A Women’s Basketball Fashion Archive: PDX
The BLACK Gallery
Expensify, Portland, Oregon
Saturday, August 22, 2026 | 11:10am
I had stopped to photograph the Expensify building in downtown Portland.
With its monumental marble façade, soaring columns, and enormous dark windows, it looked to me like an old bank—which, as it turns out, is exactly what it was. Today, Expensify occupies Portland’s historic First National Bank Building.
I wasn’t there for Expensify. I simply thought the building was worth photographing.
Near one of the entrances stood a small sidewalk sign for Portland in Black: Documenting Our Lives in the City of Roses, with arrows pointing toward the doors.
As I took a photograph of the sign, one of the building’s large doors creaked open. I assumed someone was coming out, so I stopped what I was doing.
Instead, a woman was standing just inside.
“Come in, check it out,” she said.
So I did.
Inside, two women sat at a main table, while a small group farther into the gallery appeared to be working with archival materials.
And then I realized what else I had walked into: A Women’s Basketball Fashion Archive: PDX.
The exhibition was presented by The BLACK Gallery in collaboration with Liberated Archives for Black Lives, both powered by Don’t Shoot Portland. It drew from A Women’s Basketball Fashion Archive, a larger project by multimedia artist and archivist Hypatia Sorunke. Its first print project, The Fitted W, grew from more than 1,200 film photographs taken at more than 50 WNBA games in 12 cities during the 2024 season.
The BLACK Gallery is a Black woman–owned and curated space centered on art, education, history, and community.
Sorunke’s interest extended beyond the game itself. The archive focused on the people surrounding women’s basketball—the clothing, gestures, identities, communities, and forms of self-expression that become part of the sport’s history as well.
The Portland exhibition had opened June 12 and was scheduled to close August 28, just six days after I happened to walk through the door.
What struck me almost immediately, though, was how little the exhibition felt like a conventional museum display.
Photographs appeared in different sizes and arrangements—some framed, others mounted directly to the walls, some backed by sheets of color. Magazines, newspaper clippings, shoes, photographs, books, and other ephemera shared space inside display cases.
There was something wonderfully organic about it.
It felt hand-built—almost like a scrapbook, community archive, or zine expanded until it occupied an entire gallery.
That seemed particularly appropriate for what was being preserved. These were traces of a culture that had been worn, photographed, collected, shared, and lived in.
Two images especially stayed with me.
One centered on a denim jacket covered in patches from women’s professional basketball teams, many of them teams that no longer existed. Sorunke had photographed the jacket in Connecticut, and its patches transformed an everyday piece of clothing into something closer to a historical document.
Near the bottom was a familiar name:
Portland Fire.
The timing made that small patch striking. The WNBA was celebrating its 30th season, while Portland itself had returned to the league that year with the revival of the Portland Fire, more than two decades after the city’s original WNBA team played its final season.
When Sorunke photographed the jacket, that logo represented a team from Portland’s WNBA past. By the time the photograph was hanging on a Portland gallery wall in 2026, the Fire name was back on the court—with a new visual identity.
Another photograph stopped me for a completely different reason.
Across the back of a black shirt were four words:
SOUNDS GAY I’M IN!
Around it, photographs of fans, clothing, gestures, and everyday moments continued down the gallery wall.
Seen together, the two images seemed to hold much of the exhibition between them: history and fandom in one; identity and belonging in the other.
And perhaps that was what I enjoyed most about the exhibition.
It wasn’t asking me to look only at basketball. It was asking me to look at the culture that grows around it. The clothes people choose. The teams they remember. The communities they build. The ways people announce who they are and where they belong.
I hadn’t planned to see any of it that Saturday.
I had merely stopped to photograph an old building.
Then a door opened.
And behind it was an entire women’s basketball archive I hadn’t even known was there.
Sources
- A Women’s Basketball Fashion Archive. A Women’s Basketball Fashion Archive. Official project website. A Women’s Basketball Fashion Archive
- Don’t Shoot Portland. “Opening Reception: A Women’s Basketball Fashion Archive.” June 12, 2026. Exhibition information, dates, The Fitted W, Sorunke’s 2024 photography project, and the collaboration with Liberated Archives for Black Lives. Don’t Shoot Portland exhibition page
- KOIN 6 News. “Sports and Arts Collide at ‘A Women’s Basketball Fashion Archive’ Exhibit.” July 17, 2026. Includes Sorunke discussing the project’s origins and describing the WNBA fan community as a “living archive.” KOIN 6 News article
- Mahoney, Mary. “The WNBA as A Living Fashion Archive with Hypatia Sorunke.” Landline with Mary Mahoney, April 28, 2026. Interview with Sorunke discussing the larger archive, The Fitted W, the project’s research origins, and the denim jacket with patches from defunct women’s basketball teams found in Connecticut. Landline with Mary Mahoney episode
- Portland City Archives & Records Management. “Portland in Black: Documenting Our Lives in the City of Roses.” August 22, 2026. Information about the community-archiving event held at Expensify and visitors’ opportunity to view Sorunke’s exhibition. Portland City Archives event page
- Portland Fire. “Portland Fire’s 2026 Debut Season.” January 21, 2026. Official information on the Fire’s return to the court in 2026, 24 years after the original Portland team’s final season. Portland Fire announcement
- WNBA. “WNBA Slated To Tip Off 30th Season Friday, May 8 with WNBA Tip-Off 2026 Presented by CarMax.” January 21, 2026. Official confirmation of the league’s 30th season and Portland’s May 9 return to WNBA play. WNBA Season 30 announcement
- ZGF Architects. “Expensify, Portland Office: A 100 Percent Agile Office.” Background on Expensify’s adaptation of Portland’s historic First National Bank Building. ZGF project page
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