Student

Simeen is a social practice artist hailing from New Delhi, India. She was raised in post-liberalization India, a transformative period that reshaped the urban landscape and neighborhoods. While on one hand, this world presented a sense of freedom in the ways of being; particularly for young women, the stratification across class, caste and religion created tensions that manifested in everyday life of women in many ways. Simeen’s creative practice represents a conscientious effort to grapple with these tensions, offering personal insights that comment on the broader political context.

Her approach involves the intentional integration of everyday fragments from ordinary life. Through mediums such as installation, wall murals, and community art projects, Simeen endeavors to initiate conversations that can facilitate new possibilities of being, becoming and belonging in a time of repression. Her work intersects at both personal and political junctures; it is, at large, an attempt to represent lived experience of systemic oppression and collective healing in/of community. 

Simeen’s involvement extends to numerous community-based art projects addressing gender issues and marginalized identities in public spaces. Her works have been featured in the past two editions of the Students Biennale within the Kochi Muziris Biennale. Notably, she is currently engaged in an upcoming project, a photo essay slated for release in Spring 2024. This essay, which delves into the utilization of tarp sheds in India as an anti-authoritarian strategy, is set to be featured in a book titled ‘Beyond Molotovs—A Visual Handbook on Anti-Authoritarian Strategies’. 

Simeen currently lives in Portland and is working on a project that seeks to document safe spaces and spots of leisure for women in the city, further contributing to her commitment to social engagement through art.

Instagram: @loadingwaitt

Nina Vichayapai explores how surroundings embody humankind. Her work examines physical spaces as expressions of the many people who shape them. Through many mediums but especially hand stitched textiles she explores how belonging within the American landscape has been established by historically marginalized communities.

Her work has been shown nationally and locally with institutions such as the Wing Luke Museum, the Henry Art Gallery, and the Bellevue Art Museum. She has been an artist in residence with Caldera, Inscape Arts and Cultural Center, Deception Pass State Park, Centrum, and more. She has also been the recipient of several public and private commissions including with Meta Arts, Homes for Good, Lake Sammamish State Park, and the Cities of Redmond and Ellensburg.

Born in Bangkok, Thailand, she graduated from the California College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2017. Nina currently lives in the Pacific Northwest and when she is not making art she can be found turning roadside fruit into jam, taking pictures of crows, or trail running in the rain.

Website: www.nvichayapai.com
Instagram: @nvichayapai

Clara Harlow (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and preschool teacher from Omaha, Nebraska. Her work weaves together community, personal history, and play through experiential events and interactive objects. You can most likely find her at the local swimming pool or making pigs in a blanket for her next themed party. 

Recent collaborations include Crown Heights Mutual Aid, Carrig Montessori School, Lolo NYC, Four-D, and the Fabric Workshop Museum Shop. Clara currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Check out her work at www.claraharlow.com and @all_corndogs_go_to_heaven. 

Lou Blumberg (they/them) is an artist, educator, and facilitator living in New Orleans. Their work deals with questions of personal and community safety, vulnerability and intimacy, and how to live a good life. Hire them to mediate your next conflict by emailing them at loub@pdx.edu.

Sarah Ngoc Luu (She/They) is an interdisciplinary artist and barista. She is first generation Asian-American from San Jose, California and is currently living in Portland, Oregon. She holds a BA in Studio Art with a concentration in Preparation in Teaching from San Jose State University and is looking forward to her next several years in the MFA Art and Social Practice program. 

During her undergraduate studies, she was heavily involved with her college radio station, 90.5 KSJS. Working with figures in her local music scene, Sarah collaborated with her peers and colleagues to host shows throughout the California Bay Area. Throughout her time with the station, she has also led multiple workshops introducing mediums of collage, printmaking and zine making for others within her radio community.

Sarah has created multiple zines, including 2GÜD and Sound Shock for 90.5 KSJS. Aside from specializing in D.I.Y publications, her work explores themes of Asian American identity, diaspora, intergenerational trauma and family lineage through ceramics, printmaking, and photography. She describes herself as “interdisciplinary in life”, having backgrounds in not only art but also radio broadcasting, community service, baking, music, dance and coffee. 

Domenic Toliver is an interdisciplinary artist and educator from Long Beach, California. He works across film, photography, performance, and socially engaged art. His practice centers on collaboration, curiosity, and community.

His practice emerges through dialogue, where responding to what people say becomes a creative act in itself. He approaches his work as an ongoing process of questioning rather than seeking fixed answers, embracing change as both material and method He is especially interested in how storytelling can serve as a powerful tool for connection and social change. A former Division I football player, Toliver’s work also explores masculinity and its cultural traditions, examining how societal expectations shape behavior, identity, and interpersonal dynamics. He is especially interested in the public “masks” people wear, and how masculine norms influence these performances

As a facilitator, listener, and collaborator, he leads community-oriented projects that value lived experience, shared authorship, and meaningful exchange.

https://domenictoliver.com

Gwen is a visual and socially engaged artist based in Portland, Oregon. With a background in psychology and social work, she brings a trauma-informed, relational lens to her art. Her work explores the physicality of emotion, memory, and storytelling through painting, drawing, photography, sound, and conversation. Currently pursuing an MFA in Art and Social Practice at Portland State University, Gwen is especially interested in themes of shelter, safety, and domestic space—how they can hold both comfort and harm. She centers listening as a practice, creating space for others to share stories often kept silent.

Adela is a Professional in noticing the beautiful small things in life / Una Profesional en ver las maricaditas lindas de la vida. Depending on the day, she poses as an Artist, Journalist, Poet, Storyteller, Gatherer, Sustainability, and Social Impact Director. But truly, she’s a druid, a plant dressed in the body of a human.

As a Colombian-Lebanese, Autistic x ADHDer, Queer woman she is constantly inhabiting the borderlines and bringing her roots everywhere, to help other people flow with the rivers of their own stories. Her work touches on the themes of family, legacy, mental health, fashion, community storytelling, identity, creativity, and sustainability. 

Some of her gifts include an insane ear for music, as well as weaving words and people together. She’s now in the process of getting her MFA in Art + Social Practice at PSU, in Portland, Oregon.

Instagram @adelafajury
website: adelafajury.com

Peery Sloan makes art that reimagines work as something rooted in care and connection instead of exhaustion and profit. Using materials like clay, straw, and earth, she builds hands-on spaces and invites people to join in the making. Her projects—whether a gathering spot built from the ground up or a performance about unlearning old work ideals—encourage conversation, reflection, and community. Inspired by her Scottish family history and the belief that work can be more than endless production, she aims to create places where people pause, connect with the land, and feel a renewed sense of agency and belonging.

Sarah Blesener is an educator, socially engaged artist, and visual researcher whose long-form work explores trauma, testimony, and survivor narratives through photography, archival material, poetry, and painting. 

www.sarah-blesener.com 
@sarahblesener