Artist talk by Sasha Wortzel, followed by a reception at the Cooley Gallery
The DJ’d reception is outside the library, with refreshments and dancing!

The Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, and the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) are proud to present the exhibition: Sasha Wortzel, Dreams of Unknown Islands. Wortzel is an artist and filmmaker widely recognized for her elegiac depictions of LGBTQ+ survival, activism, and love. Wortzel uses video, film, installation, sculpture, sound, and performance, to explore how past and present are inextricably linked through resonant spaces and their hauntings.

Sasha Wortzel, Dreams of Unknown Islands is organized by Stephanie Snyder and Kristan Kennedy for the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, 2022. The exhibition was originally commissioned and presented by Oolite Arts, Miami, Florida, and curated by Kristan Kennedy in 2021.

Based between Miami and New York City, Wortzel’s work specifically attends to sites and stories systematically erased or ignored from these regions’ histories. Wortzel’s films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art’s DocFortnight, True/False Film Festival, BAMcinemaFest, Wexner Center for the Arts, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Berlinale, among others. Their work has been exhibited at the New Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and The Kitchen, New York; and SALTS, Birsfelden. Wortzel has been supported by the Sundance Institute, Ford Foundation, Field of Vision, Doc Society, and Art Matters. Solo exhibitions include Dreams of Unknown Islands at Portland Institute of Contemporary Art and Cooley Gallery, Portland OR (2022) and Oolite Arts, Miami Beach, FL (2021). Wortzel’s work is in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Studio Museum of Harlem, Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, and Miami Dade County Art in Public Places.