portfolio
ee portal porfolio
What are our beliefs?
What perspectives do we live by?
What ideologies guide our actions?
What undertow of stories dwell in our subconscious?
advanced life support unit is an intervention that digs into our collective histories, creates a space for open dialogue and offers perspectives on societal and personal fears.
SHADOW documents the movements of a woman (and friend) who was told she would never move her body again after a severe spinal chord injury. In the face of great adversity, she slowly regained access to her body through a movement therapy based on physics and somatic studies, called Feldenkrais. Founder, Moshe Feldenkrais said, “We move according to our perceived self-image.”
As numerous life supporting structures now face ecological paralysis, what does it take to adjust our collective self-image that demands so much of our planet? We feel enlivened by the courage of this woman to recover her body - piece by piece - starting with the smallest movements. Welcoming uncertainty with care, we unfurl and face our shadows to gather much needed courage.
Project link, including the video SHADOW:
A contemplative durational performance and installation on the essence of colour and meditation, in an apartment building parking garage.
micro-habitat displayed slow processes of steeping local plants in water, with organic cloth, to reveal their hidden pigment qualities.
self-deception was a slow-performance in which ee portal carved a quote from renowned Tibetan meditation master, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, onto a handmade, circular white oak table.
Project link, including the video micro-habitat:
In Sudbury, ee portal experienced the Junction creek, zig-zagging across the city, and flowing beneath the gallery. Here, textiles and video evoked the waterway made invisible by urban planning.
A video of Junction creek, included: walking in the water, witnessing the environment, observing walls constructed to contain and control, and documenting the foreboding depths and darkness of the concrete culvert entrance.
Multiple soundscapes of the creek were played through a series of headphones hung by branches on the gallery wall.
A hand printed and drawn book compiling research of the Junction creek watershed was placed on a bespoke cherry and maple desk.
Based on interests in painting, yet desires to leave acrylic paints behind (not only energy-intensive to produce, water-based acrylics contaminate watersheds with synthetic biocides, emulsifiers and pigments), ee portal collected watershed plants to experience the local colour palette. At night, a textile dyed with black walnut was illuminated by solar energy gathered in house.
Project link:
garden skool, a project by Golboo Amani for community skill sharing and knowledge exchange, highlighted diverse earth work practices, including the ee portal performance: handmade fire.
The original practice of setting fire to Southern Ontario to produce the great black oak savannahs, underpinned the performance. After the fire was lit, ee portal opened the space for exchanges around living in an ancient remnant savannah.
“The rain fell hard all day and the air was thick with moisture. If felt as though the clouds lifted their heavy blanket just as people arrived to the Handmade Fire. Emilio and Elyse Portal worked tirelessly to generate a flame. They teased us with numerous attempts. We smelled the smoke and witnessed the sparks but the moist air dominated and eventually won over. Still we sat by the fire, exhausted with anticipation. Mesmerized by the flames we learned of the relationship between humans and land through fire.” ~ Golboo Amani
Project link:
hyperobjects: a work that contemplates the interwoven realities between humans, ecology, industry and our own attempts at addressing the crisis of global warming and the 6th mass extinction.
claybank: a deep meditation into listening, watching, becoming, and knowing that we are always one with the land, world, universe and unfathomable mystery.
Project links:
This work investigated our only shared ancestry (Irish) to understand our grief entanglements with personal, institutional and systemic climate crises/pandemic losses. We responded to grief through touching surfaces, water, rocks, plants, edges, and other touched places. We transformed these sensual recordings into a transdisciplinary body of work called: mnemonic for the commons.
Our late mother’s wish was that we follow her historical fiction manuscript through the colliding records of pagan and Christian worldviews in Ireland. Our grief for her led us to a month-long residency at the Burren College of Art, situated in County Clare – the epicenter of her tale. The greatest colliding force within her writings were Sheela-na-gigs: relief sculptures in the form of a nude woman who is both ancient and youthful: a figure paradoxically near death, birth, pregnancy and fertility. A figure often found above portals into churches, castles and monasteries. The stone Sheela-na-gigs we documented had areas worn away from human touch – mostly her vulva – from everyday people eliciting her blessings and fertility throughout centuries – possibly millennia. The sensual act of touching Sheelas to acknowledge the responsive aliveness within art, stone and places informed our methods of making...
We recorded deep sonics of rubbing boulders, river rock rhythms next to naked feet slipping into water, and hands moving sand over North Atlantic black beach stone. With our recordings of performances and soundscapes, we created sensually provocative works that have been exhibited in-person and virtually. Touch was salient – especially given its absence during the global pandemic, and remnant social fallout. Like the life cycle embodied within the Sheelas, we wanted the act of touching to evoke both grief, as we navigate the 6th Mass Extinction, and also aliveness. Sonically and visually, aesthetics of touch sensually recognized entanglements among control, capitalism and colonization as well as life-giving entities.
Project link:
Contemplating COVID-19 within the context of the sixth mass extinction, ee portal look to both their local ecological crisis, as well as the text "Enlivenment" by Andreas Weber, to acknowledge "the ideology of death" that has brought on this situation and to consider other ways of being.
Project link, including the video material spiritual commons:
Ma-sh-ki-ki-ke:A story of healing, pour nous et pour la terre
"Ma-sh-ki-ki-ke" (mu-sh-ki-ki-kay), an Anishnaabemowin word that means: to make medicine.
This project is locally-based and grounded in grassroots community priorities, starting with a seed vision from 1000 citizens. Sudbury's urban core is...
Decolonial
Sudbury is located within Anishinaabe Atikameksheng territory. Atikameksheng people and values lead the changes needed in our systems, industries, practices and decision-making structures to heal ourselves and the earth. The urban core reflects and is guided by Anishinaabe identity and values.
Part of a healthy ecosystem and watershed
Green spaces, native vegetation, green walls and roofs, and low-impact development enhance biodiversity, improve water quality, and connect people to nature in the urban core. Surfaces are permeable to filter and cool water entering the watershed.
Net Zero and climate emergency ready
A car-free urban core is connected to surrounding neighbourhoods and to all Greater Sudbury communities with safe and convenient active transportation and transit. Green energy is incorporated into public spaces, and both new and existing buildings are designed to the highest sustainable building standards.
Caring
People come first in a more humane urban core. Downtown is safe, friendly and caring for all people and cultures. Community-led initiatives, services, programming and celebrations thrive. Downtown is revitalized but not gentrified. Affordable housing, healthy affordable food, public washrooms, and supporting services are integrated into the urban core.
Vibrant and full of life
The urban core is well cared for, and always full of activity. There are gathering places, resting places and activities for all ages. Play areas for all seasons, informal and formal events, and performance spaces provide recreation and entertainment. Multi-purpose public art invites play and reflects the history, communities, and stories of this territory. The downtown is welcoming to all of Sudbury's diverse populations.
Project link:
A collaborative dance, sound art and video work from Curtis Kagige, Emilio & Elyse Portal (ee portal), which features Anishnaabek (from Wikwemikong) B-Boy Curtis Kagige breakdancing on the Cup & Saucer Trail on Mnidoo Mnis (Manitoulin Island). The videography and score was done by Emilio Portal. The video sampling, composition and editing was created by Elyse Portal.
Project link, including the video Kagige entanglement:
Artists work across boundaries when challenging the status quo. Boundaries of social discourse, relationships, geologies and the subtle expectations of conformity by peers. Making statements about the turbulence and dangers of our current existence is the responsibility of every generation as an act of preservation and survival. This responsibility is a challenge that is manifest through artistic intention, process, material, form and outcome. How does and how can art vitally influence individual and societal behaviours?
Our collective arts process considers life and land, choosing not to follow or adhere to those that have extracted and commodified all so-called resources. We deeply contemplate our own feelings, actions and interactions in an effort to decentralize our human perspective and prop up non-human entities, subjectivities, agencies, which demonstrates our innate relatedness with the broader natural world. Conceptual or real independence and individualism only exists due to our biological interconnectedness that developed over millions of years. Art is a uniquely human process that exists in our daily lives, but we should not lose sight that we are only uniquely human because of our evolutionary, ecological entanglement here on Earth. Art exists because that’s what the Earth wanted.
Will we survive? Will art survive? Can we exist in a more respectful and balanced manner with all living entities? Perhaps, it is our small, simple and humble intentions, choices and focus that will profoundly inspire and support, or dramatically impact future generations.
Project link:
This album was conceived in 2022 as a gesture of solidarity with the Bennett Lake area, which is part of Laurentian University's Greenspace. ee portal has spent thousands of hours hiking these pristine boreal forest trails. We have experienced much joy, peace and sublime poetic exchanges. Bennett Lake has given us so much, yet very few people recognize its beauty and ecological importance.
In these 27 performances, there are a vast array of sounds, field recordings, synthesizers and sonic methodologies. Many of these performances utilize a technique known as destructive or disintegrating tape loops. These types of loops are very intriguing because they both linger and fade, which is a phenomenon that we see in the forest a lot.
This album was supported by the Ontario Arts Council through their Northern Arts Project program.
Released: June 16, 2023
Featured tracks:
https://emilioportal.bandcamp.com/track/i-know-it-as-a-sacred-abode-to-the-mystical
https://emilioportal.bandcamp.com/track/birds-and-keys
Project link:
For further projects see the following:
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