CURRENT Exhibition
Entre ritos y portales
December 6, 2024 - January 17, 2024
Sebastian Bruno-Harris, Gabriela Estrada, Sofía Fernández Díaz, Mariana Noreña, Frank Vega, Kushala Vora and Irene Wa.
Opening: December 6. 6-9PM. Performances by Gabriela Estrada, Frank Vega, and Irene Wa
Entre ritos y portales (Amidst rites and portals) presents the introspective journeys, embodied experiences, and rituals of seven artists who are deepening their connection with nature and reclaiming their bond with the Earth.
By embracing ephemerality, the artists reflect on the remnants of our existence: what lingers after we are gone; meditating on the impermanence of both art and life itself, inviting us to return to life's origins (the seed, the womb) and unlearn the systems that have disconnected us from nature and each other.
This exhibition explores the intersection of visual art and performativity, with the body at the heart of the creative process and the viewer’s experience. Whether through action, movement, or creation itself, the artists draw inspiration from the body, infusing their work with an embodied presence that evolves with every interaction.
Entre ritos y portales, nothing remains static. The works are alive, evolving over time—growing, moving, expanding, or disappearing—creating an environment for an uncertain journey.
Curated by Sofía Gabriel in conversation with the artists.
FRUIT COCKTAIL CAKE
December 6, 2024 - January 17, 2024
When you let the child cut the cake, the possibilities come open. Among family and friends, the birthday child makes the first slice with a kitchen knife, through the whipped cream and the glossy red letters. The idea is to pose for the picture: a kid with a knife in hand, comedy found in the edges of fear. He would never do anything with that knife but cut the cake and smile. Even though he plays with swords and scissors and cuts the hair off of Barbie to repaint her in his gay image of beauty.
Clocks and calendars move in circles, as do the fruits on top of a Chinese fruit cocktail cake: the sliced kiwis and strawberries, the plump balls of cantaloupe. Each birthday marks the occasion of aging, as the child moves into adolescence. The parents reckon with the adult child: how is it that the wiggling bundle in the crib is now thinking and moving for himself? The adult confronts his own uneasy transformation: what happens when growth feels inconsistent with time? The adult and the child show up and shift within the same aging body. The aging child stares into the mirror and restructures the possibilities for who he was and will become.
FRUIT COCKTAIL CAKE is an exhibition of drawing, sculpture, and installation that examines the psychic terrain crossed between the child and the adult. Allured by the modularity of the alphabet and childhood toys, Andy constructs wall drawings with painted strips, a playroom with folded cardboard props, and messages with letters and gestures. On display in the windows of Co-Prosperity, queer signals punctuate the reflective surfaces in the form of rainbow fruits, family pictures reinterpreted, and postures of flamboyance and melancholy.
The location of this exhibition in Bridgeport is especially significant, the neighborhood where Andy grew up. He ran around with his cousins in White Sox parking lots, was called names on the street, and now takes his parents out to lunch on Halsted. The show saunters through the celebratory traditions with which Andy grew up in a Cantonese home in Chicago. It draws from the tales of children’s capacity to live between recreation and danger, as in Julio Cortázar’s short story “In the Name of Bobby.” Finally, it investigates the act of clowning, where the adult takes the world with the openness of the child.
Andy Li | 2024
Past PROGRAMS and exhibitions
exhibition texts
Co-Prosperity started an initiative in 2021 with the help of our Co-Pro Council that commissions writers to produce responses that document/review/analyze/discuss/talk about their experiences of our exhibitions. Are you a writer? Get added to our Writer’s Bank here!
About Co-Prosperity Chicago
Co-Prosperity is a gallery and HQ for Public Media Institute: a non-profit organization that brings you independent media projects like Lumpen Magazine, Lumpen Radio, and Lumpen TV, a gallery in upstate New York, Buddy (an artist store at the Chicago Cultural Center), and MdW: a coalition of artist-run organizations in the Midwest!
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