Here, To you, Now
The 2026 Converge 45 Triennial
Curated by Lumi Tan
The 2026 Converge 45 triennial Here, To you, Now centers on experiences that bring people together—here and now—while celebrating the meaningful temporary communities that form around art. Inspired by the writing of Portland literary icon Ursula K. Le Guin, the triennial features 28 artists and 17 new commissions activating the city as a shared stage for discovery and connection.
Following a dynamic opening weekend, Here, To you, Now is now in full swing across 16 venues citywide. Plan your visit to explore participating spaces and catch ongoing fall programming.
Exhibitions
Barn Radio
215 SW 1st Ave, Portland, OR 97204
8/27 - 10/3 | Fri: 12:00 - 6:00 PM
sidony o’neal: TANP D’ÆR/SPLINE + ELEGY
A sweeping installation of perforated Tyvek and ambient audio creates an environment for gathering, dance, and healing within this Black-led music club.
Center for Contemporary Art and Culture at PNCA
511 NW Broadway, Portland, OR 97209
8/27 - 10/3 | Mon – Sat: 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Ido Radon: Men make their own history…
An installation of sculptural forms based on the games of chess and Chutes and Ladders considers chance, strategy, and the possibility of free will.
Native Arts and Culture Foundation
800 SE 10th Ave, Portland, OR 97214
8/27 - 10/17 | Thurs – Sat: 1:00 - 4:00 PM
Gerald Clarke: Between the Lines
Sculpture, prints, mural, and video confront the performative language of land acknowledgment and urge a more genuine understanding of Indigenous sovereignty.
Cooley Gallery at Reed College
3203 SE Woodstock Blvd, Portland, OR 97202
8/27 - 12/12 | Thu – Sun: 12:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Rose Salane: Afterlife in Public
A video and series of prints centered on a pair of Princess Diana’s shoes explore public mourning, civic memory, and what happens when the records of collective experience disappear.
Hoffman Gallery at Lewis & Clark College
615 SW Palatine Hill Rd, Portland, OR 97219
8/27 - 12/10 | Daily from 11:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Srijon Chowdhury: Phool
Paintings and a sculptural steel gate structure reimagine the tarot's Major Arcana as a visual grammar of recurrence, transformation, and new beginnings.
Frank Heath: Pony Express
A new film documenting the National Pony Express Association’s annual “Re-Ride” examines how logistics, nostalgia, and national identity converge in the performance of American history.
Movie Madness
4320 SE Belmont St, Portland, OR 97215
8/29 only, 11:00am-11:00pm
Vo Vo, Street Meetz (on loop)
A “vox populi” video project built from conversations with strangers in parks, malls, and other public settings, tracing how brief encounters can create temporary community.
North View Gallery at Portland Community College Sylvania
12000 SW 49th Ave, Portland, OR 97219
8/30 only, 11:00
Marcus Fischer: We Are the Confluence of Two Rivers
A site responsive tape loop performance drawing from the artist’s personal history and creative community, presented in cooperation with the PCC Music and Sonic Arts program.
Open Signal Community Access Network
Stream Online: Stream the broadcast from your computer or mobile device on the Open Signal Live Stream page: https://www.watch.opensignalpdx.org/live
Television: If you have cable in the Portland area, you can watch via the Community Access Network on Xfinity: 7:30pm on 9/2 and 9/4 on Channel 23, 9/3 on Channel 11, and 9/5 and 9/6 on Channel 22.
Vo Vo, Street Meetz
A “vox populi” video project built from conversations with strangers in parks, malls, and other public settings, tracing how brief encounters can create temporary community.
Oregon Contemporary
8371 N Interstate Ave, Portland, OR 97217
8/27 - 10/3 | Weds-Sat: 12:00 - 5:00 PM
Amy Ruhl: Other Spaces
Panoramic video installation and August 28 + 29 performances with Sophia Cleary and Lu Yim draw on speculative fiction and role-playing games to imagine political possibility after catastrophe.
One more, and that’s all: Artists of North Pole Studio + Elbow Room
A group exhibition of paintings, drawings, and sculpture by Ricky Bearghost, Aaron Cunningham, Michelle Fromme, Annie Rose Macer, Elmeater Morton, and Dan Tran, foregrounding distinctive perspectives of artists with autism and intellectual disabilities.
Patricia Reser Center for the Arts
12625 SW Crescent St, Beaverton, OR 97005
8/27 - 10/17 | Wed – Sat: 12:00 - 6:00 PM
Lex Brown: Carnelian
Paintings and a feature-length musical video following three elemental archetypes as they navigate media overload, impending disaster, and the surreal absurdities of contemporary life.
PDX International Airport / Port of Portland
8/5/26 - 2/5/27 | 7000 NE Airport Way, Portland, OR 97218
Morgan Ritter: SPACE AVAILABLE
Borrowing the language of advertising, Ritter transforms an airport display case into an invitation to pause, drift, and imagine what kinds of space remain open to collective imagination.
PLACE
735 NW 18th Ave, Portland, OR
8/27 - 10/22 | Mon — Fri: 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM and Sat by appointment
Linda K. Johnson: The Evidence of Foot Fall
A retrospective of network maps, action drawings, and oral histories that traces Portland’s performance ecology through embodied forms of archiving.
Paragon Arts Gallery at Portland Community College Cascade
705 N Killingsworth St, Portland, OR 97217
8/27 - 10/31 | Wed: 12:00 - 5:00 PM, Thurs & Fri: 12:00 - 7:00 PM, Sat 12:00 - 5:00 PM
Meech Boakye: Black Pool Party
A two-part installation pairs a video reimagining the slime trope of 1980s children's TV with touchable cast-soap sculptures to meditate on vulnerability, exposure, and care.
Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA)
15 NE Hancock St, Portland, OR 97212
8/21 - 8/30 + 9/17 - 10/31 | Thu: 2:00 - 8:00 PM; Fri: 12:00 - 6:00 PM; Sat: 12:00 - 4:00 PM
Trisha Baga: MORE
A monumental immersive installation combining 3D video and sculptural scenography explores consumer AI, parenthood, and the uneasy overlap between technological systems and human desire.
Portland State University Schnitzer School of Art
2000 SW 5th Ave, Portland, OR 97201
8/27 - 12/5 | Tues, Weds, Fri: 12:00 - 5:00 PM; Thurs: 2:00-7:00 PM
Marcus Fischer: Reliquary at the Veil
A new video and audio tape loop installation meditating on the nonlinearity of grief and the desire to remain in dialogue with those who have passed.
Patricia Vázquez Gómez: The Mayan Works
A multichannel sound installation, artist’s book, and large-scale drawings explore the music of language and the role of art in preserving Mayan cultural knowledge.
Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork: Variations in Mass 4 - unveiling date to be announced
A monumental “breathing” inflatable sculpture and sound work reflecting on cultural authenticity and the circulation of personal history in public space.
Tannaz Farsi: In the Shadow of Flowers
A large-scale sculptural installation compressing found imagery and materials to reflect on nomadic life and the recirculation of ideas regarding "home.” Farsi’s work is placed in conversation with works by Here, To you, Now artists Gerald Clarke and Rob Rhee.
SE Cooper Contemporary
6901 SE 110th Ave, Portland, OR 97266
8/27 - 11/14 | Sat: 12:00 – 5:00 PM (or by appointment)
Rob Rhee: my hands were waving as if my feet
Developed through the cultivation of gourds and shaped by agricultural time, Rhee’s sculptures explore growth, care, and interdependence as both material process and social form.
-
Lumi Tan is an independent curator and writer based in New York City, specializing in interdisciplinary exhibitions and performances. She has been curator of the Focus section at Frieze New York since 2024 and previously served as Senior Curator at The Kitchen, New York. Recent curatorial projects include exhibitions at Performance Space New York; DOOSAN Gallery, Seoul; and Luna Luna, Los Angeles and New York. Her exhibitions, writing, awards and teaching have spanned institutions and publications internationally.
-
In her 1985 novel Always Coming Home, Ursula Le Guin created a rich fictional ethnography of the Kesh people living in a far future, whose way of living developed after they survived an ecological apocalypse in a distant past. In a further bend of time, a present-day anthropologist named Pandora has compiled a thorough guide to Kesh culture. She describes attributes of their language:
“The written word is there, for anyone, at any time. It is general and potentially eternal.
The spoken word is here, to you, now. It is ephemeral and irreproducible.”
Here she makes plain that impermanence is a condition of the present. Even if a spoken word is repeated, it cannot be the same. Its meaning arises in the specificity of who is being addressed, in the very moment, while we are together. Attentiveness is a shared responsibility. It brings us together as an audience and determines how a message may linger, dissipate, or repeat.
The artists of the 2026 Converge 45 triennial find value and resonance in the concept of impermanence, which drives their creation of new forms of communication and storytelling. In turn, we regard Converge 45’s audiences as temporary communities that come together to perceive these new forms, process their potential meanings, and consider how they are carried forth.
The phrase “temporary communities” typically denotes those formed after disasters. Refugee camps and climate disaster shelters predominate our preconceptions of these places but are amongst a multitude of environmental, political, and economic emergencies that uproot populations around the world. Considered transitional, these communities are meant to meet basic needs. Yet, temporary becomes permanent as much of the world never recovers from disruption or disaster. We understand that displacement, migration, and transience have become more common ways of existence as people only move from one unsustainable situation to the next. Within such impermanent spaces, ingenuity and generosity are employed for survival. What kinds of knowledge do these temporary communities hold, share, and inherit from site to site? How may they teach us to live in the constant instability of the present? How do contingencies affect communal investments in the future?
Through this exhibition, I propose that all mediums and approaches—from objects to performance—hold potential for expressions of impermanence. The artists of the Converge 45 citywide exhibition actively think about new methods of belonging and knowledge sharing, regeneration, inherited and embodied histories, and self-defined micro and macro communities. With them—together—we affirm the impermanence of knowledge, recognize ideas that are impossible to translate, accept the cyclical revelations of landscape, and adapt to the erosion and reshaping of our realities.
— Lumi Tan
text goes here
-
Trisha Baga, New York, NY
Ricky Bearghost, Portland, OR
Meech Boakye, Portland, OR
Lex Brown, Rome, Italy
Gerald Clarke, Anza, CA
Srijon Chowdhury, Portland, OR
Aaron Cunningham, Portland, OR
Tannaz Farsi, Eugene, OR
Marcus Fischer, Portland, OR
Michelle Fromme, Portland, OR
keyon gaskin, Portland, OR
Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork, Los Angeles, CA
Frank Heath, New York, NY
Linda K. Johnson, Portland, OR
Annie Rose Macer, Portland, OR
Elmeater Morton, Portland, OR
sidony o’neal, Portland, OR
Ido Radon, Portland, OR
Rob Rhee, Seattle, WA
Morgan Ritter, Portland, OR
Amy Ruhl with Sophia Cleary and Lu Yim, New York, NY
Rose Salane, New York, NY
Dan Tran, Portland, OR
Patricia Vázquez Gómez, Mexico City and Portland, OR
Vo Vo, Portland, OR
Lynn Yarne, Portland, OR
-
ICT News, INDIGENOUS A&E: ‘Unceded’ art, music tour, Apache images, 9/11/26
ARTnews, Five Standouts at Portland’s Converge 45 Triennial, From a Gourd Frieze to a Performance That Played with Fire, 9/8/26
KGW News (YouTube), Portland transforms into city-wide art gallery through the fall, 8/30/26
KGW8 (Website), Portland transforms into city-wide art gallery through the fall, 8/29/26
Portland Monthly, Trisha Baga’s ‘MORE’ at Converge 45: A disorienting, ultimately revealing mind trip, 8/29/26
Observer, Portland’s Homegrown Triennial Returns With Outside Curation and Hyper-Local Soul, 8/26/26
AXIOS Portland, A massive art show kicks off this week across Portland, 8/26/26
Press Release, One Day Only: Portlanders Gather to Witness a Rare Object and Rebuild a Missing Archive, 8/25/26
Willamette Week, In Year 10, Converge 45 Sets a New Course, 8/25/26
The Mercury, The Mercury’s Do This, Do That: Your Top Events for Aug 24-30, 8/24/26
Portland Monthly, Archiving Dance: Linda K. Johnson’s Maps and Memories, 8/18/26
Oregon Arts Watch, August DanceWatch: A whirlwind of movement contemporary and classical, 7/31/26
Portland Business Journal, How Ursula K. Le Guin inspired a citywide Portland arts event, 7/14/26
ArtReview, Converge 45 announces list of artists for 2026 edition, 4/30/26
Portal Tela, Converge 45 em Portland revela tema e artistas Baga, Salane e Chowdhury - Portal Tela, 4/30/26
Artforum, Portland’s Converge 45 Triennial Announces Participating Artists, 4/30/26
Press Release, Converge 45 Announces Artist List for 2026 Triennial "Here, To you, Now”, 4/30/26
ARTnews, Portland’s Converge 45 Reveals Theme and Artists, Including Trisha Baga, Rose Salane, and Srijon Chowdhury, 4/29/26
Portland Monthly, 5 Artists to See at Converge 45, 4/29/26
Joan Mitchell Foundation, In the Studio: Gerald Clarke, 4/27/26
2026 Triennial Program Supporters
Generous support from individuals, foundations, and corporate partners makes Here, To you, Now possible. We gratefully acknowledge the visionary supporters who keep Converge 45 free and accessible to all.
Tell us about your experience—take our 60-second audience survey to support future public art programming.