Yo hablo español by Diego Morales-Portillo and Distant Traces by Miya Hannan
Cascade Paragon Arts Gallery
Details
- Dates: November 13, 2026 – January 23, 2027
- Opening reception: Friday, November 13, 5-8pm
- Closing reception and artist talks: Friday, January 22, 2027, 5-8pm (artist talks at 5:30pm)
Paragon Arts Gallery at ¶¶Òõ¸£Àûµ¼º½ Cascade presents Yo hablo español by Diego Morales-Portillo and Distant Traces by Miya Hannan. Please join us for an opening reception on Friday, November 13 from 5-8pm.
In this new body of work, Diego Morales-Portillo combines elements of Guatemalan visual culture with symbols of the United States to examine the immigrant experience through history and systems of power. Drawing connections between historical and contemporary forms of control, Yo hablo español confronts the long history of Hispanophobia and its current political narrative in the United States. Rather than treating immigration as a single event, the exhibition explores it as an ongoing condition: a daily negotiation between the place one carries and the place that continually seeks to redefine us.
Miya Hannan is interested in uncovering histories that are almost forgotten or could otherwise be lost. Her research-based project, Crossing the Ocean, traces Japanese railroad workers who migrated to the Intermountain West around 1900. By retracing their footsteps, she seeks to make this fragmented history feel real and alive. This exhibition draws from historical photographs found through Hannan’s research. The workers’ images emerge through holes and tears in used jeans, embodying the toll and endurance of their labor while suggesting the erasure of their histories.
This exhibition was made possible with support from the College of Liberal Arts, University of Nevada, Reno.
About the artists
Diego Morales-Portillo (Guatemala City, 1992) is a Guatemalan multidisciplinary artist and designer based in Portland, Oregon. His work has been exhibited internationally in Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, Italy, South Korea, Spain, and the United States, and is included in the collections of the Rozas Botran Foundation, Imago Mundi, and the Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC). Morales-Portillo earned an MFA in Visual Studies from Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2019 and has participated in residencies at MASS MoCA, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and Vermont Studio Center. His honors include the 2026 Hallie Ford Fellowship, the Precipice Fund, the RACC Support Beam Grant, and Second Place at the 2017 Juannio Auction of Latin American Art.
Miya Hannan is an interdisciplinary studio artist working in installation, drawing, and sculpture. She has exhibited her work in numerous solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. She explores traces of memory and history embedded in the natural world that continue to linger. She is a recipient of the Franklin Research Grant (2025) and the Nevada Arts Council Artist Fellowship (2023). Her artist’s book, a collaborative project with Brighton Press in San Diego in 2017, is held in the collections of over 30 institutions, including the Getty Research Institute, the Library of Congress, and Stanford University. Before coming to the United States, she worked for seven years as a medical professional in her native country, Japan. She is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Websites and social media:
- miyahannan.com
- moralesportillo.com
- @dmoralesportillo