Oregon Contemporary Artists’ Biennial explores ‘The Price of the Ticket’ in 2026 art survey

More than two dozen artists are participating in the 2026 Oregon Contemporary Artists’ Biennial, which launched last month and ends on July 5.

The current exhibit is titled “The Price of the Ticket” and is on display at the Oregon Contemporary gallery in North Portland. Audiences can also experience performances, poetry readings and public talks at other venues in the city.

TK Smith is a writer and cultural historian who is curating the 2026 OCA Biennial that coincides with the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding.

Smith took inspiration from author and civil rights activist James Baldwin’s anthology of essays “The Price of the Ticket” to select a diverse array of works that explore America’s history, identity, and the price of citizenship, especially for marginalized communities.

Last fall, Oregon Contemporary announced that the National Endowment for the Arts had canceled a $30,000 grant it had previously awarded to the biennial, per reporting by Willamette Week and other media outlets.

The nonprofit Sitka Center for Art and Ecology quickly pledged its help to fill the funding shortfall.

Smith joins us, along with artists Mako Miyamoto and Jaleesa Johnston, who are featured in the biennial.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. More than two dozen artists were selected to participate in the 2026 Oregon Contemporary Artists’ Biennial. As the name implies, this is an every two year exhibition of the work of Oregon artists. This year’s biennial launched last month. It goes through July 5. That timing, one day after the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was central to curator TK Smith’s approach to the show. He chose works that explore American history and identity, especially for marginalized communities. TK Smith joins us now along with two of the Oregon artists featured in the biennial, Jaleesa Johnston and Mako Miyamoto. Welcome to all three of you.

Jaleesa Johnston: Thank you.

Mako Miyamoto: Thanks for having us.

TK Smith: Thank you.

Miller: TK, I want to start with you. You got the title of this year’s biennial, “The Price of the Ticket” from a collection of James Baldwin’s nonfiction writing. What does that phrase mean?

Smith: It’s got a lot of heavy imbued meaning, but there are two central meanings that inform this and inform its role in my life. Growing up Baptist, the price of the ticket is the price you pay to get into heaven. It’s what you have to do in your humanly life to ascend to the next. But as James Baldwin uses it, he’s commenting on what the price we all pay to live in the United States, to be American citizens or to participate in the experiment that is the United States.

Miller: You prominently feature a Baldwin quote in the biennial. It’s this: “The romance of treason never occurred to us for the brutally simple reason that you can’t betray a country you don’t have. Think about it. Treason draws its energy from the conscious, deliberate betrayal of trust, and we were not trusted. We could not betray, and we did not wish to be traitors. We wished to be citizens.” What drew you to Baldwin now for this particular collection of art?

Smith: Well, I knew I wanted to have a conversation about citizenship, and really I’ve been wanting to do a show about the semiquincentennial since I knew what the semiquincentennial was, almost 10 years. And I knew that for me as a Black American there are so many hopes and dreams and ideals that are wrapped up in my nationality, wrapped up in the idea of being American, the privileges of being an American. But the realities of my family, the realities of my own life in trying to survive here and participate here don’t always match those dreams and ideals. And so Baldwin’s words just perfectly crystallize that feeling, that tension between understanding that this place is not necessarily just milk and honey and it’s not free. It’s not free, it does come at a cost, and he outlines in that text the cost not only for him and his family as Black Americans, but Asian Americans, white Americans as well.

Miller: Jaleesa, what is that phrase now, the price of the ticket and the themes that TK is talking about? What does it mean to you?

Johnston: Well, I think it means, I think a lot about my family. I can’t help, that’s a part of the work that’s in the show. And as TK’s talking, I’m thinking a lot about my grandfather and my grandma on my mom’s side, both from the South, they’re Black American, and the amount of labor they’ve put in to try to make a life for themselves and for my mom, and then the amount of labor she’s put in to make a life for me. I’m thinking about the cost of what it may have taken from people, or what people may have given up to try to participate in what it means to be American and to make a life here.

Miller: Mako, what about you?

Miyamoto: Yeah, so for me, TK and I talked quite deeply about what the price was and thinking about really examining my history, my parents’ history and my grandparents’ history. And for me, I feel like just kind of thinking about my parents and their experience, both my mother and my father were both born during World War II in the Japanese American internment camps. And for me, I just feel like there was these repercussions that have kind of echoed through my family growing up and my family now, with my wife and my children.

I think the most fundamental thing was there’s this kind of deep shame in our history and what it was to be Japanese American in 1942. And I think this idea of building a family, building a community, building a life, building a house, building a business and then all of a sudden with one executive order, Executive Order 9066, basically just taking all that away, just kind of decimating an entire people and uprooting 120,000 other Japanese Americans. I think just for me it was fundamentally devastating and kind of what it meant and the price that they paid to be Americans, to be citizens of the U.S.

And, TK and I in making the work, I did a lot of thinking through that and examining that through the lens of my parents, of their grandparents. And I think for myself also just thinking about growing up in a smaller town. I grew up in a small town in southern Oregon. There was, I think at the time in the ‘80s, there was probably about less than 1,000 people. We were the only Japanese family within probably 50 or 60 miles. And it definitely had its fair share of racism and exclusion and really growing up, I did feel that shame and I felt when my parents had asked me, they both spoke fluent Japanese. They’d asked me if I wanted to learn it and I said that no, I didn’t want to. I just want to fit in.

And I think I reflected a lot on that as one of the prices that I did pay to be part of the we, to be part of America, to be part of this country that we live in. And I think just kind of reflecting a lot on the spectrum of our experiences and what we have given up, what we have redacted from ourselves, what we have kind of erased from our histories in order to be more part of the we and to be more part of this world. And I think it definitely in talking with TK and making the work, it gave me a lot of time to kind of reflect on that and our histories and kind of what it meant to me personally and what it could mean for my family and my daughters.

Miller: Jaleesa, Mako there said in talking to TK many times he mentioned that phrase. How would you describe the collaboration or the working relationship that you developed with TK as a curator in this case?

Johnston: Yeah, I think that I have not quite worked with anyone like I’ve worked with TK thus far, as an artist working with a curator. He’s been extremely present and he has asked some of the best questions that I think I’ve ever been asked. And we’ve sat and our conversations always seem to go off into these like larger discussions about being alive and being human. And we always seem to take these more personal dives. And so for me, working with TK has been really multifaceted in that, yes, he’s really helped me fine tune the work that I’m putting in the biennial, and really thinking more clearly about that piece and how it fits within that larger scope of the show. But also, I’ve been thinking a lot more about myself as a person, a lot more about my work as an artist, my work as a curator. He’s opened up a lot of avenues for me, for thinking. And it’s been a very rich experience.

Miller: TK, how do you think about the job of curator?

Smith: Oh, just in general?

Miller: Well, I mean, I guess I’m asking the question in such a broad, big, maybe unhelpfully broad way because I had, I guess, a simplistic idea that a curator, they do a lot of things, but for something like this, your biggest job is to figure out the filter that you want for something like the sort of the organizing principle and then find work that fits in that and organize it in a way that’s meaningful for an audience. But what I’ve just heard from both of the artists in front of me is that it was a much more back and forth, intimate, much more of a conversation than a question of selecting some finished work and saying, yeah, this belongs in my vision.

Smith: Yes, well, I would say, the cheap and dirty way that I describe what I do is that I’m very similar to a civil servant. I call myself like a librarian for art if someone were to ask me on the street what I do. But I think particularly with this project, because I knew it would be about the semiquincentennial and because I knew we were in a particular political moment, I didn’t want to trick any artists or mislead any artists into not understanding what context their work would be put in and when you’re including someone’s work, you’re also including their stories, their identity, their people. What I wanted people to understand was that I wanted to be as political as necessary, as political as they were willing to be in participating, and so it’s kind of the opposite end of that.

I was reaching out to people asking, would you have this conversation with me? And all of these artists put forth work in response to the theme, but also those stories and their identities and their peoples, putting them all in this kind of larger context about citizenship and what their experience has been or the experiences they’ve inherited. It requires you to be present and it requires you to be very human and this is a very large show. It’s probably the largest scale show that I’ve done, and every artist gave me something different and so I had to give them my full attention to be able to really represent the work well in their stead.

Miller: Mako, can you describe the work that is in this year’s biennial, your work?

Miyamoto: Yeah, yeah, so my piece is called “The Divide.” You want me to describe it visually or describe kind of the idea or how…

Miller: First briefly visually, and then what it means to you.

Miyamoto: Yeah, yeah, so it’s a diptych. So there’s two 20 by 30 prints, infrared prints. On the left side etched into the emulsion is a “W” and then on the right side is an “E.” So when you step back and look at it, it says “WE,” but it’s called “The Divide.” So for me, the piece was this exploration of identity within this construct of “we,” and when we’re talking about “we” just thinking about the group, the community, the culture, and ultimately the nation that we all occupy.

And really the price that we all pay to be part of it, and how much of ourselves do we etch away, do we kind of redact, do we erase. How much of our histories are lost in order for us to be part of the we, to have that we come in to clearer focus for us to really realize we’re part of it, to kind of lose parts of ourselves to be part of the whole.

And despite all those redactions, despite all those losses, despite all those erasures, you step back and look at it and those two sides that you have been really wanting to be part of, that whole, still has a divide down the center. So I think that’s some of the thinking behind my piece.

Miller: Jaleesa can you describe “The Clearing,” the work that you created for the biennial?

Johnston: Yes, it’s a sculptural piece. It’s mostly found materials, borrowed materials, as well as repurposed ephemera from previous sculptures and installations. It’s three chairs arranged in a way where they make an altar space. They also make their own clearing space, and there’s an offering bowl that’s attached. And everything’s also married together with these hair ropes that I have. It’s inspired by Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” specifically Baby Sugg’s sermon in the clearing, and thinking about what it means to heal, what it means to care for yourself and love on yourself under a very oppressive system. And it’s also tied to me thinking about my family and the women I come from. Yeah.

Miller: My understanding is that you had a performance this past weekend that was, well, I don’t want to put it in my words. Can you describe what the performance entailed?

Johnston: Yeah, so the performance, when people entered, the sculpture was broken apart. So the three chairs were untethered, and they were arranged throughout the gallery in different spaces. And the whole performance was me making these rounds through each chair, visiting each chair, and slowly bringing them back together into the clearing, onto the original platform. I opened with reading a part of the sermon, and I closed with reading the same part. And throughout as I was moving and visiting each chair, I was exploring healing through touch and thinking about the body and flesh, and thinking about expressions of the flesh.

Miller: TK, one of the first times that a lot of Oregonians may have started thinking about this biennial was in November when news broke that a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a $30,000 federal grant for this biennial, was canceled. What reasons were given for that?

Smith: I can’t tell you officially as a guest of the organization, but it was communicated to me that we were, again, granted the grant on the condition that we turned in the names and bios of the curator, myself and the participating artists, and then we were immediately rejected for the grant. And so the reasons, I assume, are because of the participants.

Miller: Something about you and or the artists that the federal government didn’t want to give money to?

Smith: I mean, I think it’s, this is a semiquincentennial. It’s a celebratory time in the United States, supposedly, and so many projects are happening concurrently that are very valorific. And I feel like mine, which is more critical along with a lot of other programming that is also happening in Oregon, these programs that are more critical are less desirable in a time when people are questioning the actions, the decisions of our federal government. And so I think it’s an element of that and then paired with the fact that I have also, as a journalist myself, critiqued the federal government. And so there are layers to why, probably a lot of whys that I don’t know and will not be made privy to, but those are the ones that I speculate on the most and are most visible to me.

Miller: I should say that my understanding is that that $30,000 was made up for with help from among others, the Sitka Center and obviously the show did go on, it’s happening right now and it’s going on through July 5.

Smith: Yes.

Miller: Mako, what are you hoping that visitors will take away from the entirety of the show?

Miyamoto: I mean, that’s a good question. I feel in thinking about the piece, I feel in thinking about the show as a whole, I hope it gives people pause and it gives people a moment of self-reflection. In the time that they’re taking at Oregon Contemporary, in the time that we’re existing in the world right now, in America. And I do think, I would hope it’s really hard to kind of speculate, because everybody’s bringing their own experiences, their own histories. But I think for me, I would hope it does maybe open a door within themselves that they didn’t know existed. And maybe sometime down the road they sort of examine it and maybe step through that and find something new within themselves. Because I feel like in my process in making this, it happened to me and I feel like it did open a door within me that I didn’t know was there, and kind of opened a new avenue in thinking and sort of perceiving the world.

Miller: Jaleesa, you’re nodding. Did working on your own piece for this biennial, did it have a lasting effect on the way you want to make art going forward?

Johnston: Oh, that’s a good question. I do. I definitely do. One of the things that working on this piece did for me, was it brought me back to the heart of like, why even do this? Why even make art beyond just having a show or being able to, like, maybe you want to sell your art or who knows. But there’s a core of expression of being in touch with your inner being that I felt like this piece reconnected me to, that I feel like I hope I never lose sight of again.

Miller: TK, as the non-Oregonian in this conversation, but the person who was selected to present this year’s version of the every two years selection of art from Oregon artists, I’m curious what you learned about Oregon from doing this.

Smith: So many things. Portland has great food culture first and foremost. I ate very well and folks have shown me all different parts of the city, different aspects of the city through food. That’s been really exciting. Also that there’s an incredible amount of grassroots to small independent organizations working in the arts in Oregon that I have not seen or witnessed anywhere else in the United States.

And just to kind of call back to what you were asking before, $30,000 may not seem like a lot of money, especially coming from the federal government, but SICA, another local, they’re on the coast, organization stepping up and supporting what is essentially a lateral or sister organization is, in my experience, unheard of. That’s not a small amount of money for a small organization. That’s a huge amount of money, and it’s incredibly generous and shocking to me that that happened.

I’m thankful, and I’m incredibly thankful that this biennial is up, but that kind of generosity, I have not seen and that is something that has permeated through every interaction I’ve had in Oregon. There’s so much generosity within the creative arts, within the visual arts, within movement. So many people want to help and support each other. I said at the opening, I’m shocked just how many hands went into each and every work that’s featured in the exhibition. It’s not just the artists, it’s the artists’ communities, it’s their families, it’s their gallery representation or their just collective support. It’s been incredible to witness, and it’s given me a lot of hope, honestly, as a more institutional curator. It’s given me a lot of hope that regardless of what happens, we’ll be all right.

Miller: TK, Mako and Jaleesa, thanks very much.

Miyamoto: Thank you.

Miller: TK Smith is a curator of the 2026 Oregon Contemporary Artists Biennial. Mako Miyamoto and Jaleesa Johnson are two of the featured artists.

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