Three TEMPOart posters with bold orange lettering and slogans.

ARISE!

Arisa White with Pame Chévez (2026)

ARISE! is a poem written by poet Arisa White. Illustrated and animated through augmented reality by artist Pame Chévez. Words from the poem were used to create a poster triptych for wheat pasting across Portland. When the posters are scanned with a phone camera, the words come to life and the poem can be heard recited by White.

Listen to the full poem here

TEMPOart banner with a poem by Arisa White on a brick wall.

Installation date

October 2026

Location

Various Sites throughout Portland

Materials

Wheat paste posters and augmented reality

Child and adult painting a brick wall at TEMPOart event.

Group of people arranging posters at TEMPOart event in a community space.

Person with smartphone photographing a poster at TEMPOart event.

People outdoors attaching a large colorful poster to a brick wall.

About the artists

Arisa White is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Colby College. She is the author of Who’s Your Daddy, co-editor of Home Is Where You Queer Your Heart, and co-author of Biddy Mason Speaks Up, the second book in the Fighting for Justice Series for young readers. In collaboration with composer Jessica Jones, Post Pardon: The Opera is Arisa’s librettist debut. Her poetry is widely published, and her collections have been nominated for an NAACP Image Award and a Lambda Literary Award, and have won the Per Diem Poetry Prize, the Maine Literary Award, the Nautilus Book Award, the Independent Publisher Book Award, the Golden Crown Literary Award, and the Airlie Press Prize.

As the creator of the Beautiful Things Project, Arisa curates poetic collaborations that are rooted in Black queer women’s ways of knowing. She is a San Francisco PlayGround alumna, Cave Canem fellow, and serves on the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance Community Advisory Board.

Pamela Chévez is a multidisciplinary designer born and raised in Mexico City where she got her BFA in Graphic Design. Shortly after graduating, her curiosity and passion for audiovisual experiences got her into Motion Graphics and 3D modeling. While in Mexico City, she worked for a variety of studios and executed media broadcasting, instructional videos, and video-mapping projects for clients like Nickelodeon, Sam’s Club, Kinder, The National Institute of Archeology in Mexico, and more. Now in Portland, Maine she works in illustration, and web design, is an independent animation writer and director whose work focuses on stories that highlight the Latinx community and communities of color in general.

Arisa White is a 2026 TEMPOart artist.