Ongoing

A chance to meet one-on-one with the Portland artist Qi You to view her exhibition of photos from a trip to Tokyo.

 By appointment only (message @qi_you__ on instagram for appointment) 

Outer Voice

Studio 4 at Oregon Contemporary

8371 N Interstate Ave

Portland, OR 97217

• the duration of this performance/dialogue is around 30-45 minutes.

• suggested donation: the cost of two large hass avocados. 

"Many years ago when I was in pre-college art class in Beijing, I had an art teacher called: yellow wood, a straight translation of his name: Huang Mu. I liked his first name a lot, just wood.

One time yellow wood gave us a demonstration of sketches, his pencil all of sudden started scratching the paper. He twisted it around with his two fingers to keep the flow of the sketching process. It didn’t work. Then he was very unwilling to start sharpening the pencil in front of us. The lead part kept coming out as broken. A few tries more and he dropped our country’s pencil back into the pencil box with a resigned face:

‘’Couldn’t even make a pencil well’’.

We all knew what he meant. The rest of the class laughed, including him. He picked an imported brand pencil that was painted blue, and confidently went back to his sketching.

This exhibit is all about Oregon (specificity/connection) and welcome."

- Qi 

starting as an “outsider”, i sensitively observed this unique lostandfound kindness happening in our city. a project comes across in my mind almost every day, lost and found, where home is.

my friend Shasha happened to almost lose her bag on the bus on our way together for a lunch reunion in 2019. i was wondering whether it was me with my project that brought her bad luck. i took this picture of her while she was making a phone call to her husband about her bag being found by a bus driver. even today i still hold this strong belief/strange faith that “you will find it in our city”.

Shasha makes delicious coffee drinks and roasts beans at Superjoy Coffee, a local roaster in town.

i couldn’t be more grateful for having this collaboration with the founder of Superjoy Coffee Joe Yang. expanding this blog-like art project into a real form of sharing is exciting.

Joe and i share the same idea of having coffee as a medium/carrier to tell a story. perhaps an even bigger one in this part of the land. for me Shasha and Joe are constantly telling it by working so hard in this country, other things i leave with you/us while you/we are sipping this delicious coffee the next morning.

“I just hope that people can get more information and experience through more forms of good coffee.” Joe Yang, the founder of Superjoy Coffee.

onelove,

qi