SPACE is a portland-based nonprofit organization that supports contemporary arts projects, champions artists, and encourages an open exchange of ideas.
Learn more here about Re-Site 2024
SPACE is pleased to present Re-Site 2024, the second edition of the site-specific, temporary public art and Portland history-telling initiative first launched in 2020. This year’s iteration features artistic interpretation of local histories by artists James Allister Sprang, Maya Tihtiyas Attean, Ashley Page, Rachel Alexandrou, and Ling-Wen Tsai, in collaboration with historians Seth Goldstein and Libby Bischof.
James Allister Sprang‘s work creates “sensory audiovisual poems for the spirit” and will activate the landmark building and important African American histories of the Abyssinian Meeting House in a series of intimate listening sessions of sound works. Maya Tihtiyas Attean‘s photographic and mixed media installation at Portland’s oldest place of worship, the First Parish Church, will bear witness and respond to the Indigenous scalp bounties organized by the 18th century church leader. Ashley Page‘s installation will spark dialogue and uplift themes of liberation in response to recently understood historical information about enslavement in Portland at a rare surviving example of a colonial-era estate in Maine. Rachel Alexandrou, with collaborator Joshua Clukey, will reflect on the extractive practices, cycles, and nourishment from the land around us at the site of the former Portland Brick Works, asking us to look at our own extractive footprint while also celebrating and learning about natural cycles of produce from the land. And finally, Ling-Wen Tsai‘s temporary sculptural installation in the tidal landscape will allow us to collapse past, present, and future on the Casco Bay shores, exploring the history of industry that changed the shoreline, reflecting on the daily changes of the tidal landscape today, and pointing the imminent changes of sea level rise and climate change coastal events.
Maya Tihtiyas Attean
Roots of Resilience: Echoes of Connection
First Parish Church | May 5 – 30
Sunday, May 19th 2-4pm – Opening event to experience the sound installation component and celebrate the project
Maya Attean’s Roots of Resilience: Echoes of Connection, reveals the historical narrative of the relationship between the Wabanaki and the First Parish Church in Machigonne, or what is now known as Portland, Maine. Maya’s work illuminates the deeds of 1757 where church leader, Reverend Thomas Smith and his cohorts, profited from bounty incentives outlined in the Spencer Phipps Proclamation to lead a caravan to perpetrate violence upon the Wabanaki people. As Maya writes, “The attempted genocide of my people failed to extinguish our unyielding spirit; I stand as a testament to that survival.”
Through the use of photography against the left side of the First Parish Church Meeting House in the Memorial Garden, these images serve as a solemn reminder of the connections lost to history’s shadows, juxtaposed against the enduring bonds illuminated by the Wabanaki, people of the Dawn. Simultaneously, an accompanying audio piece, blends chants with archival recordings of Wabanaki children from 1996, weaving sounds that echo a shared continued legacy. This is a response to acknowledge these harsh truths and speak to the strength and legacy of Indigenous ancestry and the Indigenous experience in Maine.
The opening event on May 5 coincides with Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Awareness Day, and will be an opportunity to experience the audio component live.
Read more for the artist statement, site history, and resources.
Ashley Page
Imagining Freedom
Tate House Museum | May 10–June 30
Museum hours: Wed-Sat 10 am-4 pm
Note: Ashley Page’s work is on view during the Tate House Museum’s hours of operation and costs their standard rate to view.
Wednesday, June 19th | Juneteenth Community Day (Free admission + ticketed tour + cyanotype workshop)
Ashley Page’s installation asks, “What does freedom and liberation look like?” Inspired by the history of Bet, an enslaved African who worked for the Tate family’s home built in 1755, and the only colonial house in Portland, that overlooks the Fore and Stroudwater rivers.
Interdisciplinary artist Ashley Page has partnered with the Tate House Museum for the 2024 iteration of SPACE’s Re-Site project. Reconciling Portland, Maine’s history of industrialization and colonization while contending with the global reverberations of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, Imagining Freedom, asks the viewer to step into the shoes of an enslaved Black individual, Bet. Her age, appearance, homelands, and quality of life are all unknown, lost to the unraveling nature of time. Only appearing as a called witness in a court record, we know nothing about Bet other than she was an enslaved servant living and working in the Tate House in the 1700s for an unknown amount of time. Researching the social, political and economic landscape of Maine in the early-late 1700’s and reviewing archival documents, Page makes an intentional departure from the archive as she asks the guiding question: What did freedom look like for Bet? What did her daydreams look like, sound like, taste like? This historial recovery project grapples with the ways enslaved peoples were excluded from historical records and navigates new ways in which we tell our stories.
