Meet the 2023 Arlene Schnitzer Visual Arts Prize Winners

The School of the Art + Design and the College of the Arts are pleased to celebrate the eleventh year of the Arlene Schnitzer Visual Arts Prize at Portland State University.

We are proud to reward and encourage young artists with this prize, the highest award offered in our school. It acknowledges the achievement and promise of our students and is a meaningful expression of our values and commitment to excellence in higher education and the arts. This year’s submissions represented works in various media, including sculpture, painting, drawing, multimedia, and community-based social practice projects. Recurring themes included identity, gender, queerness, mental health, grief, trauma, and healing.

A jury composed of PSU Art + Design faculty and representative professionals from the art and design community reviewed 33 applications from art and design students, both undergraduate and graduate, to be awarded first, second, and third-place prizes.

We are pleased to announce that this year’s recipients are:

• Ashley Yang-Thompson, (MFA candidate in Studio Practice), First Place, $5,500
• Ash Kukuzke (BFA candidate in Graphic Design), Second Place, $4,000
• Mohabbat Khatibnia-Mansouri (BFA in Art Practice, ‘23), Third Place, $3,000

Honorable mentions went to Pablo Cazares (BS in Art Practice, ‘23), William Holt (BA candidate in Art History), and James Webb (BFA in Graphic Design, ‘23). Additional accolades went to Becca Kauffman (MFA in Art + Social Practice, ‘23), Nadia Belov (BFA in Art Practice, ‘23), and Ashlie Brazell (BFA in Art Practice, ‘23) and for their outstanding work.

We are extraordinarily grateful to the Harold and Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation for their support in creating the Arlene Schnitzer Visual Arts Prize. It was established by Arlene Schnitzer in 2013 to recognize student achievement in the School of Art + Design and to raise awareness of the quality of art education at PSU. With Arlene's passing in 2020, we are grateful for this annual opportunity to honor her memory and legacy as a devoted and inspired leader of art and culture in Portland. The endowed award ensures that each year, three aspiring artists and designers will receive significant recognition and a financial boost as they begin their lives as active, creative practitioners.

An exhibition showcasing the work of our prize winners will be on view at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State University from February 20 through April 27, 2024. A public reception and awards celebration honoring the prize recipients will be held at the museum on Wednesday, March 6, from 5-7pm. All events are free and open to the public.

About the prize winners

Ashley Yang-Thompson – First Prize, $5,500

Ashley’s signposts honor the reality of our interior lives. The infrastructure of road signs presents a sane, static, measurable world. They lay the world out in grids, they point toward an obvious destination, and they indicate the “right” direction. They privilege psychogeography—our interpersonal connection to our urban environment—over dominant systems & structures of design. They point towards grief, emotional constipation, trauma, transgressions, transcendence, humor, catastrophe, and eucatastrophe. What if signs pointed towards the heart that is always breaking, the self that is perpetually shapeshifting, and the overwhelming questions that govern our inner lives?

The product of a Chinese immigrant and a white polygamist from Fort Scott, Kansas, Ashley 
Yang-Thompson (she/her), has been a performance artist since the day she was ruthlessly shoved out of 
the safety of her mother’s womb. She works in various media, from figurative painting and zines to performative pissing (a la Diogenes). Her art has been exhibited at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum, the Museum of Moving Image, the Essex Peabody Museum, and numerous national and international spaces. In 2021, Bateau Press published her graphic novella, How to be the worst laziest fattest most incontinent piece-of-shit in the world EVER.

ashleyyangthompson.com
Instagram: @leaky_rat

Ash Kukuzke – Second Prize, $4,000

Ash’s work explores her experience with Aphantasia—an enigmatic condition characterized by the absence of mental imagery—and its effects on memory, nostalgia, and grief. Through a combination of analog and digital mediums, she creates immersive experiences that prompt viewers to engage with forms of visual obfuscation and their impact on memory.

Ash Kukuzke (she/her) is a Portland-based graphic designer and artist. An enthusiastic creative, she explores an array of analog and digital processes in her work, including beadwork, textile, screen printing, and digital collage. Originally from Iowa, her work explores themes of rural upbringing, grief, and nostalgia.

kukuzke.com
Instagram: @a.kukuzke

Mohabbat Khatibnia-Mansouri – Third Prize, $3,000

Mohabbat uses tools within sculpture and social science as a vehicle for participatory installations. Her labor-intensive practice enables her to bolster desired messages when engaging with participants in community-based works. She desires to serve and care for others with transparency, cultivating community engagement to build community wherever she is plugged in, earning the trust and insight needed to implement social change through collaborative, collective bodies of fine art.

Mohabbat Khatibnia-Mansouri (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist born and raised in Hillsboro, OR. After receiving a BFA in Art Practice from Portland State University in 2023, Mohabbat is pursuing her MFA as a Sculpture Candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC).

Instagram: @mohabbat.mansouri

2023 Arlene Schnitzer Visual Arts Prize Jury

• Kate Bingaman-Burt, Associate Director, School of Art + Design, Professor of Graphic Design at PSU
• Lis Charman, Director, School of Art + Design, Professor of Graphic Design at PSU
• Kiara Hill, James DePreist Visiting Assistant Professor at PSU
• Taravat Talepasand, Assistant Professor of Art at PSU
• Maryanna Ramirez, Director of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at PSU
• Libby Werbel, Director, lumber room; artist, curator, and social organizer
• Kelsey Snook, Freelance Creative Director and Designer
• Natalia Ruiz, Artist and Art Director at Wild Card Creative Group
• V Maldonado, Multidisciplinary artist, freelance curator, and writer
• Leah Maldonado, Product Designer at Jordan Brand and 2019 Arlene Schnitzer Visual Arts Prize recipient

About the School of Art + Design

Driven by a belief in the power of art to shape society, Portland State University's School of Art + Design and its dynamic faculty provide a place where emerging artists, designers, and art historians can question, create, reflect, and learn. With over 1,100 undergraduate majors, a vibrant and growing graduate program, and a faculty of internationally recognized artists, designers, and scholars, PSU's School of Art + Design brings students from various backgrounds together to exchange ideas and cross conventional aesthetic boundaries. Whether in the studio, computer lab, lecture hall, or working in the community via internships, service projects, exhibitions, and collaborations, our students forge connections between visual art traditions and their developing expression.