Intisar Abioto (born 1986) is an artist and storyteller currently living and working in

Portland Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the list of cities in Oregon, largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, Columbia rivers, Portland is ...

. Working within and between the forms of

dance Dance is a performing art form consisting of sequences of movement, either improvised or purposefully selected. This movement has aesthetic and often symbolic value. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...

photography Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed ...

collaboration Collaboration (from Latin ''com-'' "with" + ''laborare'' "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Most ...

prose Prose is a form of written or spoken language that follows the natural flow of speech, uses a language's ordinary grammatical structures, or follows the conventions of formal academic writing. It differs from most traditional poetry, where the f ...

, and

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

, Abioto explores the meaning of time, space, and belonging within the construction of who, where, and what composes the

African diaspora The African diaspora is the worldwide collection of communities descended from native Africans or people from Africa, predominantly in the Americas. The term most commonly refers to the descendants of the West and Central Africans who were e ...

. Abioto has travelled across

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

, and

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

to tell stories of personal identity and collective belonging. Her work interprets the tradition of Africans who can fly into contemporary and local landscapes, highlighting the fluidity of migration across national and natural boundaries. With the five women artists in her family, she is a cofounder of Studio Abiotto.

Early life and education

Born in

Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-mos ...

, Abioto moved to

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

as a young adult with her family. Herself and four sisters infused this new home base with the creativity intuitive to their home town community and upbringing. She completed undergraduate studies at

Spelman College Spelman College is a private, historically black, women's liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia. It is part of the Atlanta University Center academic consortium in Atlanta. Founded in 1881 as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, Spelman re ...

and

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Epis ...

Career

From 2007 to 2009 Abioto travelled 200,000 miles around the world with her sisters, documenting oral histories of about the stories and dreams of young people, especially people of color. This project was based on

Virginia Hamilton Virginia Esther Hamilton (March 12, 1936 – February 19, 2002) was an American children's books author. She wrote 41 books, including '' M. C. Higgins, the Great'' (1974), for which she won the U.S. National Book Award in category Children's Bo ...

's book The People Could Fly. In 2013 Abioto started The Black Portlanders, a

tumblr Tumblr (stylized as tumblr; pronounced "tumbler") is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a sho ...

blog that has since expanded from the digital platform into gallery installations. Originally the project began as a way to expand the stories of who belongs in Portland, while honoring the multiple displacements that have disproportionally affected African Americans in Portland from Vanport to contemporary urban reinvestment strategies. By capturing the full spectrum of identity and belonging within the urban landscape of Portland, the project offers a counter-narrative to press branding Portland as "the whitest city in America". Herself a member of the African Diaspora, The Black Portlanders uses photography to tell stories of transnational migration of African peoples to Portland from a perspective that is at once personal and transcendent. In 2015, Abioto expanded the project to include rural experiences by partnering with the

National Urban League The National Urban League, formerly known as the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, is a nonpartisan historic civil rights organization based in New York City that advocates on behalf of economic and social justice for African Am ...

Portland chapter to illustrate a reissue of the State of Black Oregon, a report documenting economic inequities faced by African American communities across the state with an emphasis on resulting migration shifts. This social justice tool kit was enhanced by Abioto's creative vision, which honors the history of migration from the

Southern United States The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...

to the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though ...

. The project includes multiple images of each person she photographs, allowing the complexity of each person's natural expressions to unfold from the lenses of camera, the artist's eye, and the viewer's retina.

Exhibitions

Abioto's work has been featured in galleries internationally such as

Portland Art Museum The Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon, United States, was founded in 1892, making it one of the oldest art museums on the West Coast and seventh oldest in the US. Upon completion of the most recent renovations, the Portland Art Museum becam ...

Portland State University Portland State University (PSU) is a public research university in Portland, Oregon. It was founded in 1946 as a post-secondary educational institution for World War II veterans. It evolved into a four-year college over the following two decades ...

's Littman Gallery, and

University of Oregon The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a public research university in Eugene, Oregon. Founded in 1876, the institution is well known for its strong ties to the sports apparel and marketing firm Nike, Inc, and its co-founder, billion ...

's defunct Portland-based gallery White Box. In 2019, she exhibited and performed with nine Oregon-based Black artists against the inner expanse of the Oregon State Capitol building in Salem as a part of the Governor's Office solo exhibition.

Awards and honors

* 2018: Oregon Humanities Emerging Journalists, Community Stories Fellowship * 2019: Women of Excellence in the Arts Award from the Portland Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. * 2020: Lilla Jewel Award for Womxn Artists from the Seeding Justice Foundation

References

External links

impactmania "Intisar Abioto: Visual Voice" by Jody Turner
{{DEFAULTSORT:Abioto, Intisar 1986 births Living people Artists from Portland, Oregon Artists from Memphis, Tennessee Spelman College alumni Wesleyan University alumni African Americans in Oregon