On view at The Silver Room
September 11- November 13, 2020

The past months have been anything but classic. They have been nothing typical, nothing normal. As justice is being demanded and fought for on so many fronts, the arts have not been spared from a similar, necessary reckoning. Hypocrisy within institutions and organizations, racist collecting practices, and the biased way in which arts histories have been told and standardized are being called out. Even the briefest look at the arts canon reveals an overwhelming oversight of Black artists, writers, and thinkers.

The Classics features two series of work by Chicago-based artist Unyimeabasi Udoh: european portraits (recto + verso) and the moor. During visits to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, Udoh sought out depictions of Black people in the shadows of paintings. For this series, Udoh mined the Met’s digital archive for European portraits for which a Black person sat. That is, an actual portrait in which they were a subject, as opposed to being represented as a mythical figure or character in a scene. Needless to say that count was not abundant. european portraits (recto + verso) celebrates the few Black figures that were encountered during this exercise. These postcards present the figures’ original context on one side and honors each individual with their own portrait on the other.

Last summer, Udoh and a friend reread Othello and the Merchant of Venice. Both remarked that neither play was particularly compelling, yet recalled it being required reading in many an academic class. The second series, the moor, pulls quotes from Shakespeare’s tragic play Othello. The protagonist, Othello, is also noted as one of the English writer’s only Black characters. The series is less a critique of the play but instead questions why a number of writings in the literature canon have maintained their place there, and, consequently, what other works are excluded.

Both of these series presence Blackness within these canonized classics— works that have become standard in art history and literature classes. Histories of what brought about the standardization of certain works into what we now know as the arts canon are being excavated and undone. Udoh’s work reexamines Black figures in an art canon that has historically been a space of exclusion, objectification, and fetishization. The work of unravelling the interconnectivity of the established arts canon and its upholding of white supremacy is being done by artists and historians alike, and the narrative of what was once “classic” is being actively rewritten.

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Artist Bio: Unyimeabasi Udoh is an artist and graphic designer based in Chicago, concerned with surface and absence, text as image, blackness as color and construct, and how systems of communication and knowledge—particularly the Western canons of art and literature, and the position of black people and African artifacts within them—are created and maintained. They hold a BA in Architecture from Columbia University and an MFA in Visual Communication Design from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Artist Website

List of Works

“Domestic”—relating to the running of a home or to family relations—is often a gendered term, connoting a space in which the woman presides yet is simultaneously relegated. However, Disrupting Domestic positions the domestic as a created space, a vessel constructed for the purpose of memory, of expression, and of comfort. Artists Johannes Barfield and Joy Priest, Pallavi Sen, and Stephanie J. Woods each explore relationships between personal space, memory, family, and the politics of rest.

Do you hear the lull of music that for some reason makes you want to sway your body back and forth to the beat as you move through the space? Barfield invokes memories of family cookouts and gatherings with imagery and a soundtrack rooted in personal memories of those occasions.

Sen recreates a living space, a bedroom to be exact. She posits that the bedroom and home are the most permanent installation spaces. They are a true expression of personal aesthetic. The space is intentionally warm and functional, a stark contrast to the usually sterile or feigned neutrality of typical art spaces.

For Woods, a space in which the armor dawned to move through everyday life can be a challenge to come by--especially for those identifying as Black women. Healing lavender and collage create a space that invites vulnerability. Here, time for joy and relaxation is assumed to be an inherent right instead of a luxury.

Featuring the work of artists:
Johannes Barfield and Joy Priest, Pallavi Sen, and Stephanie J. Woods

ACRE Projects (Chicago, IL)
November 8-29, 2019

The word “reclamation” implies taking back or seizing—a repositioning of where control lies. Representative Maxine Waters was acutely aware of this when she famously “reclaimed her time” during a 2017 House Financial Services Committee meeting. Yet the reigning queen of memes’ reclamation of speaking time points to a much larger need for an active repossession of space, time and power, especially on the part of people of color grappling with the precarity rampant in so many facets of everyday life. Reclamation: of time, of agency, of narrative explores the acts of taking back or repositioning various forms of control.  In the respective practices of artists Amanda Assaley, Mandy Messina, and Fidencio Fifield-Perez this theme is apparent. 

Assaley manipulates domestic objects, in this case a sofa, and mobilizes a Baroque sensibility while pulling in Arab Christian motifs. There’s a certain desperation in these mashups. Her work orchestrating a dialogue that pushes the aesthetic forms from the realm of object or tool into that of an emotional regulator. Assaley temporary removes the onus of emotional control from the individual and places upon the physical object. 

For Fifield-Perez, anxiousness and restlessness have become commonplace as he moves through the immigration process. These feelings manifest in the fastidiousness of hand drawing and monoprinting offset an omnipresent looming sensation. His hands are never idle, becoming a unique measure of time all based on creative practice and output. Making has become not only a source of comfort, but also a new way in which time can be perceived and experienced. 

Through five short stories Messina illustrates the rehabilitation of their native language, Afrikaans, by millennials. Ninety six tiles made in the Dutch style (the colonizer’s style) subvert the narrative of South African monuments and the co-opting of a “Brown language” into a tool of oppression. This piece, an intimate monument, is a retelling of history and a contemporary recording of the effort to reclaim a language.

Featuring the work of artists:
Amanda Assaley, Fidencio Fifield-Perez , and Mandy Messina

ACRE Projects (Chicago, IL)
August 2-30, 2019

Episode 705: Amanda Assaley and curator Adia Sykes on the Bad At Sports Podcast

In her first solo exhibition, Material Sounding: The Dimensionality of A Thread,  Nneka Kai inserts her work into the realms of abstraction and performance, situates her practice within the discourses of Black feminist studies and craft. Through an in-depth study of  improvisational music, Kai has developed a unique lexicon of aural patterns that are then translated into visual compositions. Sounds manifest in the form of these soundscores, each of them as diverse as the musical traditions form which they are derived. 

Works from this aforementioned series are combined with unnamed “portals”, structures that allude to String Theory’s notion of everything in the universe being made up of vibrating strings. These portals serve as gateways—collapsing linear time, complicating conventional perceptions of space, warping viewers to a different plane. The reverberation of the strings speaks to the thought everything makes a sound whether audible or not. These portals give sound structure and, in turn, lend an opacity to what normally goes unseen. 

Material Exhibitions (Chicago, IL)
June 23 - August 25, 2019

#1 Pick for What to See This Weekend by Bad At Sports

Sarah H. Reynolds and Fuyumi Murata collaborate on this second iteration of Unstable to once again explore their shared interests in mimicry, ambiguity, and shadows. The first iteration of this project took place in Hiketa, Japan. Using found objects and documentation through photography and painting these two artists create site specific installations in an attempt to unsettle the viewer’s very idea of what and object is and how it can exist in the world. While Reynolds and Murata were working on the first iteration of this project they would walk the gardens of Hiketa noting how the very concept of the garden was something incredibly malleable. In one moment it can imagined as a pristine thing, but venture around the bend of a path and one is met with a verdant wilderness. Shape and form come into question as properties of an object that are by no means fixed. Unstable puts the onus of interpretation on the viewer, accounting for the inevitably variable lens through which each individual will encounter an object.

The context of Chicago presents a unique opportunity for this project to exist in a new way. Murata makes her first trip to the city for this collaboration. The methodology remains constant, each artist determined to find objects that resonate with them in some way before continuing on to the documentation and installation process. What presents itself as an object of import will undoubtedly be informed by both artists’ backgrounds and making practices. Their collaborative work brings together objects that articulate concepts of shape, line, form, shadow, texture, time, and scale in such a way that the final installation sheds like on the multiplicity of meanings that a given object can have should there be space enough for diverse interpretation.

Unstable: not firm or fixed, not constant, prone to change, not stable

Comfort Station (Chicago, IL)
October 6-28, 2018

Top 5 Exhibitions to see in October 2018 in NewCity Magazine

This project invites viewers to broaden their thinking on places that are considered "public". Who designated them? Who visits them? What happens there? From the squares, to parks, to institutions, the very idea of ​​"public space" turns out to be an incredibly malleable thing.

Through a series of recordings of the Cascata delle Marmore, the spectators are immersed in a sound experience. Water becomes a metaphor of what possesses the ability to cross boundaries, serving as a space for free time, although potentially a highly contested thing. While the Terni Festival 2018 hypothesizes what mankind would do with the possibility of traveling and living on the Moon, water presents itself as something vital and once again its symbolism can take on many meanings.

Water stands out as a metonymy for social fabrics and leisure spaces during the course of this installation. The public space of this site-specific project is built to be composed of different levels and able to contain multiple meanings for each given person - the river that divides Terni is just a few meters away, for example. Abbatangelo weaves together the sonic vestiges of the water to create a soundscape, stratifying these single pieces into one, sound together.

This project is the result of a collaboration lasting months between the artist Andrea Abbatangelo (London, UK) and the curator Adia Sykes (Chicago, USA)

Centro Arti Opificio Siri (Terni, Italy)
September 23, 2018

Andrea Abbatangelo

A Landscape Made Up features work by five artists examining the themes of community and connection to place. Chiara Galimberti, Coley Mixan in collaboration with Hannah Patterson, Adee Roberson, and Ileana Tejada whose practices span the media of drawing, video, installation, and performance illuminate the necessity of seeking or carving out one’s own space of belonging should they not otherwise exist. Community, then, can become a created, malleable thing that oftentimes requires tending to.

...My search for it had brought me closer to understanding myself and other human beings. The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.
-Maya Angelou, All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes, 1986

We live in a time when the very concepts of belonging and safety are, for many, called into question. For marginalized peoples this feeling is only heightened given the precarity of this country’s social and political climate. A Landscape Made Up invites viewers to think about the soil into which they send their roots. These five artists cultivate an entire ecology within this exhibition which welcomes those who are most in need of spaces of belonging, communion, and care.

Featuring the work of artists:
Chiara Galimberti, Coley Mixan and Hannah Patterson, Adee Roberson, and Ileana Tejada

ACRE Projects (Chicago, IL)
October 5-25, 2018

Structures Manifest queries the material and aesthetic qualities of these artists’ works as they grapple with the theme of power through the unique lenses of their experiences and backgrounds. Working across mediums such as photography, sculpture, and installation these exhibiting artists articulate the complexities of identifying, confronting, repositioning, and reclaiming power vis a vis the structure and materiality of their works.

Art objects move to the fore, and viewers are encouraged to start their thinking with the object first before further parsing out the power structures that are being implicated in each piece. These artist’s narratives are diverse and their work makes these explorations of the ways in which notions of power inform narrative creation, politics, social relations, identity, and gender performativity are made tangible and accessible to the viewer.

Featuring the work of artists:
Kearra Gopee, Eli Gold, eduardo restrepo castaño, and Anne Yafi

ACRE Projects (Chicago, IL)
August 3-13, 2018

This installation is mired in the concept of memory. How do we construct a memory? What do we choose to remember? How do we, then, present and share such memories with others?

This exhibition reconsiders the installation space, a historic cabinet, as an item of furniture reminiscent of that which could be found in someone’s home--such cabinets that are often filled with family photos, heirlooms, and other objects with personal stories and histories--and invited two artists, Ashley M. Freeby (SAIC MFA 2018) and Ben Harle (SAIC MFA 2018), to engage this space through works which considers loss and remembrance. In dialogue, these two artists’ work illicit a consideration of how we each of us cope with loss, and the potential for both public and personal memorials to generate reflection and potential healing through collective mourning.

Works Included:
Ben Harle
Various ceramic objects from the series “Thixotropic Urns”
Glazed and unglazed porcelain

Ashley M. Freeby
Photographs in standing frames from the series “Many Thousands Gone” Manipulated found photography, archival inkjet prints

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Office in Chicago City Hall
Installed July 13, 2018

The Space We Grow Into explores the connections that women of color cultivate with those around them and the self-care that is necessary to our wellbeing. It is a celebration of sisterhood, of spirituality, of individuality, and an uncompromising commitment to finding and holding onto the beauty that exists in this world should we keep our eyes open to it. 

Artists Catalina Bellizzi, SHENEQUA, and Ariana Vaeth, whose practices span painting, weaving, sound, and video consider themes of connection, care, friendship, and intimacy. 

Woman Made Gallery (Chicago, IL)
May 25-June 16, 2018

The culminating public presentation of more than 100 MFA candidates’ new and ambitious work. Students work for more than six months with three guest curators and 12 graduate curatorial assistants to envision the exhibition, an approach that allows for dialogue, process, and collaborative decision-making among the curatorial teams and artists.

Graduate Curatorial Fellows: Qais Assali, Duncan Bass, Madalyn Brooker, Katie Cato, Luna Goldberg, Garbo Hu, Lindsey Hutchens, Stephanie Koch, Carlos Salazar Lermont, Makayla May, Adia Sykes, Maria Urigoitia Villanueva

Guest Curators: Anthony Elms, Jenny Gheith, and Kate Nesin

The Sullivan Galleries (Chicago, IL)
April 29-May 17, 2018

MFA Show Website

Artists seen in photos: David Heo, Paris F. Jomadiao, Danielle Vickers, Jacob Melgren, Ben Harle, Ashley Pastrore, Jane Thompson, Kevin Demery, Minami Kobayashi, Tri Ngo, Ten Ten Y, Sunny Choi, Jenna Boyles, Tsailing Tseng, Alex Younger, Annie Wieseth, Dana Nechmad, Nicole Rinde, Barbara Polster, Kathia Muniz-Rios, Rachel Lin, and Will Wiebe

Shifting the Center showcases projects by current MFA and BFA students who consider individual experience and the everyday through the use of architecture and site. These artists intervene into spaces of confinement, reassembling familiar visual markers, and, in doing so, question sites that often go unnoticed. Viewers are invited to reconsider overlooked spaces and their relationship to the built environment. 

This exhibition features new work by MFA and BFA students that consider individual experience through architecture and site, including work by Ivana Brenner (MFA 2018), Ashley M. Freeby (MFA 2018), Ryan Goh (BFA 2018) and Hope Wang (BFA 2018), Catherine Hu (BFA 2019), Ayesha Singh (MFA 2018), Falak Vasa (BFA 2018), and William Wiebe (MFA 2018). 

Co-curated with Lindsay Hutchens

The Sullivan Galleries (Chicago, IL)
August 29-October 14, 2017 

The Visualist: http://www.thevisualist.org/2017/09/shifting-the-center/

Through an accumulation of adapted, manipulated, and repurposed information, Iterative Information, Origin Ongoing elicits the question: how does the proliferation of knowledge shape or reframe information from the “original” source?  As the integrity or truthfulness of information is constantly being called into question, these works explore what happens to information systems as they traverse time and medium

Both a conceptual framework and methodological approach, this exhibition explores the iterative processes that information systems undergo moving from their original source to their dissemination. The works presented express this idea both aesthetically and thematically. Each work foregrounds the notion that the genesis, transmission, and reception of information are equal steps in a generative, creative process. 

Iterative Information, Origin Ongoing brings together eight artists whose work encourages its audience to look closely, think critically, and understand interpretation as a part of the iterative processes. These works continue down the hallway and are on view through September 2017. We invite you to spend time with each one, and contemplate your role in in this ongoing process of information exchange. 

Co-curated with Alden Burke

Featured Artists: Santina Amato, Jasper Goodrich, Nihat Karatasli, Ting Yan Khor, Ji Su Kwak, Sarah H. Reynolds, Aden Soloway, William Wiebe

Dean’s Office, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
June 2017-September 2017 

This exhibition showcases the culminating achievements of 32 graduating students from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Low-Residency MFA program, who work in in a variety of media and methodologies.

Featuring work by: Anon Anym, Kioto Aoki, Isidore Bethel, Louise Captein, Michelle Carrasquilla, Kylie Carrigan, Thomas Dexter, Molly Duggan, Scott Easson, Meryl Feigenberg, Katherine Finkelstein, Patricia RAIN Gianneschi, Ellie Hazlett, Clareese Hill, Monica Kelsie, Jenny Keyser, Susan Krueger-Barber, Marina Leybishkis, David Martinez-Moreno, Alexandra Medina, Rebby M – TNKRT, Claire Pope, Benjamin Ripley, Erin Schalk, Griz Strüss, Zsuzsanna Szegedi, Arielle Tonkin, Alena Ahrens, Josh Turk, Janelle Turner, Lan Xu

Curatorial Team: Cortney Lederer, Guest Curator; Alden Burke and Adia Sykes, Graduate Curatorial Assistants; with Andrew Falkowski, Graduate Coordinator; and in collaboration with the Department of Exhibitions and the Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts Program

The Sullivan Galleries (Chicago, IL)
July 13-July 30, 2017 

The Visualist