Photo by Annalise Reinhardt

Nica Aquino is a multidisciplinary artist, analog photographer & educator from Los Angeles, California. She holds a BFA in Photography from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon and an MA in Visual Culture from the School of Art at Manchester Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom. Her work has been exhibited internationally in Manchester, United Kingdom; Belgrade, Serbia; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and nationally in Portland, Oregon; Los Angeles, California; San Antonio, Texas.

Her work reveals place, identity, diaspora and the cross-cultural experience largely through a photographic lens. Via photography, viewers see through the eyes of a first generation Ilokana-American trying to navigate North American culture and drawing inspiration from the people and places around her, exploring diverse immigrant diasporas and communities in the US and beyond. Most recently, her work has expanded to experiment with textiles, installation, video and sound; examining themes of memory and loss.


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COMING IN 2019...

JANUARY 2019

More info TBA
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FEBRUARY 2019

Borders: Representation & Reality
MK Gallery
Exhibition Run - 6-27 February, 2019
Opening Reception - 6 February, 2019
Panel Discussion - 13 February, 2019

"In his seminal essay, “What Is a Border?”, Étienne Balibar writes of the “heterogeneity and ubiquity of borders” and observes that “borders are everywhere”. Though people often conflate borders with official political borders, borders are also social, cultural, economic, and psychological. Border walls and barbed wire fences gouge landscapes.Borders are etched in law books and embodied by state officials charged with coercing, confining, and deporting transgressors. Languages and dialects nourish communities, but also exclude people without linguistic knowledge or access to interpretation. Borders are mobile, etched on bodies, accompanying people as they traverse space. Furthermore, they are polysemic so that their effects and even their visibility vary depending on people’s individual characteristics and social belongings.As a result, borders immobilize some and facilitate the mobility of others, perpetrating structural inequalities.

Though borders structure the fabric of the social world, their nature is mysterious and opaque. Borders are not static. Indeed, borders in significant ways are the efforts to maintain and contest them – if people do not recognize and legitimize them, they cease to exist. In many respects, it is more appropriate to speak of bordering rather than borders.

The heterogeneity, complexity, and peculiarity of borders call for multidisciplinary efforts to explore the ontological, socio-political, and cultural dimensions of borders. In this spirit, we invite artists and theorists across disciplines and media to present and exhibit in our gallery/symposium Borders: Representation and Reality."
MK Gallery
2000 SW 5th Ave
Portland, OR 97201

Monday-Friday
10AM-5PM
Closed Saturday, Sunday