Aruni Dharmakirthi | Laura Camila Medina | Olivia Nevins-Carbins // Portals

On view January 7–February 13, 2022

A portal is a way in. A work of art is always a portal, whether a framed landscape painting, or an installation filling an entire room, art is an invitation to enter another realm. Within the work of Aruni Dharmakirthi, Laura Camila Medina, and Olivia Nevins-Carbins, portals become spaces to delve into personal mythology, memory, dreams, familial ties, and cultural archives. These diverse and dynamic works—textiles, videos, and paintings—invite the viewer to enter inner landscapes of self-creation.

Moon God Alchemizing, a textile work by Aruni Dharmakirthi, with its gridded patterns, elongated shape, and bold color recalls the stained glass windows in the nave of a church. But unlike stained glass, the sewn tapestry is not transparent, and unlike the depictions of saints and martyrs that one would find in a church, Moon God Alchemizing presents a powerful body with breasts like an avocado split in two clutching a blue phallus. The figure sheds a baby blue tear from its one large eye; they are both powerful and vulnerable. Through emotionally complex figures, patterns, and repetition, Dharmakirthi’s textile portals become objects and shrines for self-healing.

Laura Camila Medina’s video collage, “Caras vemos, corazones no sabemos" explores connections between personal mythology, memory fragmentation, and media’s influence on cultural and national identity. “Caras vemos, corazones no sabemos" reaches back to the anachronistic technology of Medina’s childhood, displaying the work via DVD on an early 2000s era TV. The TV, encapsulated in textiles, becomes a soft sculpture in itself, sitting atop a hand built shelf where small objects are displayed like a cabinet of curiosities. A virtual reality (VR) headset, also presented as a sculpture, brings technology to the current moment. The two portals, experienced side-by-side, illustrate the vast technological changes within Medina’s lifetime.

A latticework of leaves, flowers, insects, and abstract motifs occupy Olivia Nevins-Carbins’ colorful and evocative paintings. The grid structure that is central to her work, was initially inspired by the 19th century metal gates of the townhouses in Nevins-Carbins’ hometowns of San Francisco and Oakland. For Nevins-Carbins, the gates represented a romantic nostalgia for an area that has drastically changed and gentrified over the past few decades. The grid structure has become a space to explore her own identity within the ever-shifting urban spaces that she still calls home. In Self Haunting the grid makes up the frame of the watercolor painting, evoking tilework or the border of an illuminated manuscript. The central image depicts a curved pathway in an urban park. Like a Surrealist dreamscape, a face floats in the trees above a late Victorian era street lamp beckoning us to enter.

A portal is a way in, welcome.

ARTISTS’ BIOs
Aruni Dharmakirthi is a Sri Lankan born textile and digital artist based in Brooklyn, NY, whose work has been shown nationally and internationally in galleries including Disjecta, PICA, and Nationale in Portland, OR; Transmitter Gallery and Housing in Brooklyn, NY; and the School of Art Gallery at the University of Manitoba, Canada. Dharmakirthi received an MFA in Visual Studies from Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2017. She has participated as an artist in residence at the Bric Workspace Residency (NY), Centrum Emerging Artist In Residence (WA), and Caldera PNCA MFA Residency (OR), and has received an Equity Award by the American Craſt Council, as well as a recent grant from the Udayshanth Fernando Foundation (UFF) in association with Saskia Fernando Gallery, Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Laura Camila Medina (b. 1995) is an interdisciplinary artist born in Bogotá, Colombia. Her work has been exhibited at the Center for Contemporary Art & Culture, PLANETA New York, Fuller Rosen Gallery, Wieden + Kennedy, the Portland Art Museum, and with the Nat Turner Project. She was awarded the New Media Fellowship at Open Signal, Artist in Residence at the Living School of Art, IPRC Artists & Writers in Residence Program, ACRE Residency, the Centrum Emerging Artist Residency, the Support Beam and Make Learn Build grants from RACC, and the Re:Imagine Sustainability Grant from the NW Film Center & Portland Art Museum. Alongside Angela Saenz, she is part of Maracuya con Leche, a collaborative project that encourages artists to participate in creative exchange with their community. She earned her BFA at the Pacific Northwest College of Art and is currently based in Portland, OR.

Olivia Nevins-Carbins was born and raised in San Francisco and Oakland, she currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has an overarching theme of memory, fantasy, isolation, and nostalgia. Nevins-Carbins attended the San Francisco Art Institute and was awarded the Herb Alpert Emerging Young Artist Scholarship in 2012. Her work has been shown in Delaplane Gallery and Swim Gallery in San Francisco, and most recently at Pt. 2 Gallery in Oakland, CA. This is her first time exhibiting in Portland, OR.

In light of the Omicron surge, Aruni Dharmakirthi and Olivia Nevins-Carbins have canceled their traveling plans and we have decided to hold off hosting a public event for the opening reception. We hope to celebrate with a closing reception instead if the situation feels safer by mid February. If you’d like to schedule a private tour of the exhibition with artist Laura Camila Medina and curator May Barruel, please email the gallery.

Laura Camila Medina’s project was funded in part by a Make | Learn | Build grant from the Regional Arts & Culture Council.