@frogwhomp
any pronouns
Intermedia Experimenter.
Welcome to my Portfolio! I love creating objects that reflect my lived experience. I hope to affirm black trans queers everywhere.
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Black Rituals:Hair (2025)
Hoodoo Cabinet (2024)
Beanie Babies (2024)
Apology (2024)
And the Body Sparkles (2023)
Top Surgery (2023)
More Coming Soon!
BIO
Davis Bashungwa (Any/He) is an artist, curator, and intersectional advocate raised in Olympia, WA and working in Portland, OR. His art explores themes of identity and the everyday with a focus on his experience as a black trans queer person. Bashungwa’s work manifests itself as illustration, installation, sculpture, digital media, publications, printmaking, performance, and anything else he can get his hands on. He is studying at the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) majoring in Intermedia and Minoring in Art History. He is currently working as a Gallery assistant at The Black Gallery in Portland and as a Special Events Coordinator for PNCA’s BFA student council.
Statement
I make art because I am alive.I grew up in the Pacific Northwest on the traditional homelands of the Steh-Chass people. I make things that reflect everyday life through my experience and I love working in all sorts of mediums like illustration, installation, printmaking, sculpture, etc. I am interested in using gallery and museum spaces as spaces for representation advocacy and change. For about three years I have been organizing BIPOC specific programming for Artists of Color. I love hosting workshops on zine making and publications along with helping others in my community find what they need.Most of all my work is an act of experimentation even when I'm making work in a familiar medium I know it will evolve and change. I like adding new elements which leads me to learn something new.
I am tied to the intersection of class, race, gender, ecology, and sexuality. Each of these sections define my outlook on creation and art:Class: I was never rich, am currently not rich and I know I will never be rich; I use second hand and affordable materials every chance I have.Race, Gender, Sexuality: Queer and Trans people of color are some of the most underrepresented and erased people in history, even more so in Art. Proudly proclaiming my Black, Trans, Queer personhood I leave my identity and existence up to no interpretation or speculation. I will be Black, Trans and Queer even after my death.Ecology: We live on earth and we must care for it.
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Hoodoo Cabinet (2024)
Wood, Plaster, Acrylic Paint
Hoodoo is an African American spiritual diasporic practice with origins in Haitian Voodoo. One of Hoodoo’s key aspects is the concept of working with what you have since many African communities that first came to the Americas had little to no personal resources. In the Spirit of Hoodoo this cabinet acts as an altar made of reclaimed materials. This Cabinet acts as a space for personal reflection, connection, and empowerment, emphasizing the individual's agency over their own practice and legacy. In the making of this cabinet I play on traditional and tribal East African design and art through the lens of a second generation East African immigrant. I blend both my contemporary ideals of African art as someone born and raised in America along with gestures that heavily reference my place of heritage in North West Tanzania and Rwanda.This was my final for Furniture Design Class during the Fall 2024 semester. I Worked on this cabinet a large majority of the semester - Every aspect of this cabinet was made from reclaimed materials and built from the ground up. I went through several different rounds of designs and iterations . This was my first woodworking project where I planned, made, and installed it all independently. (with some advice from my professor of course) The outside of this cabinet is covered in painted plaster to mimic earthen clay houses which are abundant all over the African continent. I put a lot of my own personal narrative into this, as a second generation transgender African immigrant I often wonder what it would be like to go back to my motherland but Tanzania and Rwanda still have laws and enforcement against trans and queer individuals, so through this cabinet I imagine a motherland that holds trans and queer identity with admiration and apart of tribal life.
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Beanie Babies (2024)
Relief Print, Screen-print, and Lino-cut
Beanie Babies was a series of prints I made during my Spring 24 combined print media class. They are a set of printmaking experiments using some unconventional materials. The process of making these prints was first using a beanie baby to make multiple impressions of its fur texture onto a large sheet of paper. This gives almost a ghostly appearance to the prints, like the beanie baby is floating in a pool of paper. Then using two different print making techniques I combined them both with a carved lino cut and screen print. The master for the screen print was made by squishing several beanie babies onto my scanner and then in an editing program isolating the mid-tone values into a black halftone pattern.I utilized the primaries Cyan, Yellow and Magenta to see how each ink color layers and changes when it's overlapped. These prints serve and whimsical, but also horror-like experiments with conventional and unconventional printing processes.
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Apology (2024)
Screen print on 2"x 5" inkjet repoduction kodak prints
"Ptsd has distanced you from my memory, and it scares me because you are me. Since I couldn't remember, I tried to bury you and pretend the past never happened. But even then, I find your photos and stare, fixated on the images of a life I lived that used to be full of love and laughter, but now are stuck memories of loved ones hurt. I need to apologize for treating you poorly just like others did. I love you, and I'm sorry."For this project, I utilized scanning and screen printing. When visiting home one of my favorite things to do is go through all the old things including old pictures of myself as a baby - Its odd to see ones self in a state they cant remember. I use this piece as a sort of acceptance of that past self who is so far removed from me, writing out an apology and embedding it onto the reproduced images with ink makes this statement permanent into their existence.
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And The Body Sparkles (2023)
Acrylic Painting and Woven Miniature Tapestry
This piece is an exploration of the body and transformation through woven tapestry and painting. My inspiration for this piece was drawn from the fluidity of gender identity and how it is constantly evolving. I aimed to create a tapestry that served as a commentary on the complexities of gender and how it intersects with our bodies. To create this tapestry, I used a combination of yarn, lace, and fabric. These materials allowed me to create a range of textures and effects that gave the piece depth and dimensionality. I also incorporated a range of colors, including shades of pink, blue, and white, the colors of the Monica Helms Transgender Flag. The tapestry was embellished using various weaving and needle-punching techniques, allowing me to create an abstract and organic composition. The use of lace added a delicate and intricate quality to the piece, while the fabric provided a juxtaposition of hard and soft textures. In addition to the woven tapestry, I created a painted canvas of a figure with noticeable and characterized top surgery scars. This canvas served as a visual anchor for the piece, grounding it in the physical body. I combine two art practices Painting and Fiber works both fields that have a heavily gendered history.This piece was featured in the 2024 Pacific Northwest College of Art BFA Juried Exhibition.
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Top Surgery (2023)
Screen print
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Black Rituals: Hair (2025)
Screenprint series
A series of screen prints reproducing current and past products used on my hair. I created this piece with hair nostalgia in mind.
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