Portland citywide arts show kicks off this weekend

Portland's free citywide contemporary arts festival — "Social Forms: Art as Global Citizenship," hosted by local nonprofit Converge 45 — kicked off Thursday and will run through October.

What's happening: At 17 sites around the city, Portlanders can experience the work of 50 regional and internationally acclaimed artists who work in a range of media.

• The concept of the biennial is inspired by "what artists have done to activate ideas around political change," Derek Franklin, Converge 45's artistic director, told Axios earlier this month.

State of play: At Lewis & Clark College's Hoffman Gallery, the immersive video installation "Broken Spectre" by Irish artist Richard Mosse is on display.

• The stirring film features, at times, up to four simultaneous videos documenting deforestation in Ecuador and Brazil through reels of logging, mass burning and the creation of monoculture farming.
• Throughout the 74-minute installation are images of barren swaths of land once occupied by thick forest, with birds of prey soaring above, intermixed with voices of Indigenous people speaking of the disastrous impact of gold mining on the region.

If you go: "Broken Spectre" will be on view daily, from 11am to 4pm, through Dec. 15.