Art and Advocacy: A Conversation with TK Smith and Oregon artists

Enjoy food, drinks, and a conversation with TK Smith, the 2026 Biennial curator, and artists working in advocacy as part of their practice.

Come join us for a night of art and conversation at Soho House Portland with TK Smith leading a talk with Lisa Jarrett, Patricia Vázquez Gómez , and Vo Vo. These Oregon artists will discuss advocacy within their artistic practices and the role of the Oregon Contemporary Artists' Biennial in supporting artists of this region. A number of 2026 Artists' Biennial artists will be in attendance as well. Enjoy a night filled with inspiration and community as Soho House provides delicious food and drinks for us in the beautiful Music Room. Supported by The Ford Family Foundation and Soho House.

Date: Wed April 29 2026

Time: 6:00 PM cocktails + food / 6:30 PM conversation begins

Location: Soho House Portland

Can't make this event? Support Oregon Contemporary by preordering the 2026 Artists' Biennial Catalog in our shop here!

About the speakers

TK Smith, 2026 Artists' Biennial curator

TK Smith is a curator, writer, and cultural historian based in Atlanta, GA. He currently serves as Curator, Arts of Africa and the African Diaspora, at the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University. Smith’s writing has been published in exhibition catalogues, academic journals, and periodicals, including Art Papers where he is a contributing editor. Smith is a doctoral candidate in the History of American Civilization program at the University of Delaware, where he studies the intersections of material culture, the built environment, and identity.

Lisa Jarrett, artist and Director/Co-founder of KSMoCA which was a 2019 Biennial participant and is currently a 2026 Artists' Biennial partner

Lisa Jarrett (Portland, OR) is an artist and educator. She is Associate Professor of Community and Context Arts at Portland State University and the co-founder/director of various collaborations including KSMoCA (Dr MLK Jr School Museum of Contemporary Art) and Art 25: Art in the Twenty Fifth Century. Her intersectional practice considers the politics of difference within a variety of settings including: schools, landscapes, fictions, racial imaginaries, studios, communities, museums, galleries, walls, mountains, mirrors, floors, rivers, and lenses. She exists and makes socially engaged work within the African Diaspora. She recently discovered that her primary medium is questions; the most urgent of which is: What will set you free?

Patricia Vázquez Gómez, 2024 Artists' Biennial artist

Patricia Vázquez Gómez (she/her) lives and works between the ancient Tenochtitlán and the unceded and occupied lands of the Chinook, Clackamas, Multnomah and other Indigenous peoples. Her art practice investigates the social functions of art, the intersections between aesthetics, ethics and politics and the expansion of community based art practices. She uses a variety of media to carry out her research: painting, printmaking, video, exhibitions, music and multidisciplinary projects. The purposes and methodologies of her work are deeply informed by her experiences working in the immigrant rights and other social justice movements. Her work has been shown at the Portland Art Museum, the Reece Museum, the Paragon Gallery, and the Houston Art League, but also in other spaces as apartments complexes, community based organizations and schools. She is the recipient of the 2013 Arlene Schnitzer Visual Arts Prize and has received support from the Ford Foundation, Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC), the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA), the Oregon Community Foundation and Oregon Humanities. Patricia teaches at the undergraduate and graduate levels at Portland State University.

Vo Vo, 2024 Artists' Biennial artist

Vo Vo (they/them) explores support strategies and models of community care within a post-traumatic social landscape, focusing on the resilience of BIPOC, LGBTQIA2S+ and disabled communities. They are editor of an internationally renowned publication, speaker, educator, curator, artist and musician who has exhibited and toured in Australia, Germany, Indonesia, The Netherlands, Singapore, Croatia, Mexico, Finland, Denmark, New Zealand, Vietnam, Sweden, Malaysia, and the States. In their transdisciplinary art, they work in textiles, embroidery, audio, video, weaving, and furniture building. Their installations seek to interrogate power dynamics, structural oppression, challenge histories and realities of imperialism, white supremacy and colonization.