and the black rainbows when

Currently at:
Chehalem Cultural Center, Newberg OR
July 12 - Sept 30 2022


dear gentle reader,

this gathering, arrangement, offering, flotation of images arises from the dreamscape, hopescape, and decades long movement body travels of artist Intisar S. Abioto (b. 1986, Memphis TN).

it represents one small selection of a movement-based story-grounded photographic practice imaging people of African descent spanning the past 22 years of her life (she is 36!)

and the black rainbows when ... is the movement-based traveling site-specific public art expression of this living archive, one compendia in the constellation of story works by the artist imaging after this way. 

it moves within and through the traditions and vision of the African diasporic myth of the Flying Africans, a canonical tale of Black flight and freedom re/told for hundreds of years by Black people in the Americas, a tale that continues to live and find expression in their varied and expansive dreamscapes today. Through Virginia Hamilton’s The People Could Fly, Paule Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, and countless and continuing Black storywayers past, present, and futuring ..  it moves, travels, and transfers within the collective, temporal, and spirit/ed body of our being ness.

and so it is..

.. Or in other words,

we are the ones who knew,

                                  we are the ones who fly,

the ones who flew.

Using Format