Through Our Lens: Curating a Sense of Place

A Collaborative Exhibition with Diana Marcela Cuartas and Creativity in Action FRINQ Students
The collaborative exhibition 'Through Our Lens' represents the culmination of a yearlong creative residency with artist Diana Marcela Cuartas and FRINQ Creativity in Action students. Over 100 first year PSU students worked with Diana over the course of fall, winter and spring terms. Through a series of conversations, experiments, and place-based photography exercises facilitated by Sarah Newlands and Michelle Swinehart - students explored the places they inhabit. Our learning community is left with a deeper sense of what makes Portland State University a place.

Phoenician Poetry by Diana Marcela Cuartas
This exhibition presents a selection of photographs taken by Diana between the spring and summer of 2019, shortly after migrating from Colombia to Phoenix, Arizona. Photography became a tool for research and adaptation, a way to make sense of a new cultural and physical landscape. Captivated by the vast desert scenery, the wide streets, and especially the intriguingly literal names of local businesses, Diana documented moments that reveal a society shaped by car culture, where everything moves too fast for subjectivity and poetry is traced in the ordinary.

This project is generously supported by the PSU Offices of Research and Graduate Studies and Housing and Residence Life.