoot PDX called Center of Injustice, and Benevolent Dictator: an interactive installation by Raphael Arar that prints answers to audience-posed questions, which are generated either by fellow users or an AI language model.
“I want York to be a prism,” Smith says. “I want people to be able to look through the back and see through it. Todd did this incredible thing where it’s like a Western set, and that allows York to be in direct conversation with everybody. I was hoping that people would walk around it and make connections like seeing Ash Stone’s work through it, or Eboni Frisson’s work, or how you can see The Center of Injustice through it.”
The final room, Power, plots an ongoing price paid by those who remain in the US. In one photography tryptic Wayne Bund explores an ongoing balance between his unapologetic identity as a gay man against his day job in education. Another work, by Stephen Slappe, conveys an archival radio broadcast from a maritime labor strike in Portland. Taravat Talepasand’s painting series depicts a card deck of works by 14th century Persian poet Hafez-e Shirazi, which were common in Iranian households before the Islamic Revolution.
“No one is the center, really.” Smith says of his curatorial process. “You’re all in conversation with one another and inform each other. I don’t want you to look at any singular work. I want you to look at all of them in conversation.”
The 2026 Oregon Contemporary Artists’ Biennial is on view at Oregon Contemporary, 8371 N Interstate, Fri-Sun, noon-5 pm; satellite locations include Portland Art Museum, KSMoCA, and Ori Gallery, through July 4, more info, all ages that can appreciate conceptual art.