News & Notes: Wendy Red Star’s MacArthur Fellowship; Oct 7th peace vigil and installation

Portland-based artist Wendy Red Star wins a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship; In commemoration of October 7th, poet Mimi German will read poems to mourn lives lost; Mona Huneidi’s installation at PCC honors the war’s missing journalists.
artist shown in a studio environment with her work, hands folded underneath her chin
Wendy Red Star photographed with her work for the MacArthur Fellowship. Photo credit: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

2024 MacArthur Fellow: Wendy Red Star’s “genius grant”

Every year since 1981, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation reveals a list of individuals selected to receive a no-strings-attached fellowship entailing $800,000 distributed over five years. These individuals, all submitted anonymously, come from various creative and intellectual disciplines and the selection is a surprise. One of those people gifted this year’s so-called “genius grant,” the colloquial name for the MacArthur Fellowship, is Oregon-based Apsáalooke/Crow artist, Wendy Red Star

Red Star was born in Billings, Mont., into the Apsáalooke (Crow) Nation, and raised on the Crow Reservation. This geographic and cultural upbringing continues to inspire and drive her art forward via consideration of colonial impact on Native American narratives and subsequent cultural misconceptions. In a recent interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Jess Hazel regarding the MacArthur Fellowship, Red Star recounted that she aims “to build an art historical canon for Apsáalooke aesthetics.” In the same interview she also mentions being the second woman from her tribe to become a MacArthur Fellow; Janine Pease Windy Boy received the fellowship in the 1990s creating a lineage of which Red Star is now a part.

Now residing in Portland, Red Star’s work is featured in prominent permanent collections including at the British Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Portland Art Museum. Her clever use of multimedia, photography, and archival materials has become the artist’s well-known signature style, earning her an array of awards — including her recent Bonnie Bronson Fellowship covered by ArtsWatch in April of this year.  

Information regarding the other recipients included in the MacArthur Foundation’s 22-person list can be found on the MacArthur Foundation’s YouTube channel “macfound” through the video Meet the 2024 MacArthur Fellows. Wendy Red Star’s video on that same channel can also be found here

Marlies Carruth, director of the MacArthur Fellows, explains: “The 2024 MacArthur Fellows pursue rigorous inquiry with aspiration and purpose. They expose biases built into emerging technologies and social systems and fill critical gaps in the knowledge of cycles that sustain life on Earth. Their work highlights our shared humanity, centering the agency of disabled people, the humor and histories of Indigenous communities, the emotional lives of adolescents, and perspectives of rural Americans.”

Wendy Red Star, “1880 Crow Peace Delegation,” 2014, Archival pigment print on Sunset Fiber rag, 24 x 16.45 in (60.96 x 41.78 cm).

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Sponsor

Seattle Opera The Magic Flute Seattle Washington

Monday, October 7, marks the one-year anniversary of the continuing and escalating conflict in Gaza. Here are two commemorations in the Portland area.

Flyer for the ‘Let There Be Light’ event

Vigil for Peace

On October 7 there will be a vigil begining at 7 p.m. to honor those who have died in the conflict in Gaza, held at the Shir Tikvah/Eastside Jewish Commons in Portland and called “Y’hi Or, Let There Be Light.” Mimi German, the Oregon New Generation Beat Poet Laureate of 2023-2025 and a Jewish woman who lived in Israel for many years beginning in 1987, will be sharing poetry from her book WAR POEMS Israel-Gaza/The First 100 Days of Carnage. There will be an Arabic translator as well as a Hebrew translator in honor of the book’s recent translations into Arabic and Hebrew. 

Mimi German. Photo: Laurie Clarke

German was born in Philadelphia but quickly moved to New York City. Throughout her life she has been an advocate for various social justice movements. She relocated to Oregon in 1995 and has been involved in numerous protests, including actions around a uranium dumpsite in Nevada located on Indigenous land. In Portland, her advocacy focuses on the houseless population.  

German’s poetry wrestles with tragedy of the more than 1,200 civilian Jewish lives lost on October 7, 2023, and her horror at the genocidal response of the Israeli government in the year since, which has resulted in more than 39,000 reported Palestinian deaths. In addition to the poetry reading at 7 p.m. Oct. 7, an art installation will remain for three weeks at the Eastside Jewish Commons in a small room resembling a bomb shelter, with German’s poetry projected onto the walls. 

The vigil and art installation welcome those with connections to any side of this war and espouses the need for understanding and peace while giving space to mourn.

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Sponsor

Portland Opera The Shining Newmark Theatre Portland Oregon

Portland Community College’s North View Gallery Stages Exhibition to Benefit Journalists

Mona Huneidi, “Targeted: 100+ Kites,” 2024, installation view at Performance Works Northwest, Portland, Oregon. Photo: Tim Sugden

In remembrance of the journalists who have gone missing or been killed since the beginning of the conflict on October 7, 2023, North View Gallery on the Sylvania Campus of Portland Community College features Mona Huneidi’s installation Targeted: 100+ Kites: A Benefit for Gaza. The display consists of 100 handmade kites shown in conjunction with projections and sounds original to the artist and her team.

Huneidi was born in Kuwait and was educated simultaneously in Kuwait and Lebanon. Her personal tie to this conflict, however, comes from her Palestinian grandparents who were displaced from their homes. This is Huneidi’s first installation. Her primary pursuit is filmmaking and animation, particularly related to stop-motion animation, which has led her to show work at PCC’s Art Beat as well as further afield at the Cannes Short Film Corner and the Festival De Cine Internacional De Barcelona.

The installation is directly inspired by the poem “If I Must Die,” written by Palestinian author and academic Refaat Alareer, who was killed by an airstrike in December 2023, around the time Huneidi began to conceptualize this installation. Part of the impetus for this project came from the August 2024 reports from the Committee to Protect Journalists which revealed that 116 journalists and media workers in Gaza went missing and/or were killed. This is reported as the most deadly period for journalists since the organization began investigating deaths in 1992. The title 100+ Kites acknowledges that the death toll likely will continue to rise. Kites are used because Alareer’s poem is filled with kite-related imagery.

Mona Huneidi, “Targeted: 100+ Kites,” 2024, the artist in front of the installation at Performance Works Northwest, Portland. Photo: Tim Sugden

This exhibition incorporates collecting funds for the Committee to Protect Journalists, Anera — a site which funds the support of displaced and struggling Lebanese families; and the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, which provides food, medicine, and other necessities to the children caught in the crossfires of this conflict.

Beginning Oct. 16, the gallery will launch a series of programming that will run through the exhibit’s closure on Oct. 25. In chronological order of occurrence we have listed the events below:

  • Exhibition Dates: September 14-October 25, 2024
  • Gazan Kite Making Workshop with Mona Huneidi and Mohammed Usrof: Wednesday, Oct. 16, 10:30 a.m.-noon.
  • Screening of Spaces of Exception: A documentary about the American Indian reservations and the Palestinian refugee camp. Discussion with directors Matt Peterson and Malek Rasamny to follow at Portland State University, Lincoln Hall 075: Tuesday, Oct.22, 5-7:30 p.m.
  • Artist Talk with Mona Huneidi: Thursday, Oct. 24, 11 a.m.-noon.
  • Closing Reception: Friday, Oct. 25, 5-8 p.m.

Kyera Lutton is local to Salem, Oregon, where she grew up with a love of hiking, reading, and museum-going. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from Willamette University with a dual BA in Art History and English Literature. She is passionate about local news and democratized art education. In line with those interests, she curated an exhibition for the Hallie Ford Museum of Art titled Cyberspace Scenery: An online exhibition looking at landscape painting in the Pacific Northwest. Currently, Kyera is the assistant to accomplished Pacific Northwest landscape artist April Waters.

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  1. Vivian Cameron

    Awesome work Kyera, I’m so impressed with your knowledge and hard work. The article opened my eyes to some unknown history, so thank you very much!

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