was a center for contemporary art in Southeast Portland, Oregon. It was led by a desire to support artists, propose new modes of production, and stimulate the ongoing public discourse around art. This website serves as an archive of Yale Union’s programming from 2011 through 2021.

Yale Union acknowledges that it occupies the traditional lands of the Multnomah, Chinook, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla, and other Indigenous peoples.

home school reading #5

EV

June 12, 2020, 4pm PDT
on TWITCH

Yale Union hosts home school’s fifth poetry reading, featuring Legacy Russell, S*an D. Henry-Smith, and manuel arturo abreu. These artists and thinkers work at the nexus of embodied abstraction, networked selfhood, and ephemeral tactics.

Though this reading is not related to the Sometimes when birds make sounds, it feels like the sounds are coming out of me exhibition, it is part of a series of digital events programmed in the wake of the postponement of the physical exhibition due to COVID-19.

Previous home school readings can be viewed at home school’s tumblr.

Legacy Russell is a curator, writer, and artist. Born and raised in New York City, she is the Associate Curator of Exhibitions at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Recent exhibitions include Projects 110 : Michael Armitage, organized with Thelma Golden and The Studio Museum in Harlem at MoMA (2019); Dozie Kanu : Function (2019); Radical Reading Room (2019) at The Studio Museum in Harlem; and MOOD : Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2018-19 (2019) at MoMA PS1. Russell’s ongoing academic work and research focuses on gender, performance, digital selfdom, internet idolatry, and new media ritual. She is the recipient of the Thoma Foundation 2019 Arts Writing Award in Digital Art and a 2020 Rauschenberg Residency Fellow. Her first book, Glitch Feminism, is forthcoming from Verso Books in Fall 2020.
[https://www.legacyrussell.com/]

Sean? Sian? Swan? S*an D. Henry-Smith is an artist and writer working primarily in poetry, photography and performance, engaging Black experimentalisms and collaborative practices. S*an received their BA in Studio Art from Hamilton College, and have been awarded fellowships, grants, and residencies from Denniston Hill, Lotos Foundation, and Antenna/Paper Machine. S*an’s words and photographs have appeared in Apogee Journal, FACT, The Felt, The New York Times, Triple Canopy, and elsewhere. S*an collaborates with Imani Elizabeth Jackson as MouthFeel; their forthcoming book Consider the Tongue explores histories of aquatic labor and Black food through poetry, performance, and ephemeral practices. The author of two chapbooks, Wild Peach, S*an’s first full length collection of poems and photographs, is forthcoming on Futurepoem.
[https://seanhenrysmith.com/]

manuel arturo abreu (b. 1991, Santo Domingo) is a poet and artist from the Bronx. They studied linguistics (BA Reed College 2014). abreu works in text, ephemeral sculpture, and what is at hand in a process of magical thinking with attention to ritual aspects of aesthetics. They are the author of two books of poetry and one book of critical art writing, the Oregon Book Awards Sarah Winnemucca creative nonfiction finalist Incalculable Loss (2018). Their writing has appeared in Rhizome, Art in America, CURA, The New Inquiry, Art Practical, SFMoMA Open Space, AQNB, etc. abreu also composes club-feasible worship music as Tabor Dark, with nine releases to date. They also co-founded and co-run home school, a free pop-up art school in Portland in its fifth year of curriculum. Recent solo and duo shows: Portland State University, Portland; Yaby, Madrid; the Art Gym, Portland; Open Signal, Portland; Institute for New Connotative Action, Seattle. Recent group shows: Superposition, LA; Veronica, Seattle; Felix Gaudlitz, Vienna; Critical Path, Sydney; Studio Museum in Harlem, NYC; NCAD Gallery, Dublin; online with Rhizome and the New Museum; Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva. Recent curatorial: Yale Union, Portland; Center for Afrofuturist Studies, Iowa City; SOIL, Seattle; Paragon Gallery, Portland; old Pfizer Factory, Brooklyn; S1, Portland; AA|LA Gallery, LA; MoMA PS1, NYC.
[manuelarturoabr.eu]

home school is a free pop-up art school in Portland, Oregon run by Victoria Anne Reis and manuel arturo abreu. They provide welcoming contexts for critical engagement with contemporary art and its issues. Their multimedia curriculum follows a pedagogy that honors the casual rigor of the etymology of “school,” from the Greek shkole: “spare time, leisure, idleness, rest.” Now in its fifth year of curriculum, home school has received support from the Precipice Fund, the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, Allie Furlotti / the Calligram Foundation, a Rhizome Net Art microgrant, the Regional Arts and Culture Council, the Cooley Gallery, and a 2019 artist residency with Yale Union.
[homeschoolpdx.tumblr.com]