Co-Prosperity

27

to Aug 1

Numbers Game

Fri, Jun 27, 2025 7:00 PM 19:00 Fri, Aug 1, 2025 8:00 PM 20:00
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Photo Credits: Sandra Oviedo

Numbers Game
Britt Ransom
June 27th - August 1st, 2025

Opening Reception: Friday, June 27th, 7:00pm - 10:00pm

Numbers Game is an exhibition by Britt Ransom, the great-great-granddaughter of Reverdy C. Ransom and Emma Ransom, that traces the inheritance of spiritual leadership, social service, and civil resistance. Through sculpture, digital fabrication, archival media, and interactive optics, this exhibition excavates the layered history of Reverdy C. Ransom’s civil rights work in Chicago during the Progressive Era and connects it to present-day movements for racial and economic justice.

At the center of this exhibition is the story of Ransom’s founding of the Institutional Church and Social Settlement in 1896, located at 3825 Dearborn Street on Chicago’s South Side, a building that no longer exists. More than a place of worship, the church was a pioneering social experiment: one of the first Black-led religious institutions to integrate faith, education, physical health, community organizing, and social services under one roof. It included a kindergarten, nursery, gymnasium, library, and clubs for boys and girls, all aimed at serving the growing Black population migrating to Chicago during the early waves of the Great Migration. The Institutional Church stood as a vital response to the influx of Black Southerners seeking safety and opportunity in a city that was often just as segregated and economically punishing as the Jim Crow South they had fled.

Ransom was not alone in this endeavor. He forged strategic and lasting alliances with some of Chicago’s most prominent Progressive reformers, including Jane Addams, Clarence Darrow, Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus, and Bishop Samuel Fallows. These figures recognized in Ransom a peer—a leader whose theology was grounded in action, whose sermons catalyzed reform, and whose gathering space offered tangible services to the city’s most vulnerable. Jane Addams, the founder of Hull House, played a particularly significant role. She understood the risk Ransom was taking and the urgency of his mission. Shortly after the purchase of the old "Railroad Chapel" building that would become the Institutional Church, Addams helped secure its first external donation. Through her network, a check was sent from a philanthropist in California—marking the beginning of what would become a network of white and Black supporters committed to the settlement’s mission.

Addams’s support was not symbolic—it was strategic. She publicly endorsed the work of Ransom's settlement, visited regularly, and included it in broader coalitions of Progressive reform across the city. Alongside her were Rev. Graham Taylor of Chicago Commons, Mary McDowell of the University of Chicago Settlement, and Clarence Darrow, the famous criminal defense attorney. Darrow notably worked with Ransom during the 1902 Chicago Stockyards strike, helping to mediate racial tensions between Black strikebreakers and white union laborers. Ransom, risking personal harm, walked into the yards himself to convince the strikers that Black laborers were not their enemy, but fellow workers caught in an exploitative system. He then invited both Black and white laborers to his church for an unprecedented public forum, where dialogue—not violence—prevailed.

Despite these successes, Ransom’s greatest challenge—and his most dangerous act of resistance—came in the form of his public campaign against policy gambling, an underground lottery system that was thriving in the community during this time. Once he realized that his sermons were being used by congregation members to choose numbers for the game, Ransom spoke out in opposition. His campaign to expose those who were profiting from the game which ultimately led to a personal encounter with Policy Sam. In 1903, his church was bombed with the intent to kill him. Ransom survived, as did the settlement, though badly damaged.

In this exhibition, Ransom’s work is represented through a symbolic vocabulary drawn from the Aunt Sally’s Policy Players Dream Book. In the dream-language of policy gambling—objects like the bell, book, key, train, ladder, lamp, and brick house, had coded meanings and specific numbers assigned to them within the game- players would then use these numbers to place their bets. Recontextualized here, they become metaphors of Ransom’s resistance: the bell sounding a warning, the book and lamp reflecting his intellectual and spiritual light, the key signifying access and transformation, the train representing migration and mobility, the ladder echoing his vision of racial uplift, and the brick house as both church and fortress.

The 3D printed reimagined policy game objects—symbols of exploitation and coded hope—face black obsidian mirrors creates a space for reflection, divination, and reorientation. Traditionally used in spiritual practices for scrying and ancestral communication, obsidian mirrors serve as portals to the unseen, allowing one to look both backward into history and forward into possibility. Their dark, reflective surfaces suggest that knowledge is not always found in clarity, but in shadow, memory, and multiplicity. Here, the viewer is invited to confront the past not as something gone, but as a continuing presence—one that can still inform vision, intuition, and resistance. Recreated casts of policy gambling tickets appear throughout the exhibition, referencing original tickets that are now extremely rare; most were casually produced, used daily, and quickly discarded, making surviving examples—especially those with meaningful number sets—difficult to recover.

Interactive teleidoscopes—optical devices that in this case, refract historical and present day images of significant sites in the Ransom story, create layered patterns. Inspired by the Ransoms’ visit to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, where they encountered the Yerkes Telescope, these devices invite viewers to consider how history is distorted, repeated, and reframed through personal and collective lenses. Looking through them, audiences encounter archival images from the Ransom family alongside present-day scenes from South Side Chicago and Wilberforce, Ohio.

Lenses—both scientific and spiritual—serve as tools for examining how the past remains embedded in the present. The teleidoscope, allows us to see backwards in time, while the black obsidian mirror, rooted in ancestral and divinatory practices, invites inward reflection and intuitive knowledge. Together, these optical instruments challenge the viewer to consider history not as distant or static, but as something actively refracted through personal vision and collective memory.

Other elements in the exhibition continue threads of time-space dialogue. 3D-printed roses recall the anonymous banker who donated fresh flowers to the Institutional Church every week—roses that were then handed out in saloons, pool halls, and street corners on the Southside of Chicago, offering beauty in the midst of despair as a way to call together community. These small gestures, like Ransom’s sermons, were both radical and restorative at the time calling people to come together.

Reverdy C. Ransom’s influence extended far beyond Chicago; he was a founding member of the Niagara Movement, the early civil rights organization led by W.E.B. Du Bois. At the movement’s 1906 meeting at Harpers Ferry, Ransom delivered his now-famous speech, The Spirit of John Brown, invoking the legacy of the abolitionist to call for moral courage, direct action, and racial justice. This powerful address positioned Ransom as a leading voice of prophetic resistance, linking the Black freedom struggle to broader histories of radical abolition. His work with Du Bois and the Niagara Movement helped lay the intellectual and organizational groundwork for the NAACP, cementing his national significance as both a preacher and civil rights pioneer.

Numbers Game also includes digitally fabricated architectural elements 3D Scanned and recreated from the Tawawa Chimney Corner House—Ransom’s family home in Wilberforce, Ohio, now being restored by the Bishop Reverdy C. and Emma S. Ransom Foundation. This structure grounds the exhibition in a spatial legacy of sanctuary, history, and forward vision, connecting the South Side of Chicago to one of the earliest centers of Black education in the United States.

Numbers Game also includes a selection of historical books that deepen the archival and narrative context of the work. These include an original Aunt Sally’s Policy Player’s Dream Book, published on Dearborn Street and used to interpret dreams into lottery numbers; The Pilgrimage of Harriet Ransom’s Son, an autobiographical text written by Reverdy C. Ransom himself; foundational histories of the AME Church; and an original souvenir book from the 1893 World’s Fair, where the Ransoms first encountered the Yerkes Telescope. Together, these texts anchor the sculptural and symbolic elements of the exhibition in lived, documented experience.

Through these varied components—sculpture, interactive media, archival documents, and metaphor—the exhibition frames Reverdy C. Ransom not only as a prominent bishop, but as a builder of moral infrastructure, someone who understood that justice required more than belief—it required buildings, coalitions, and the willingness to stand in the fire. Numbers Game insists that the past is not behind us. It is beneath our feet and reflected in our eyes—refracted, living, and unfinished.

Artist Bio:

Britt Ransom is an artist whose practice probes the lines between human, animal, and environmental relationships through sculpture and installations that are made using digital fabrication processes. Ransom’s work is systematic both in construction and in concept, often a direct reflection of observed microcosms found at the surface of our feet, developed in the web of a digital mesh, and made to explore the braided entanglements between ourselves and the other species of plants and animals with whom we share space.

Ransom is the recipient of the Heinz Endowment Creative Development award, Joan Mitchell Center Residency, Los Angeles Clean Tech Incubator (LACI) Residency, and the ZERO1 American Arts Incubator. Her work has been shown most recently at Louisiana State University (Baton Rouge), The Ogden Museum of Southern Art (New Orleans), Contemporary Art Center (New Orleans) Ohr-O’Keefe Museum (Biloxi), Honor Fraser (Los Angeles), Royale Projects (Los Angeles), and Schering Stiftung (Transmediale, Berlin).

Her writing has been published in Antennae (2024), In and Out of View: Art and the Dynamics of Circulation, Suppression, and Censorship (2021), Leonardo Journal published by MIT Press (2019), The 3D Additivist Cookbook (2016), and The Routledge Handbook on Biology in Art, Architecture, and Design, Routledge Press Essay (2016).

Ransom was the SIGGRAPH Studio and Art Gallery Chairs in 2017 and 2019. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Emma S. and Reverdy C. Ransom Foundation and Freedom to Grow Legacy Center in New Orleans. She received her BFA from The Ohio State University in Art and Technology (2008) and her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in Electronic Visualization / New Media (2011).

Photo Credits: Melissa Tran

Changing Patterns: A Review of “Numbers Game” at Co-Prosperity
Christina Nafziger, 2025

To unearth historical materials and build an archive is laborious and emotional. To sift through the fading analog photos, the crumbling first edition books, and piece together a story that has strategically been ignored or devalued is not an easy task to complete. I imagine there being feelings of only getting the partial truth, of always feeling like a piece is missing, of wanting to do the story justice by preserving and telling the story in its fullness and complexity. Add in that the story is your own family history, and it becomes even more weighted…and what you may even have on your hands is your life’s work. This is the sentiment I felt while viewing “Numbers Game” by Britt Ransom, artist and great-great-granddaughter of Reverdy C. Ransom and Emma Ransom, whose legacy of civil resistance, community work, and lasting impact locally in Chicago and nationally is on full display.

Through a constellation of historical images, documents, markers, handmade kaleidoscopes, and 3D-printed objects, Britt Ransom ushers the viewer into the past, coaxing us through the metaphorical wall that separates the history from present day, allowing us to step deeper into the archive. The artist tells Ransom's story: “[The] Ransom’s founded the Institutional Church and Social Settlement in 1896, located at 3825 Dearborn Street on Chicago’s South Side, a building that no longer exists. More than a place of worship, the church was a pioneering social experiment: one of the first Black-led religious institutions to integrate faith, education, physical health, community organizing, and social services under one roof. [...] The Institutional Church stood as a vital response to the influx of Black Southerners seeking safety and opportunity in a city that was often just as segregated and economically punishing as the Jim Crow South they had fled.”

Their story—the reach and significance of the Ransom’s work—does not stop there. It is a history that is layered, with tentacles that spread out and touch others doing aligned work, such as Hull House founder Jane Addams and criminal defense attorney Clarence Darrow—but I won’t go on. If you want to learn more about the history unearthed, archived, and explored within the exhibition, read Britt Ransom’s essay on her family’s legacy. It is worth the read, just as it is worth preserving and considering through the eyes of an artist who has inherited the task of caring for the archive.

But what does it mean to care for an archive? For Britt Ransom, it does not mean to hide the materials away in a private storage space or library. Instead, she offers them up to viewers, creating pathways to learn, to understand, and to connect. Throughout the exhibition, there is a throughline of aesthetics fabricated by the artist. Deep indigo, purple, and lavender show up on laser-cut acrylic objects and 3D printed pieces, such as “Can a Nation So Soon Forget?”, a sculpture resembling a fallen building column with the piece’s namesake present on its side. Lavender roses are set beside various historical images, while other lavender objects such as a key, a train, an oil lamp, and a bell sit on little reflective discs on purple pedestals. Displayed under glass, more lavender rose petals lay next to a historic copy of The Time-saver. A Book Which Names and Locates 5,000 Things 5,000 at the World's Fair That Visitors Should Not Fail to See. The mixture of fabricated objects and elements of the archive entangle history and the present, what has come to pass and what remains with us today. The touches of purples and reflective surfaces give way for an air of mysticism, creating space for possibility, perspective, and magical intervention.

As you might imagine with a title like “Numbers Game,” possibility and chance have a clear presence in the exhibition. 3D-printed replicas of policy tickets used in policy gambling can be seen in the show, and in the reading room located in the back of the space (curated by the artist specifically for the show), viewers can find books like Running the Numbers: Race, Police, and the History of Urban Gambling by Matthew Vaz, and Aunt Sally’s Policy Player’s Dreambook. The miniature lavender objects mentioned earlier bring to mind pieces in Monopoly, a game of chance, landlords, and gaining (and losing) wealth. For the artist, these Monopoly-like game pieces are “symbols of exploitation and coded hope.” Britt Ransom explains that policy gambling was “an underground lottery system that was thriving in the community during this time,” and her great-great-grandfather was firmly against it. You can’t win a game whose rules were designed for you to lose, and this was what Ransom and his community were up against. So how are you supposed to play a game when there’s no way to win? How can change happen when our current systems are built against communities based on race, class, ability, and more? The artist invites us to wonder—are we still stuck in the same pattern? (The answer is of course, yes.)

How can patterns be changed? This question comes to a head in Britt Ransom’s five Teleidoscopes, which are central literally and conceptually to the exhibition. Arranged in a circle, five lavender and purple sculptures, fabricated by the artist, invite the viewer to look into a small, triangle opening. Through the opening, a kaleidoscope of historical images can be seen, fragmented and brilliantly reflected into different parts. Each kaleidoscope forces a change in perspective, creating new imagery and new patterns. They encourage participation—the tool is there, and it is up to you to use it. The viewer is no passing body, but instead a fragment of a whole. Each prism of imagery can be rotated and spun, shifting the way we see, consume, and understand. We now see that history itself is fragmented and cracked, its legibility skewed by whoever has their hands on it. The act of viewing these archival images in this way reveals how easy it is for history to be distorted, warped, and reframed in a way that hides the truth of the story—a practice that continues to happen depending on the keepers of the archive. It is why so many stories are forgotten or never told, and how certain histories (often histories of BIPOC communities) are strategically left out of education systems and mainstream narratives. What Britt Ransom does so beautifully and brilliantly here is show us what someone with a deep understanding of and personal ties to a specific history can craft and create when the archive is in their hands. Yes, this exhibition is a history lesson (at least for me), but it is also a lesson in possibility, in perspective, in the archivist (or keeper of the archive) as creative force, and in the ways in which exhibition design can push the archive further into the present while creating a kaleidoscope of entries to the so-called past.

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27

to Aug 1

La Basurita

Fri, Jun 27, 2025 11:00 AM 11:00 Fri, Aug 1, 2025 12:00 PM 12:00
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La Basurita
Mariposa Divina
June 27th - August 1st, 2025

Opening Reception: Friday, June 27th, 7-10pm

A fable / crónicá:

My only childhood memory is my mother whispering in my ear, “Little basurita, one day you will die.” It turned me on. For the first time, I realized my godlike power.The secret name was revealed, and after wailing and a loud gasp, I could feel massive butterfly wings sprouting through my shoulder blades. I flew past my own desert grave, then reincarnated as MARIPOSA DIVINA, a transexual in a windy city far from home. My new life was no paradise, but I made friends with the serpent women, and we made a protective pact to watch each others’ backs and crochet our broken hearts together.

[Mariposa’s poem of El Espejo:The Mirror, from when I was nine] Dec, 30, 2005

Con el espejo veo mi rostro

Y el espejo me cuida, no otro

Con el yo voy a estar

Y alli me voy a quedar

Con el veo cosas maravillosas

Fantasía, logros , y mariposas

Preparare mi veliz

Para ir con él y ser feliz

Mi espejo se llama miguel

Y no me separare de el

In the mirror I see my face

Only the mirror takes care of me, no one else

I will be with him

And that's where I’ll stay

With him I see wonderful things

Fantasies, realisations, and butterflies

I’ve prepared my suitcase

To go with him and be happy

My mirror’s name is Miguel

And I will never separate from him

La Basurita is a tender, hopeful tragedy in three nonlinear acts, populated by glazed ceramic stransculptures and fabricated metal shapes wrapping around the landscapes of Co-Prosperity’s window exhibition spaces. The acts, in no particular order, and without giving away which window maqueta maps onto our many secret names, are as follows:

ACT ! [ Pleasuregarden / Sueño con Serpientes ]

Genderfluid fashion and giddy get-ups! Butterflies frolicking in the light of golden hour! When I close my eyes and the sun swirls on my lids, this is the dissociative parable of paradise I see. Here in the pleasuregarden I can play and flirt with the earth to my ass’s content. Writhing in pleasure, I multiply and bloom a thousand little deaths.

Act ? [Darkness / Rot / Transformation ]

I face my death over and over, then cross to the other side. Memento mori is ancient medicine.

I lean into the mirror and take a selfie with my dark shadow selves.

ACT </3 [ Exceptional Friendships / Creating stars ]

Resting in my friends’ arms: is this where home is?. Even if it’s ephemeral I can trust we will find each other again in our memories, dreams, and promises.

Visual reference points / inspiration:

Niki de Saint Phalle’s Queen Califia’s Magic Circle in California, Ana Teresa Fernandez’s border performance art in heels, Javier Tellez’s human cannonball, Helio Oiticica’s Parangolés, Asco’s walking murals, Ana Mendieta’s facial hair transplant performances, Adrian Piper’s Mything Being, Sofia Moreno’s trash gender art with needles, heels and snakes, Gloria Anzaldúa’s Sueño Con Serpientes chapter in Borderlands.

Keywords:

Archetypes, matrilineal, faerie, frolicking, paradisepleasuregardens, trash/asco, turning windows into mirrors, inner child, world-making, fables, snake women, healing, rest, composure, holding self, dissociation, imagining, nonbinary faggotry and friends, sensual play, maquetas, disposability, fashion.

Becoming Refuse: Mariposa Divina’s La Basurita

Noa Micaela Fields

In the song “La Basurita,” ranchera queen Beatriz Adriana exclaims, “Yo soy basurita / Soy basurita que arrastra el viento” (“I am trash, I am the trash blowing in the wind”). In a similar spirit, there’s a meme remix of Katy Perry’s “Fireworks” that fixates on the line, “Do you ever feel like a plastic bag,” and transforms the chorus into: “Cause baby you’re a plastic bag,” rather than “firework.” A self-deprecative reversal where the listener becomes refuse rather than incendiary spectacle. These could be two sonic epigraphs for Mariposa Divina’s window exhibition at Co-Prosperity Sphere, La Basurita, which leans into the role of trash as if it were a tarot archetype, embodying this reclamation to an extreme.

In America’s wasteful and necropolitical culture, Black and brown, working class, queer and trans people are also portrayed as and made disposable. Just as “queer” or “puta” reclaims a slur, to call oneself trash might be to celebrate possibilities in the inverted values of degeneracy, refusal, and worthlessness. Instead, embracing the dirty glamour in the everyday transforms shame into pride. To see a carousel of pleasure and wonder in one’s own quotidian actions which our society condemns, abuses, and tries to erase.

Take in the scene of a mannequin in the window styled in a trash bag halter dress: glistening and form-fitting, a Cinderella-worthy transformation, like Stephen Varble’s gender subversive “trash couture,” which incorporated eclectic found rubbish like milk cartons into other-worldly drag costumes for street art performances. Divina’s dress is displayed in the window as if outside a boutique and not hidden in the shadows, willing any passerby to stop in awe and desire.

Divina reminds us we are surrounded by a plethora of waste available for us to repurpose as a vehicle for self-expression if we exercise a little resourcefulness—like Arte Povera (“poor art”), drawing on whatever’s readily available. Art and poetry can consecrate these materials as portals, highlighting the refined visions they offer. Whole worlds, treasure where others see only trash. I think of the baroque sentences of insurgent Chilean travesti writer Pedro Lemebel’s cronicas which spellbindingly describe quotidian lifeworlds of sex workers, mythologizing a streetwalker as “the wonder of the witching hour, a flash of mother-of-pearl catching the light in a city whorehouse.” This is no trick or illusion: just the larger than life but totally true story of us, as seen by us, told for us.

For the exhibition’s description, Divina wrote a fable that similarly exemplifies reinvention as self-mythology, finding unexpected erotic pleasure in put-downs and reminders of fatality:

My only childhood memory is my mother whispering in my ear, “Little basurita, one day you will die.” It turned me on. For the first time, I realized my godlike power. The secret name was revealed, and after wailing and a loud gasp, I could feel massive butterfly wings sprouting through my shoulder blades. I flew past my own desert grave, then reincarnated as MARIPOSA DIVINA, a transexual in a windy city far from home. My new life was no paradise, but I made friends with the serpent women, and we made a protective pact to watch each others’ backs and crochet our broken hearts together.

The fable has an arc of melodrama swinging from feelings of familial rejection to realizations of a secret name and creaturely transformation. (Isn’t melodrama widely the trashiest TV genre?) Little basurita, one day you will die: skull motifs in the show cast death’s shadow, emphasizing the life and death stakes of existing on society’s fringe in conditions of precarity and risk, all the while also functioning as a memento mori, marking time’s passing and reminding us to embrace ephemerality. Even as La Basurita holds melodrama, it is also tender and hopeful. In one serene sculpture of self-embrace, glazed grey-blue ribbons trussing serpentine braided hair echo in gentle rhythm with matching teardrops and nails, an example of style as a form of emotional fortification, a protective armor when feeling vulnerable.

Each detailed ceramic tableau begs to be seen from all angles. While this wasn’t possible for all of the sculptures in a window display, Divina shrewdly placed some of their sculptures on revolving cake platters to provide the 360° views. Get up close to take in the texture of the glaze heightening the sheen of skin and flushed cheeks, or on-point colorful genderfuck dyke fashion accessories, like a leopard print harness, fishnets, and red heels. There is also slutty, big time sensuality, as in a ceramic bust of a pair of hips, sagging jean shorts exposing the jockstrap and rampant pubic hair underneath.

The windows house three color-coordinated intermedia installations, situating the glazed ceramic transculptures alongside fabricated metalwork and fabric screen prints. There’s variety but also a satisfying rhythm in the visual vocabulary that appears across textiles and paintings with butterflies, hearts, and playful, genderfluid Spanish. I am staggered by the breadth of Divina’s talents in fashion, ceramics, metalwork, and painting separately, but even more by their vision for bringing it all together to suggest another world of possibility and transformation where other trash and misfits belong, too.

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13

to Jun 15

The Bridge Performance Incubator

Fri, Jun 13, 2025 7:30 PM 19:30 Sun, Jun 15, 2025 12:30 AM 00:30
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The Bridge Performance Incubator Showcase

June 13th & 14th | 7:30-10:30 PM

@ Co-Prosperity (3219-21 S Morgan St)

Join us for an inspiring evening of performance art, presented by ten dynamic artists who have spent the past ten weeks immersed in creative exploration at Hyde Park Art Center. This culminating showcase is the result of The Bridge Performance Incubator, a professional development program designed to spark bold ideas, nurture embodied practices, and support the creation of new work.

Through a seminar-style course, artists engaged in deep dialogue, collaboration, and experimentation—receiving critical resources and guidance to evolve their practice and bring new or developing projects to life.

This showcase celebrates their journey and the vibrant, ever-growing performance art community in Chicago.

SCHEDULE:

June 13. 7:30 - 10:30 PM

Artists: Reid Arowood, Pruthvish Dangat, Hannah Marcus, Makayla Lindsay, and Hesam Salehbeig

Saturday, June 14. 7:30 - 10:30 PM

Artists: Amari Amai, Ry Douglas // Deacon Weekend Denis, Jacquelyn Carmen Guerrero, Veronica Casado Hernández and Zach Sun

Produced by: Rosé Hernández & Sofía Gabriel

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May

2

to Jun 14

Parallel To Hell

Fri, May 2, 2025 5:00 PM 17:00 Sat, Jun 14, 2025 6:00 PM 18:00
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Parallel to Hell
Le Hien Minh
May 2nd - June 6th, 2025

Opening Reception: Friday, May 2nd, 6-9pm

Le Hien Minh, Me So Horny, 2025. Courtesy of the artist.

For her solo show at Co-Prosperity titled Parallel to Hell, Le Hien Minh presents a new body of work comprising two sculptures and a large hand-painted, site-specific text-based work. This body of work critically examines how American pop culture has impacted Vietnamese female identity. Drawing from a wide range of sources, including Hollywood films, American pop music, Vietnam War iconography, and traditional Vietnamese motifs, she weaves these elements together to create powerful objects that radiate an otherworldly aura. Le Hien Minh approaches this new work through a surrealist and metaphysical lens, blending fantasy and nightmare to create artwork that is both alluring and unsettling.

*Me So Horny*, 2025
Traditional Vietnamese handmade Dó paper, buffalo skull, ceramic mask, wood, sound.
Me So Horny is part of Le Hien Minh’s ongoing series of sculptural works reflecting on the experience of Vietnamese women in the United States, and the layered impact of American pop culture shaped by war, Orientalism, and media.
The title references a phrase widely known in American pop culture, first spoken by a Vietnamese sex worker character in Full Metal Jacket and later repurposed in a 1990’s hip-hop song. Here, Minh reclaims and transforms this charged phrase through a symbolic fusion of materials: a buffalo skull, an animal of spiritual and cultural significance in Vietnam, is combined with the face of an Asian woman and an oversized strand of prayer beads. In its original iteration, a sound component further re-contextualizes the phrase into a meditative, monk-like chant, subverting its original meaning. The result is a haunting and powerful work that oscillates between the sacred and the profane.
(Please note: the sound element is not included in this installation at Co-Prosperity due to spatial limitations.)

*One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you*, 2025
Traditional Vietnamese handmade Dó paper, thigh-high boots, bioplastic, wood.
Continuing her exploration of the Vietnamese female experience in the United States, the piece interrogates how American pop culture, shaped by war, fantasy, and media stereotypes, has impacted popular perception.
The title references a lyric from Nancy Sinatra’s 1966 hit, famously featured in Full Metal Jacket during a scene depicting a Vietnamese sex worker interacting with American soldiers during the Vietnam war. Central to the work are thigh-high boots, associated with sex work, featuring horn-like forms evoking the buffalo, an animal deeply rooted in Vietnamese cultural symbolism. Suspended in front are large ornamental, asian symbolic charms, including the lotus, Vietnam’s national flower.
Through this layered visual language, Minh transforms loaded cultural references into symbols of agency, and defiance.

Untitled, Site-specific text-based work, 2025

Traditional Vietnamese handmade Dó paper, acrylic paint.

For the gallery’s large front window, Le Hien Minh applies traditional Vietnamese handmade Dó paper to cover the entire surface. Across it, she hand-paints a striking sentence in soft pastel pink: "One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you." Lifted from Nancy Sinatra’s iconic song and stripped of its original pop context, the phrase takes on a darker, more ominous tone. In this new setting, the words evoke the brute force of marching armies and the trauma of war. The delicate materiality of the paper contrasts with the threatening undertone of the text, amplifying the tension between fragility and power.

Text written by Gregory Jewett. Photo(s) by Laurel Hauge. Courtesy for the Artist and Co-Prosperity.

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May

2

to Jun 14

How To See In The Dark

Fri, May 2, 2025 5:00 PM 17:00 Sat, Jun 14, 2025 6:00 PM 18:00
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How To See In The Dark
Eva Davidova, Dakota Gearhart, Garrett Laroy Johnson, Alberto Ortega-Trejo
May 2nd - June 6th, 2025

Opening Reception: Friday, May 2nd, 6-9pm

Workshop: Muindi Fanuel Muindi

Organized by Center for Concrete and Abstract Machines

Co-Prosperity Gallery is pleased to present How to See in the Dark, a group exhibition organized by CCAM, the Center for Concrete and Abstract Machines, opening on May 2nd. Artists Eva Davidova (NYC), Dakota Gearhart (NYC), Garrett Laroy Johnson (Chicago), and Alberto Ortega-Trejo (Chicago) respond to the unspoken headline of our contemporary moment: the d*rk enlightenment espoused by reactionary technopriests is upon us. How to understand this moment as artists, organizers, educators, workers, dreamers? A line from cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster often quoted by Chicago activist-artist stalwart Brian Holmes gives the show its wings: “If you want to see, learn how to act.”

Of course, the quippy “how to” offers no silver bullets, but How to See in the Dark does intend to mobilize the American can-do spirit. Emphasis on spirit. The viewer is asked to “stay with the weirder" to confront ways of thinking and acting we might have dismissed, a call to break open old convictions, and a challenge to step beyond closed systems of thinking, seeing, and acting. It is a meditation on the paradox of our times, an abandonment of purity politics. The exhibition wrestles with the cycles of history and nature, from witch hunts and genocides to tectonic shifts and cosmic phenomena. In doing so, the show challenges the viewer to reckon with the current moment on more-than-human time-scales, to accept that as a best case scenario, we find ourselves experiencing the solstice of a thousand years of darkness. Through this exhibition, the artist advocates for an intergenerational project rooted in revolutionary optimism, a collective shift towards a cyber-ecological spirituality (eco-techno-theo practices) that confronts darkness head-on without the promise of salvation. An Infopoetics workshop featuring scholar Muindi Fanuel Muindi (Chicago) is offered on Saturday, May 24th. A symposium with panels and more is offered on Sunday, June 1st.

How To See in the Dark: Closing Activations

June 1st @ Co-Prosperity

3219-21 S Morgan St, Chicago, IL 60608

Symposium: 11:00AM - 3:00PM

How to See in the Dark's symposium gathers artists, scholars, and activist's to refract the show's theme through their various socially engaged, activist, and philosophical practices: music, dance, image making, writing and computational media.

Panel 1: Signs, Signals, and Sigils

Hosted by: Eva Davidova, Grace Grace Grace & Muindi Fanuel Muindi

11:00AM - 12:30PM

while (experience == actual){

signified = signifying;

signifying = signified;

}
Processual aesthetic experience is born out of the ab- and adduction of sociopsychical ensembles. Signs, thought to be tethered inextricably to the thing they symbolize, are mutated at the molecular level by their co-imbricated perception and action. The signpost for the thing underway becomes the sign itself, signals sigilize becoming. This panel circumscribes aesthetic experience's "underway-ness", and follows its pointers to a literally magical nexus of technics, religion, scientific articulation, poiesis, that beckons ecosophic spiritual practices for a politics yet-to-come.

Panel 2: Footwork, Rootwork, and Wakework

Hosted by: Anna Martine Whitehead, Angel Bat Dawid, Thomas Defrantz, jada-amina

1:00PM - 3:00PM

Black life has never depended on the promise of light. Ever since the barracoon, the exit through the Door of No Return, the hold of the ship, Black people have learned to navigate the dark—not as deficit, but as depth—because the dual pressures of fungibility and fugitivity demand it. This panel explores how, in evading the perils of the searchlight, flashlight, spotlight, and limelight, Black survival has involved profound creativity in the fields of rhythm, ritual, and remembrance.

Closing Reception: 7PM - 10PM

Closing Performances: 8PM - 9PM

Following the symposium, How to See in the Dark's closing reception will run from 7-10 Sunday June 1. At 8:30, we will host a dynamic couplet of performances by artists Eva Davidova, Odette Stout, and Grace Grace Grace that works through the project's thematic emphasis on the immanence of vision.

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Feb

28

to Apr 11

The possibility of an expanse and what interrupts it

Fri, Feb 28, 2025 6:00 PM 18:00 Fri, Apr 11, 2025 12:00 AM 00:00
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The possibility of an expanse and what interrupts it
Mariel Harari
February 28–April 11, 2025

Opening Reception: February 28, 6:00–9:00pm

The possibility of an expanse and what interrupts it is a site specific window installation featuring new work by Mariel Harari opening on February 28 through April 11 at Co-prosperity. The work explores how human made systems impact organic beings. Physically, focusing on the way plants grow in relation to sidewalks, buildings and pollutants. Emotionally, investigating how memory can both reinforce imposed values and hierarchies, or be drawn on to untangle them.

The installation consists of fiber, sculpture, drawing, photo and video. A large blue textile presents something uncontained, images of an arm, thumb, bricks and sidewalk squares are stitched on to interrupt the blue. Hybrid sculptures present combinations of trees growing into buildings, self portraiture and limbs emerging from a cocoon of drawn memories, and plants growing from cracks in cement. The video strings together footage from Harari’s walks around Chicago, observing how and where plants contend with imposed environment, the encompassing nature of sky, and what can be learned from openness and softening contrived delineations.

The possibility of an expanse and what interrupts it

Essay

By Christina Nafziger

Living in Chicago, you become both hyper-aware and oblivious to the architecture you move through. The architecture of this city pushes and pulls you in different directions, it forces you down certain paths while deterring you from others. Sidewalks, rows of houses, public parks, fences, and brick walls alter our path and influence our choices. Turn right and take the shady path under a row of trees, or turn left and avoid the uneven and cracked concrete? Through a mixture of planned and unplanned places and paths, our experience moving within this city is inevitably influenced by these structures. Whether we notice them or not, architectural elements are there, affecting our choices.

These are the details that artist Mariel Harari draws out in her exhibition The possibility of an expanse and what interrupts it at Co-Prosperity. Through photography, textiles, video, and mixed media installations, Harari offers us a glimpse of a crack in a sidewalk, a tree that has grown bent to one side to avoid a wall, a column of bricks that was once perhaps a part of a building. Each piece draws attention to the details in the architecture around us that often go unseen yet continuously change and shape the way we engage with the world around us.

What if architecture wasn’t just the buildings we see on our way to our favorite local haunt? Can our body be an architecture, one that is made up of moments and memories instead of bricks and concrete? This is the thread that Harari is pulling at as she unravels what shapes us. Like the tree that grows at an angle in order to catch the sun, the body acts and reacts based on our surroundings. Do we take the path of least resistance, or do we risk it all and choose to push through the crack in the pavement for a chance to thrive?

In The possibility of an expanse and what interrupts it, Harari leans into this connection between the body and architecture by not only inserting her likeness into the work, but also through the inclusion of small, almost hidden objects ripe with intimacy. In her piece that is the exhibition’s namesake, a wall of hand painted fabric cascades from the ceiling in mostly shades of blue. In the top center, the artist has sewn a self-portrait originally drawn in pencil. Surrounding the portrait are various patches sewn onto the fabric. In the middle of the piece, this patchwork creates the shape of a forearm and thumb. Within The possibility of an expanse and what interrupts it, just as throughout the exhibition, the viewer can find references to the human body: a leg, a limb, a foot, a face. But what is hidden quite literally underneath the surface of this piece are small parts of the artist herself. Locks of Harari’s hair can be found sewn into this large fabric piece, as well as the artist’s baby teeth. The body is fractured, pulled apart, and sewn back together through Harari’s own hand.

Another materially ambitious piece is Tree, which beautifully blends hand painted cotton, ink, wood, color pencil, wax pastel, inkjet on silk, and more to form an installation that, like The possibility of an expanse and what interrupts it, has a quality of being fractured and mended. Emphasizing our surrounding environment rather than the body, Tree is both familiar and alien. Yes, it is recognizable as a tree, but the tree sports colors that don’t match with our reality. The branches, too, are representational, but a large, slightly opaque photo of a treetop next to a building creates a stand-in for this section of the tree. The artist cleverly plays with different opacities and materials in a way that fuses together fantasy and reality, forming an aesthetic that draws our attention to the tiny details in the environment that holds us—whether that be the architecture of our surroundings or the architecture of our bodies.

This oscillation between physical architecture and the body, between elements like bricks and limbs, comes to a head in Harari’s piece Cocoon Baby 2 (Feral). Hanging from the ceiling, this mixed-media piece has the head of a human (the artist’s self portrait) but with body parts that do not completely match the human-like features. Cocoon Baby’s limbs seem to be somewhat out of place, if they are not missing completely. Her torso seems to be opening up, as if we have caught her mid-transformation: the breaking of the cocoon. Elements of our surroundings can be seen on her body: a drawing of a brick column on her stomach, tree branches that sprout from her arms. Like each person’s identity, elements of the environment have found its way onto and into Cocoon Baby, causing her to bend, mold, and mutate into different shapes. However, there is an element of hope. Even while holding elements of her environment, even while containing her experiences and memories, Cocoon Baby is opening up. She is finding a way to live, to thrive, to transform into something beautiful under the circumstances, despite the systems she lives within. Like the weed that flourishes in the smallest of openings, Cocoon Baby finds a way.

Nearby is Brick Memory Brick; a small, brick-like sculpture made of slightly transparent biomaterial. We can almost see what’s inside, what memory this brick holds. For me, witnessing this piece was a grounding moment in the exhibition. We are all built brick-by-brick from the moments that made us. We are created from memories that influence how we move through the world, just as architecture shapes the way we choose our path. Will you be like this brick, static, unmoving, and unyielding until it crumbles? Or will we be like Cocoon Baby 2 (Feral), and break ourselves open? As the artist puts it, there is “possibility [in] an expanse.” Perhaps this crack in the sidewalk—this moment of rupture, this breaking open—is the chance we need to open up and transform, to flourish in spite of everything.

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Feb

28

to Apr 11

BAUBO UNEARTHED: A Trove of Mystery, Laughter in the Face of Grief, A Conjuring

Fri, Feb 28, 2025 6:00 PM 18:00 Fri, Apr 11, 2025 12:00 AM 00:00
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BAUBO UNEARTHED:
A Trove of Mystery
Laughter in the Face of Grief
A Conjuring
February 28–April 11, 2025

Opening Reception: February 28, 6:00–9:00pm

Co-Prosperity presents BAUBO UNEARTHED, a celebration of joyful resistance in the face of despair and oppression. The exhibition is a tribute to the ancient figure Baubo, whose bawdy humor served as a catalyst for transformation, breaking the grief of the goddess Demeter and restoring the cycles of life, as held in the lore of the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Curated by Stephany Colunga, BAUBO UNEARTHED is presented as a museum-like display of mythic and historical narratives and artifacts alongside a contemporary art showcase. It features a diverse group of inter/national artists united by the spirit of Baubo, directly and by way of embodiment. Through sculpture, painting, performance, jewelry, video, and sound installation, the works (re)introduce this elusive figure, aiming to transmute collective grief, foster radical empathy, and ignite defiance through laughter.

Baubo emerges as a symbol of unapologetic apotropaic joy, feminine rage, queer love, and the power of vulnerability, urging viewers to dismantle despair, engage with their suffering, and envision nourishing, interconnected futures. The exhibition emphasizes reclaiming agency and rekindling curiosity, wonder, and hope as acts of rebellion against oppressive systems.

BAUBO UNEARTHED, Stephany Colunga’s curatorial debut, showcases work from around the world, gathering together artists in various stages of their lives and careers. This is a culmination of years of self-supported research—including a trip to the sanctuary of Demeter in Priene in southern Turkey where the Baubo votives were discovered, along with a visit to the Altes Museum in Berlin where the figurines reside. Colunga’s own contributions to the show include metal-work, ceramics, video, and installation, an evolution and unfolding of the sensitive, intuitive work she is known for.

A special evening of performances will take place on the Spring equinox, March 21st, from 7:00 to 10:00pm. These performances tie the exhibition to the Eleusinian Mysteries, which mark the return of Persephone from Hades and the renewal of life. This conjuring of spring will feature performances by Alicia McDaid (McDazzler), Karly Bergmann, Chicago band SHRIFT, and more.

Contributing artists:
Crackhead Barney
KS Brewer
Amanda Joy Calobrisi
Stephany Colunga
Baylen Levore
Yolanda McLellan
Alicia McDaid
Helen Welton

**Celebrate the Spring Equinox on March 21 from 6:30–10:00PM at Co-Prosperity**
As part of our current exhibition **BAUBO UNEARTHED**, we are hosting a special evening of performances on the **Spring Equinox**! These performances tie the exhibition to the Eleusinian Mysteries, which mark the return of Persephone from Hades and the renewal of life. This conjuring of Spring will feature performances by **Alicia McDaid aka McDazzler (Philly/L.A.), Karly Bergmann (Mnpls), Bakantez, Shrift, and Xina Xurner (L.A.)**. Come be renewed and energized by the spirit of Baubo and the connecting ritual of laughter and dance.
Doors open at 6:30pm to view the exhibition, performances start at 7:30pm.
**ABOUT THE PERFORMERS:**
**Xina Xurner** is an experimental music/performance collaboration between Marvin Astorga and Young Joon Kwak, whose cathartic performances combine DIY and power electronics, mutated vocals, and bad drag to expand ideas about queer and trans bodies. Their music combines a variety of genres (including happy hardcore, industrial, drone metal, and techno-opera), in order to create sadical and sexperimental noise-diva-dance anthems that evoke a sense of death, decay, and transformation.
It has been over a decade since they returned to play in their old home of Chicago! A special treat. Xina Xurner will make you sweat!
**McDazzler Alicia McDaid** is a performance/video artist, painter, and actress whose work depicts a shattering of the self into infinite personas. She contracted 2 STDs when she lost her virginity in Trenton, New Jersey in 1990 and recently starred in the film Trash The Musical by Loretta Fahrenholz. This will be Alicia's debut performance in Chicago. She will be performing a mix of her characters. Stephany considers her to be a modern day Baubo in the flesh! Not to be missed!
**Bakantez** formed in 2022 as the solo electronic project of Hanna Elliott, former member of the proto-Industrial duo HOGG. The project's name plays off of the word Bacchantes, the female followers of Dionysus who inspired his ecstatic rites. Over the years of creative development, Hanna has retained consistent themes of libidinal physicality, tactility, and tumultuous introspection. Her project Bakantez sonically consists of electro-acoustic sampling, sequencing, synthesis, and processed vocals reminiscent of sound collage, minimal wave, and noise.
**Shrift** Uniting the smooth bass of toxic nerd Jill Lloyd Flanagan (Forced into Femininity, Cb Radio Gorgeous), the vocals of local funnyman Carly Wicks (Dog Problem), electrical saxophone by the large-mitted Sonia Monet (Nakamura Lock) and the punishing beats of museum replicator Janice Lim (Gula Gila) into a semi-coherent sound; **Shrift** is the band your mom would favorite on SoundCloud and add to her Mixcloud favorites. Whether you’re a creator, a disruptor, or just ruining the city for fun, get ready to nod your head vigorously to their up-tempo sound.
**Karly Gesine Bergmann**'s one-person show, Baubo, is at the intersection of puppetry, mask, and clown. The performance channels sleepover energy and the kind of late-night silliness that comes with it, and invites the audience to participate in the ritual summoning of the goddess. If successful, everyone will leave with the goddess' protective blessing.
**Karly Gesine Bergmann** is a performer and maker who conducts experiments in the science of enchantment—often through puppetry, but always through handmade, object-based work. Her work often centers around endings, death, and what we choose to preserve. Also, camel toes. Her article "Babuo: A Cross-Disciplinary Approach to a Vagina Puppet" is published in Puppetry International, and her monthly newsletter, Pussy Clown, is on Substack. Her puppetry work has been seen on stages in Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Italy. She has toured nationally as a performer and puppeteer with the emmy-nominated Manual Cinema, was a recipient of the Edes Prize for Emerging Artists, and firmly believes that silliness is sacred.

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“Monster, I give you my spirit, my flesh and my memories,” Keng’s voice says.

6

to Jan 17

FRUIT COCKTAIL CAKE

Fri, Dec 6, 2024 5:00 PM 17:00 Fri, Jan 17, 2025 6:00 PM 18:00
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FRUIT COCKTAIL CAKE
Andy Nicholas Li
December 6, 2024 - January 17, 2025

Co-Prosperity presents FRUIT COCKTAIL CAKE, the first solo exhibition of Chicago artist Andy Nicholas Li.

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.

Artist Bio
Andy Nicholas Li is an artist and educator based in Chicago, IL and Ithaca, NY. Andy works with drawing, installation, fiction, and food to conjure the contradictions of identity and intimacy. Symbols and materials in Andy’s work bear the sticky construction of a person, between Cantonese, Midwestern, queer, lonely, childish, grown.

Andy’s work has been exhibited at ACRE Projects, the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, and Hyde Park Art Center, among others. Collaborative projects have appeared at places like AS220, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the Singapore Art Book Fair. Andy’s short story, “Prologue to the Death of Julian,” was published in The Notre Dame Review. Some of Andy’s paintings are featured in New American Paintings, Midwest #167. Andy has also spent time at residencies and workshops at ACRE, the Bridge Program at Hyde Park Art Center, Ox-Bow School of Art, Ragdale, and the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University.

From 2019-2023 Andy worked at Marwen, developing exhibitions and programs for alumni and young artists in Chicago. Andy holds a BA from Brown University, and is an MFA candidate in Art at Cornell University.

Exhibition Review
and the knife used to feed us by Joelle Mercedes

and the knife used to feed us

The lore or etymology of “cocktail” points us in many directions. The one I find the most curious describes the act of gingering, or to feague a horse. This practice requires inserting an irritant, such as ginger, into the anus of a horse, which encourages the animal to carry its tail high and move in a more buoyant manner.

Image Credit: Eugene I-Peng Tang

The anus is an erogenous zone
The anus is the anchor
The anus is a multitude of nerves

Pin the tail on the donkey
Tip over the cow
Make me your dog

Image Credit: Joelle Mercedes

smear slice spit spurious
spice stitch spoon sticky
skull sponge scar slime
spirit scaffold suspension
saliva sex spine sorbet
soufflé sufferable sit soil

Window One:
The black curtain provides a backdrop for five drawings—a colorful house on a teal submerging surface, ghosts sitting on a dining room table, a bedroom with a charcoal-stained mattress, a face with a forearm or an insect hovering over it with a belt, and an adolescent in a cheerful pose, wearing knee high socks, and a flaccid penis.

The background installation uses white strips to render a triangular roof alongside a large circular image that reminds me of a fruit cocktail cake, and modular building toys designed for toddlers. The strips also illustrate a centipede, hungry caterpillar-like intestine, that bleeds into the foreground.

This window is a feast of illusions. The foreground uses watercolor strips to construct other characters by a table. One figure is in a seated position as a child would be when opening their birthday gifts. Another figure with a muscular body holds a knife, and cuts open a colorful multi-tiered cake. All the distinct elements begin to integrate, transmuting the scenes of domesticity into a garden filled with ouroboros and a ring of fire made of confetti. The sun and the penetrating force of the streetlights activate this carnival childhood of desire and night terror.

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***Countersexual Manifesto by Paul B. Preciado, translated by Kevin Gerry Dunn***

manipulate my material manipulate my material manipulate my material
manipulate my material manipulate my material manipulate my material
manipulate my material manipulate my material manipulate my material
manipulate my material manipulate my material manipulate my material
manipulate my material manipulate my material manipulate my material
manipulate my material manipulate my material manipulate my material
manipulate my material manipulate my material manipulate my material
manipulate my material manipulate my material manipulate my material
manipulate my material manipulate my material manipulate my material
manipulate my material manipulate my material manipulate my material
manipulate my material manipulate my material manipulate my material
manipulate my material manipulate my material manipulate my material
manipulate my material manipulate my material manipulate my material
manipulate my material manipulate my material manipulate my material
manipulate my material manipulate my material manipulate my material
manipulate my material manipulate my material manipulate my material
manipulate my material manipulate my material manipulate my material
manipulate my material manipulate my material manipulate my material
manipulate my material manipulate my material manipulate my material
manipulate my material manipulate my material manipulate my material
manipulate my material manipulate my material manipulate my material
manipulate my material manipulate my material manipulate my material
manipulate my material manipulate my material manipulate my material

Window Three:
This beauty of a beast is phenotypically an intersection between the PBS children's animated series Arthur, a wild coyote starting back, and the Leather Daddy archetype. This figure is alluring yet unsettling, like one encountered in a Grimm Brothers’ fairytale. Tread lightly as the charms of cannibalism radiate throughout this window. The sweaty horse awaits its procedure against the barn house and prairie.

Andy is my sister in rigor. I asked him to help me compose a reading list to guide the viewer through all the show's idiosyncrasies.

● Playing and Reality & The Squiggle Game by D.W. Winnicott
● Knots by R.D. Laing
● “In the Name of Bobby” by Julio Cortázar
● Clown: The Physical Comedian by Joe Dieffenbacher
● Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia by Avgi Saketopoulou (borrowed from
Zachary Nicol’s expansive library)
● The Art of Cruelty by Maggie Nelson
● How to Love by Thich Nhat Hanh, a short essay on “Channeling Sexual Energy”

Andy and I love continuous research: reading, watching YouTube videos, attending film festivals, embodied practices, listening to DJ mixes, describing unique textures in food and humor, and frequently seeking quietude. We are two Tasmanian devils born during the most erotic time of the year. We share the planet Venus as our astrological natal chart ruler. We are united by red and a meticulous variety of particularities. We met in the driftless region of the Midwest at an art residency. We became close along the prairie, the stream, the river, the mosquitoes, and the starlight skies.

Image Credit: Andy Li

I first encountered the work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul at Specialty Video & DVD in Andersonville. The store is no longer open but when I lived on the North Side ten years ago it was fundamental to my growth as an artist and filmmaker. They carried experimental porn, the Criterion Collection, B movies, cult classics, films from auteur directors, films that blurred the lines of genre, and so much more. I borrowed Tropical Malady on DVD and watched it on the old television in my carpeted living room. I was alone watching the film, overwhelmed by the saturated darkness, the bubbly tenderness between Keng and Tong, the titillating waltz/haunt between tiger and soldier, the movie theater scene, the licking of the knuckles, and all the spiritual transfiguration. The film brought my carnal desires to the foreground, and revealed deep entanglements between humans and animals. The human submits to the animal, and the animal submits to the human.

Andy and I connect deeply through our love of Weerasethakul. His slow cinema gives us a playground where we can come to our bodies, wild desires, and braininess with devotion. The work of the exhibition is slow cinema.

The quotidian, silence, repetition, nothingness, long takes, landscape, stillness, little dialogue, meditative quality.

Now I want us to taste the Fruit Cocktail Cake. Cut yourself a slice. As you enter the fluffy cake into your mouth, picture your adolescence. The squishiness of your brain is still developing, this moist substance, this ripe fruit.

Squiggle Wrestle

Performance with Andy Nicholas Li and Zachary Nicol

Thursday January 16, 2025 at 7pm

Andy Nicholas Li and Zachary Nicol will perform a "squiggle wrestle" in the windows of Co-Prosperity, as a closing event to Andy's exhibition, FRUIT COCKTAIL CAKE. This performance spins the playful methods of D.W. Winnicott's squiggle game in child therapy, where Winnicott and the child draw intuitive squiggles and respond to each other by completing the drawing into creatures and symbols. Andy and Zachary will explore physical play with instinct and reaction, drawing from wrestling, cuddling, and dance improv.

Hot tea will be available for audience members. Please feel free to bring your own mug!

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6

to Jan 17

Entre ritos y portales

Fri, Dec 6, 2024 5:00 PM 17:00 Fri, Jan 17, 2025 6:00 PM 18:00
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Entre ritos y portales Final Activations & Closing Reception

Collective tour by the artists and curator: January 15, 7pm

Closing reception & performances: January 17, 6-9pm

Performances:

Alden Burkes and Kushala Vora, 35 gestures towards

Kat Bawdenm, Every cell in your body has a weight an expanded cinema performance exploring memory, death, and mothering.

Veronica Anne Salinas a sound assemblage using field recordings, ambient textures, and light for an embodied sonic experience.

Entre ritos y portales
Sebastian Bruno-Harris, Gabriela Estrada, Sofía Fernández Díaz, Mariana Noreña, Frank Vega, Kushala Vora, and Irene Wa.
Curated by Sofía Gabriel in collaboration with the artists.

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? They meditate 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.

Entre ritos y portales presenta viajes introspectivos, experiencias y rituales de siete artistas conectados con la naturaleza y reclamando un vínculo con la Tierra.

Abrazando lo efímero, los artistas reflexionan sobre nuestra existencia y cuestionan lo que persistirá una vez que hayamos desaparecido. Contemplando la impermanencia tanto del arte como de la vida, los artistas nos invitan a volver al origen. A emprender un retorno a la semilla, al vientre materno, a oponernos a los sistemas que nos han deshumanizado y desconectado de la naturaleza.

Esta exhibición explora el diálogo entre las artes visuales y la performatividad, con el cuerpo en el centro del proceso creativo y en la experiencia del público. Ya sea a través de la acción, el movimiento o la creación misma, los artistas se inspiran en el cuerpo, fundiendo su obra con una presencia encarnada que evoluciona con cada interacción.

Entre ritos y portales, nada permanece estático. Las obras están vivas, evolucionando con el tiempo: creciendo, moviéndose, expandiéndose o desapareciendo; creando un entorno para un viaje incierto.

Final Response to "Entre ritos y portales" at Co-Pro

Essay by Nicky Ni

I came to Entre ritos y portales on a sunny Saturday afternoon, jet-lagged. It had stopped snowing. I tried to stump the wetness off my shoes as I swung the door open, finding not a soul inside. The sun gleamed on the reflective surfaces of the sculptures near the windows: clayware, glass, metal. A musky, warm smell imbued the stillness, the kind of welcoming serenity found in a temple.

The show is eventful at every sight level. Some pieces blossom ankle-high, while others are suspended from the ceiling. Mariana Noreña G’s horizontal line on the ground, made of quinoa seeds, ash, and coil, that stretches across the entrance—as though demarcating a beginning—has dissipated, leaving only the label stubbornly stuck to the wall. Next to it, Gabriela Estrada performs through a video titled God Has a Mother (2024). The artist, whose bust is cropped just beneath her eyes by the camera frame, is covered with red clay. She speaks about mothers and daughters, vigorously, passionately; she chants female vitality and resilience into an incantation as she shovels handfuls of clay into her mouth and chews on them with rigor.

Further down, Noreña’s other piece The House That Lives Within Me (2023) opens up like a parasol in mid-air, a human-size lampshade that hovers over a round, elevated island concentric to the larger basin within which it sits. To activate this piece is to stand on the island that can only hold one pair of feet and observe around: looking up, lit by natural light, is the dazzling inner shade made of pulped corn husks; down below, water from Lake Michigan has etched the bottom and sides of the steel basin with turquoise, cyan, and ochre.

Other suspended objects are a lot more sensitive, in a way as though they knew they were hanging and swinging. Irene Wa.’s Flower crate (2024) by the entrance, like a halved cacao fruit bleeding in raspberry red, undulates to the small current of air I have brought inside. It responds to my presence.

Sofía Fernández Diáz’s monumental installation Umbral (2024) transforms the enclosed low-ceiling nook beneath the mezzanine level into an altar. Two rows of long strips of ink-steeped paper, earthy, streaky, each about a foot wide, hang from the ceiling, angled perpendicular to the side of the wall. The paper is coated with beeswax. Its dizzying smell punctures the space—a pungent scent of protection. I wasn’t sure what the beaded wood stick that hung from the wall at the end of this pathway signified, nor could I unravel the riddles about those individual red beans, like little offerings, cradled by minuscule baskets pinned to the wall, but they brought me curious bits of delight.

“The works are alive, evolving over time—growing, moving, expanding, or disappearing—creating an environment for an uncertain journey,” curator Sofía Gabriel states in the opening text. This statement is most apt for Diáz’s Azul (2024), which has a whole universe spilled over a large piece of watercolor paper laid out on a low platform. A row of dainty jars and small bottles contain electric-blue ink of various shades are conjured from oxidized copper. At the opening, and perhaps throughout the show, whatever has been poured and layered on top of the paper has now formed a geography of wonder. Mounds of crystals have accumulated, like mushroom clouds frozen in time; puddles of liquids have turned into salty lakes, their mesmerizing abyssal blue dotted by crystallizing whitecaps.

This azure and cerulean converse with the energetic splashes of paint on Frank Vega’s vertical canvases hinged together to stand like a folding screen. This “screen” is part of a pair with one on each side of the gallery. In front of the other set, a small low table displays what looks like ceramic snakeskin fragments. They bear the same scaly patterns as that which has been impressed into the painted surface—as though they slithered across the canvas. But they are much thicker than skin, seeming almost armature-like where they are layered. These pieces, some only partially glazed with the colors of molasses and coffee, fill a woven basket in the corner of the table and lay loose on the tabletop. Three ouroboros have been disrupted by a pair of mallets. I imagine how Frank used the mallets to break the circles, shattering eternity into small pieces.

Fragmentation is celebrated in this show. It sprawls symmetrically like a skeletal Rorschach inkblot in Irene Wa.’s wall-based The Remains (2024). It is also sweetly hinted at in Kushala Vora’s Everything carries me to you (2024), a tiled ceramic relief that is expressive and attentive to details like one of Ruth Duckworth’s. The seam between two tiles cuts right through a hand, separating the reach from its intention. The assemblage made by Sebastian Bruno-Harris, titled Bracket Axon Salad Knots (2024), is a deconstructed cabinet of curiosity that unfolds into myriad fragmented memory objects: vines and vessels, a newel post, easels and ladders, hooks and sconces—they are the ornaments of gravity, the temptations of precarity. One small photograph, discretely attached to a door, shows a tunnel where stalactites have grown from the ceiling. The cave formations would be an appropriate metaphor for Entre ritos y portales, a collection of works that exemplify the work of time by showcasing process, growth, decay, and the love and respect the artists all share for the materials they use and see as sacred.

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2024 Let's Co-Prosper Fundraiser and Online Auction

Oct

23

to Nov 3

2024 Let's Co-Prosper Fundraiser and Online Auction

Wed, Oct 23, 2024 6:00 PM 18:00 Sun, Nov 3, 2024 1:59 AM 01:59
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Join us and support Public Media Institute and our community's efforts to make Chicago's cultural, independent media, and movement work more meaningful, powerful and prosperous than ever. Join us Wednesday, October 23rd from 6:00 PM - 10:30 PM at Co-Prosperity, 3219 S. Morgan Street. There will be live music, dinner, and an auction with over 30 artworks.

Use the buttons below to get your general admission tickets ($125) or to view our online auction!
Student or artist? Click the button below to get your discounted tickets! ($60)

Tickets

ONLINE AUCTION

STUDENT + ARTIST TICKETS

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More artworks are coming soon!

All tickets include:
🍽️ Dinner Dozzy's Grill – Experience the bold, authentic flavors of West African cuisine, thoughtfully crafted to create a one-of-a-kind cultural dining experience. Let Dozzy’s Grill take you on a culinary journey with their signature dishes and warm, radical hospitality. Indulge your sweet tooth with desserts from Elizabeth's Cakes and Eli's Cheesecake.

🍻 Open Bar – Sip and enjoy drinks, courtesy of Marz Brewing and Jeppson's Malort.

🎤 Live Music – Groove to beats by DJ Logan Bay, Weird Lady Music, and RADIUS.

🎟️ Artwork Auction – Bid on exclusive, one-of-a-kind art pieces through our Qgiv online auction platform, and help support our cause! Pick the ticket that feels right for you. If you can’t join us in person, please consider attending one of our many free events throughout the year. Your support, in any form, is invaluable. Spread the word, and let’s continue to co-build the communities of the future—together.

Sponsors:

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Oct

4

to Oct 13

Landscapes from Under the Rubble

Fri, Oct 4, 2024 6:00 PM 18:00 Sun, Oct 13, 2024 10:00 PM 22:00
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Landscapes from Under the Rubble: Destroyed Artworks from Gaza
Curated by Linda Abdullah
Co-Prosperity, 3219 S Morgan Street, Chicago

Opening Friday, October 4, 6-10PM

Open Hours:
Saturday October 5, 12 PM - 6 PM
Wednesday October 9, 12 PM - 6 PM
Thursday October 10, 12 PM - 6 PM
Friday October 11, 12 PM - 6 PM
Saturday October 12, 10 AM - 2 PM
Sunday October 13, 12 PM - 6 PM
Monday October 14, 12 PM - 6 PM

“Landscapes from Under the Rubble” is an exhibition featuring eight Palestinian artists from Gaza. Their work exhibition encompasses work created prior to October 2023 and destroyed by the bombing, work produced by artists who were able to escape Gaza in 2024, and new works being created daily under the relentless attacks by the Israeli occupying forces.

In the face of the destruction of their homes, studios, and galleries, as well as the loss of lifetimes of work, countless artists in Gaza have been compelled to flee continuous massacres. Some artists in this show were able to escape through Rafah Crossing, while others managed to rescue their families but were unable to leave themselves. Many are currently residing in tents with their families, awaiting ceasefire, a pause in the genocide that’s just been postponed until at least after the US election.

“This is our only window to tell the world: we are still alive,” says Salem, a visual artist and professor at Alaqsa University. He began posting daily sketches on Facebook as a means of documenting diaries from a war zone. Other individuals are organizing art workshops for children and mothers as a form of respite from the daily trauma they endure.

Since 2007, Gaza has been subjected to a siege that has restricted Palestinian movement and crippled the economy, leaving a 360-kilometer square of land isolated from the rest of the world. The blockade severely limited art funding and materials, forcing Palestinian artists in Gaza to be resourceful with whatever resources they could find, often hindering their ability to attend their own exhibitions.

Since October 7, the attacks on Gaza have deliberately targeted hospitals, schools, universities, bakeries, and cultural spaces. Shababeek, a hub for the art community that housed a collection of over 20,000 works was completely destroyed by Israeli occupying forces in April 2024. Eltiqa’, Gaza’s first contemporary art space, was similarly destroyed, along with all the studios and artworks it housed. By attempting to destroy Palestinian culture, the occupation seeks to render impossible not only the reconstruction or buildings, but also the reconstruction of ways of knowing, ways of expressing.

Artists who have managed to escape Gaza are deeply traumatized by the horrors they have endured. Some have been able to reflect on their experiences, while others are paralyzed by creative block. Those who are unable to leave are living in tents, unsure if they’ll see the next day. Some use pomegranate, charcoal, tea, and hibiscus stains to leave their mark on a piece of ruled paper.

This exhibition serves as a documentation of the experiences of eight artists over the course of nearly a year of ongoing genocide. “The life of a Gazan artist is not easy, as we are often isolated from the world,” Salem elucidates. “However, art serves as a bridge between us and other people.”

Artists Bios:

Mohamed Abusal @mabusal
Born in Gaza in 1976. Although a graduate in finance and management, Abusal retrained as an artist in 2000 and attended many workshops to develop and refine his artistic skills. Abusal exhibited his work internationally in countries like France, where he has held several solo exhibitions, United States of America, United Kingdom, Australia, and United Arab Emirates. In 2005 he was awarded the Charles Aspry Prize for Contemporary Art. He is a founding member of Eltiqa’ artist collective in Gaza City. Abusal’s stoic manner and diligent approach – in style and technique – make him one of Palestine’s brightest talents.

Shareef Sarhan @shareef_sarhan
Born in 1976, Sarhan is a Palestinian artist, professional photographer, and freelance designer. He started his career in 1995 after graduating from YMCA, Gaza, Palestine with a degree in Fine Arts. Sarhan holds a diploma in arts from the University of ICS in the United States. Sarhan’s artworks have been exhibited in Ramallah, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and internationally in Jordan, United Kingdom, France, United States of America, Italy, United Arab Emirates, and Egypt. He is a founding member of the Windows from Gaza for Contemporary Art group (Shababeek) and an active member of the Association of Palestinian Artists.

RANA BATRAWI @ranabatrawi
Rana Bartrawi (b.1983, Palestine) is an established artist and an art teacher based in Gaza, Palestine. She obtained a bachelor’s degree in fine art from Al Aqsa University, Gaza, in 2007 and has since developed a fantastic catalogue of work – primarily sculptures and reliefs – drawing inspiration from Gaza’s rich cultural and archaeological heritage and recent history.

Batrawi participated in many group shows in Palestine and internationally. Batrawi remains passionate about introducing art to women and children and has conducted many sculpture workshops with support from the Palestine Cultural Fund and the AM Al Qattan Foundation. She is also a committed volunteer participating in many fairs and on art panels. In 2023, she became a jury member of the Ismail Shammout Fine Art Award, Dar al-Kalima University, Bethlehem, Palestine. She currently in residency at Collège de France pavilion.

Sohail Salem @sohail.salem
Born in Gaza in 1974, Salem is a visual artist and a professor of fine arts at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza. Salem received his B.A. in Fine Arts from Al-Aqsa University in 1999. He secured several prestigious art residencies in Jordan, Switzerland and France. Salem is a co-founder of Eltiqa' Group of Contemporary Arts where he was a supervisor of the contemporary art program GCAP. He participated in many local and international exhibitions and produced four solo exhibitions

RAED ISSA @raed.issa.art
Raed Issa is a contemporary artist born in Al Bureij refugee camp, Gaza, in 1975. Issa holds a Diploma in Computer Science from Al Aqsa University, Gaza. He is laureate of the Cité des Arts fellowship in Paris in 2011. He is a founder of the Fine Art Program of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in Gaza and a founding member of the Gaza Contemporary Art collective Eltiqa'. His art explores the themes of vulnerability, loss and bereavement of living under siege and war. He has been exhibited in Palestine, Jordan, Switzerland, Japan, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Italy, Australia, Ireland and at Documenta fifteen. Much of his art work was destroyed during the Israeli war on Gaza in 2014.

DENA MATAR @mattardena
Born in Gaza in 1985, Matar is a Palestinian artist known for her dynamic use of color and line to offer an optimistic perspective on life in Gaza. She earned her degree in Fine Art and Education from Al-Aqsa University in Gaza in 2007. Despite the profound challenges of living under siege, Matar has made significant contributions to Gaza’s artistic scene through her paintings and by mentoring young artists. She is a member of the Eltiqa’ artist collective in Gaza City and has participated in numerous local exhibitions and workshops, collaborating with organizations such as the A.M. Qattan Foundation and the French Cultural Centre. Matar’s work has gained international recognition, with exhibitions in Geneva, France, and the Mosaic Rooms in London as part of the ‘Occupied Space’ exhibition in 2008. In 2012, she was selected for an artist residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Critics have likened her vibrant and imaginative style to that of Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso, yet it remains uniquely her own.

BASEL ELMAQOSUI @basel_elmaqosui
Born in Gaza in 1971, Elmaqosui is a visual artist and freelance photographer. He is a graduate of the Arts Program in Gaza in 1995. He is a recipient of multiple awards such as: the Charles Asprey Award for Palestinian artists by A.M Qattan Foundation, the bronze price for the best photo from the Union of Arab photographers, Germany and the Oscar of Nile Culture biennale in Cairo in 2009. Elmaqosui presented his work in 7 solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group exhibitions. He worked as an art teacher and is a founding member of the collective Shababeek for Contemporary Art.

’AMERICA NEEDS TO HEAR MORE PALESTINIAN VOICES’ by Coco Picard on Chicago Reader, 2024

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Sep

13

to Oct 25

Bebesota

Fri, Sep 13, 2024 6:30 PM 18:30 Fri, Oct 25, 2024 7:30 PM 19:30
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Bebesota
September 13 - October 25, 2024
Opening Reception: September 13 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Bebesota features large silkscreen printed bandanas, custom spinner rims and gold hoop earrings. By introducing these iconic materials from the hood into a gallery setting Bebesota calls attention to the vast space between the art world and various communities of so called outsiders. Exaggerating the scale is a symbolic gesture of intervention, a way of colonizing and claiming space in the world as a queer, Latina from a barrio. The value of art rests in its ability to communicate across barriers.

Vanessa Viruet, a Chicago-based artist of Puerto Rican descent, creates large-scale works delving into complex histories rooted in textiles, including identity, heritage, gender, and class. Her art has been exhibited at the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit.Viruet has also exhibited in conjunction with Chicago Textiles Week, the Surface Design Association, and the Annual Lowrider Festival. Residencies include ACRE, Lillstreet Art Center, and the Fabric Workshop and Museum.

Viruet holds a BFA and an MA in Teaching from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She has served as an art instructor for Chicago Public Schools for ten years. She is a Lecturer in Fiber and Material Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she also works with students in the Low Residency MFA program.

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DEMOCRAZY: DNC Counter-Programming at Co-Prosperity

Aug

12

to Aug 23

DEMOCRAZY: DNC Counter-Programming at Co-Prosperity

Mon, Aug 12, 2024 5:00 PM 17:00 Fri, Aug 23, 2024 6:00 PM 18:00
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Join us for two weeks of counter-programming in the shadow of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. These events, put together by local and national artists and organizers, will include opportunities to workshop street art before the convention, gather to learn about the history that brought us here, and organize the movements of the future while the politicians make their speeches.

Radio partnerships with Pacifica, Democracy Now!, and WZRD will bring you round the clock news on WLPN Lumpen Radio and Lumpen TV, and movement workshops and panels coordinated by The Dissenters will bring leading activists and organizations from contemporary struggles against empire, the carceral state, and cop cities to engage with all of you who still care about tearing down the pig system.

Week 1: Art Builds, Workshops, Democrazy Fair, and Lumpen Magazine Launch Party!

August 12, 6 - 9 PM: Puppets For Protest Workshop with Grace Needlman

Learn how to build various types of street puppets in the tradition of Bread and Puppet.

Explore different materials and techniques for making large-scale, lightweight puppets for parades and demonstrations. Connect with other makers and activists to get your giant puppet ideas off the ground! Whether you have an idea for a puppet and need help figuring out the design or are looking for a crew to build with, this is a fun space to build skills and community.

August 13, 6 - 9 PM: The Anarchist’s Guide to Running for Office with Matt Muchowski

A workshop on how to run for local office from an anarchist perspective

August 14, 6 - 10 PM: Democracy in the Dark with Jason Lazarus

Experiment with free speech messaging at night. Prompts, materials, and food provided.

If we assume darkness, how can voices for justice become the light? This workshop invites participants to actively experiment with how we might reimagine free speech messaging at night. Prompts, physical materials, and food will be provided. We are also seeking participants who would like to join in leading the workshop by sharing kindred experiments and ideas designed specifically for darkness, please dm for more information.

August 16, 8 PM - late: Tech Noir Lumpen Launch Party ft. Bambi Kunst

Tech Noir, the nightclub featured in the first Terminator film. Live performance synth dance party, a return to the dystopian futures of the past. Look out for a performance from Bambi Kunst in wearable sculpture by O Tenzing, Democrazy Bambi Chips Themself at Tech Noir

August 17, 10 - 4 PM: Democrazy Fair: Radical Book, Zine, and Art Pop-up with Chicago Dissenters Day 1

FEATURING: Books from Pilsen Community Books, PM Press, Skunk cabbage books, Haymarket, and Other Forms. Printing for Protest by Fatherless. “Chicago ‘68'' Strategy Board Game Teach-and-Play Demo with Yoni Goldstein.

CHICAGO '68 is an antiwar wargame about revolutionary spectacle and collective action at the DNC riots of '68. Join Designer Yoni Goldstein for a live demo and teach-and-play of this upcoming historical board game!

10 AM: Art from the Heart - Art-Making ft AI-Hub

1 PM: Colonial Violence at Home and Abroad: A Public Health Issue ft. Healthcare Workers for Palestine - Chicago

3PM: Workplace Organizing for Palestine ft. Chicago Labor Network for Palestine

August 17, 7 - 10 PM: The Poet’s Platform presented by Exhibit B

Poets respond to the DNC platform with one of their own.

August 18, 10 - 4 PM: Democrazy Fair: Radical Book, Zine, and Art Fair Pop-up with Chicago Dissenters Day 2!

2:30 - 4:30 PM: Welcome to Chicago: Radical Memories, Revolutionary Horizons ft. March on the DNC Coalition, Chicago Torture Justice Center, NotMeWe, Chicago Alliance Against Racist + Political Repression. Special Guests: Laura Whitehorn, Jalil Muntaqim, David Gilbert, and Red Fawn Fallis

**Evening at Marz Brewing**

7 PM: Artcraft 4 Liberation: Community, Co-optation + Resistance presented by DJs Against Apartheid, Various Chicago DJs

FthGNC Dance Party (Marz Brewing)

Week 2: PANELS, TALKS, AND THEATER!

August 20: 10 AM - 4:30 PM: Panels with Chicago Dissenters

10 AM: Autonomous Organizer Training ft. Unity & Struggle

1 PM: StopCopCities: Domestic Warfare and Decolonization ft. StopCopCity, NDN Collective

3 PM: Undoing Border Imperialism: Migrant Defense + Mutual Aid ft. International Migrant Alliance, Chicago Mutual Aid Organizers

August 20, 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM: I Wish to Say Performance with Sheryl Oring

Twenty years ago, artist Sheryl Oring set out with a typewriter and offered people a chance to speak their minds as part of her I Wish to Say project. With this work, she sets up a public office – complete with a manual typewriter – and types people’s postcards to the U.S. president. Dressed as a 1960s secretary, she records whatever participants say. Originals are mailed to the White House and Oring keeps a carbon copy for her archive.
To date, Oring has typed 4,241 postcards, typed at hundreds of locations around the United States, from parks and town squares to college campuses and festivals. From August 19-21, she is bringing her show to Chicago to document the mood in the city during the Democratic National Convention and she’ll be at Co-Prosperity from 11:30 to 1 p.m. on Tuesday, August 20. Oring invites people to stop by and speak their minds.

August 21, 10 AM - 4:30 PM: Panels with Chicago Dissenters

10 AM: Sharpening the Tip of the Spear: Prison Abolitionism + Inside/Outside Resistance ft. In the Belly, In the Mix: Prisoner Podcast, Coalition to Decarcerate IL

1 PM: End Permanent Punishment: From Murder Registries to Death by Incarceration ft. Chicago Torture Justice Center

3 PM: US Out Of Asia Pacific ft. Nodutdol, Anakbayan, Cancel RIMPAC, International League of Peoples’ Struggle

August 21, 7:30 - 9:30 PM: '68 – a new American musical by Jamie Leo and Paul Leschen

A “sit in” concert version of the 2018 musical about the last big Chicago DNC. A festival of life. You are history, next Wednesday, August 21. Join Chicago-area activist folk and rock musicians and singer/actors in performing a sit-down reading / sing-through of '68, the new musical theater work that has been described as the ‘HAIR’ for our generation. The event is being conceived as a 1960’s “happening” —but streamed live and broadcast, as well as featured on national broadcast platforms. BYO instrument! (Sheet music and chord charts to be provided). We will self-organize to create history together. To hear a song samples + style: 68musical.com. Expect a 60+/- minute rich historical narrative that includes songs with a narrator. We ask a $10 donation to support performers, but no one will be turned away.

‘68 composer Paul Leschen is an outstanding composer, musician, and music director, and Jamie Leo (in addition to writing the book and lyrics), has directed unique, award-winning performances. Join us in honoring the history we sing and speak of and deliver a memorable experience to the audience.

August 22, 10 AM: Student Intifada: Reflections + Lessons from the Encampments presented by Chicago Dissenters ft. Direct Action 4 Palestine, SJP Chicago, Justice, Unity, & Social Transformation, Palestine Solidarity Working Group w/ Actionists from “CA”, “IL”, “MA”, “NY”, “OH”

August 22, 1 PM: Encampments, Blockades and Revolts: Strategic Reflections since Occupy presented by Chicago Dissenters ft. Escalate Network

August 22, 7:30 PM - 10:30 PM: I WANT AN AI FOR PRESIDENT by Garrett Laroy Johnson and Kristin McWharter

A new experimental theater piece about of leadership models and artificial intelligence

Please join us for a playtest of a new interactive performance "I WANT AN AI 4 PRESIDENT" developed by Garrett Laroy Johnson and Kristin McWharter. This live action role play style performance dives into the complexities of workplace leadership models and the evolving anxieties surrounding computer intelligence and the automation of labor. We hope you will join us for this intimate experience designed for small audiences. Attendance is limited, please RSVP via google form.

August 23, 10 AM - 3 PM: Breaks in the Chain: Resisting the Industrial Base of US Imperialism and the Fight to Free Palestine presented by Chicago Dissenters ft. Palestinian Youth Movement, Workers for a Free Palestine, Unity & Struggle

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lumpenradio.com + www.lumpen.tv

21

to Jul 26

Of Love: A Labor

Fri, Jun 21, 2024 6:00 PM 18:00 Fri, Jul 26, 2024 7:00 PM 19:00
Co-Prosperity (map)
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Co-Prosperity is thrilled to present Of Love: A Labor, a solo presentation of Ruth Burke’ installation in our window space. What are the textures and traces of care? How do labours of love materialize? Of Love: A Labor, a solo exhibition by the interdisciplinary artist Ruth K. Burke, attends to the tactile remnants of domestic interspecies relationships. This is not an exhibition about animals but of animals, and emerges in relation with animals. As is the habit of art history, non-human animals are all too often obscured by the powers of their own symbolism. Their transmutation into metaphor distracts us from their vibrant material lifeways that permeate earthly existence.

Burke’s practice, more broadly, interrogates how we might challenge these objectifying paradigms, and instead care-fully invite animals into artistic practice as active agents and co-producers. This is embedded within the context of agricultural animal husbandry in the American Midwest. The word husbandry derives from the Old Norse husbondi or ‘house dweller’, which evokes proximity and duration. For millennia, draft animals have lived and worked alongside humans, shaping the land, shaping bodies, shaping ethical questions of power, of labor, of kinship. Here in Illinois, the ancestral lands of native peoples including the Peoria, Illini, and Myaamia nations, draft animals also pull the heavy load of settler colonialism, as they were once instrumentalized as key tools of the colonial project. Burke is concerned with how draft animal power may be harnessed otherwise, and how oppressive human power might be shifted and softened in these domestic contexts. Through installation, performance, and large-scale earthworks created in collaboration (co-laboring) with animals and plant-life, Burke attends to how non-human agencies might partake in and sustain art-making practices for collective acts of multispecies worldbuilding.

Every installation that makes up Of Love: A Labor emerges as residue from the relational practice of living alongside animals and engaging in the labor of animal husbandry. Living on a farm in rural Illinois alongside her many companion species, including horses and a team of oxen, Ruth understands labor as a collective and interdependent process. Reflecting upon how the oxen haul countless bales of hay and straw for themselves and the horses to eat, aerate the compost broken down by a host of decomposer species, and plow, disc, and fertilize the kitchen garden, she acknowledges that: “Our work together sustains our life together.” Ruth attends to the remnants of these daily cycles of care-labor with a sculptural sensibility. Transforming ubiquitous materials and processes into relational meditations, she considers an aesthetics of interspecies care that bares an ephemeral tenderness. As Burke puts it: “I think and feel through my body when I'm working with the animals. Like the ability to measure 20 lbs of alfalfa hay without a scale, I'm trying to bring an attuned kinesthetic-haptic knowledge into the studio and making process”. On the gallery floor lies trails of scattered hay and furls of carefully coiled bailing twine and netting. The swirling, fluid arrangements echo the cyclical flow of interspecies care routines, but a closer look tells us that the threads catch, twist, and knot. The contours of care are not always smooth, they are punctuated by power, conflict, refusal, and grief. Our knotty species entanglements bind us materially and emotionally, and yet to attend to them is often complex and contradictory, and therefore requires an ethics rooted in difference.

Installed behind the main gallery window is a large-scale digitally collaged mural, which presents a durational mapping of cow licks shared between Ruth’s bovine companions known as ‘allogrooming’. Markings are produced by rough curling tongues gliding across downy hair, leaving behind undulating furrows of affection in kaleidoscopic coats – an ephemeral inscription of animal language. A layer of twine running across the photographic panels traces the shape of the ‘flight zone’; an animal handling model that demarcates a herd animal’s personal space, which if encroached upon whilst handling may cause alarm or ‘flight’. For Burke, this concept becomes a metaphor for the precariousness of relational thresholds, human and more than human, which are constantly established and re-established in the complex dance of relating. “I'm thinking about how we human animals also share flight and pressure zones in common with bovines, '' Burke says. “For both species, these thresholds are sites where we negotiate consent, pleasure, pain, and trust.” These species thresholds become particularly fragile when bodies occupy a state of discomfort or trauma, and an interspecies empathy requires care-full attention to the haptic experience that defines such bodily boundaries.

The coiling twine, and the intimate palimpsests of cow-lick-love-language, are motifs that are repeated throughout the exhibition. Repeated rituals of care. Rhythms of care. The rhythms of two young oxen chewing their cud on a video screen on the gallery wall. How we attune to non-human rhythms is at the heart of Burke’s wider practice, and Of Love: A Labor gently invites the viewer to feel into the textures and tenderness of a relational world that subtly reverberates through its materialization in the gallery space.

- Florence Fitzgerald-Allsopp

Artist Bio

Ruth Burke is an interdisciplinary artist, from and of the Midwest, who collaborates with animals in her creative practice. She is a teamster, farm laborer, professor, equestrian, and cultural worker. Straddling the practice of contemporary art and the fields of human-animal studies, and agriculture, Burke has exclusively focused on human-animal relationships in her practice since 2015. In addition to exhibition, her current focus is a series of large-scale native plant earthworks powered by animal traction.

Ruth Burke recently received the 2022 ISU University-level Creative Arts Initiative Award, which recognizes scholars with exceptional promise early in their careers, and is a 2024 Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education (SARE) Partnership Award Grantee. Burke has been a resident artist at ACRE, Detroit Community School, and was a fellow in the 2017 inaugural cohort at the Animals & Society Institute. Burke has presented her work at venues and institutions nationally and internationally, co-authored works in peer reviewed journals, created earthworks in three US states, and received numerous grants from various entities.

Ruth Burke holds a BFA from the Ohio State University, and an MFA from the University of Michigan. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Video Art in the Wonsook Kim School of Art at Illinois State University.

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In Concert with Jen de los Reyes

Fri, Jun 21, 2024 6:00 PM 18:00 Sat, Jul 27, 2024 9:00 PM 21:00
Co-Prosperity (map)
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In Concert with Jen de los Reyes: Mid-career survey exhibition and publication

The first mid-career retrospective of influential social practice artist, organizer, and educator Jen de los Reyes* Canadian-born, Ithaca, NY-based Reyes has made a concerted effort to live and make work in accordance with her principles, including pragmatic organizing practices informed by her early years in punk music communities and recent anti-corporate and anti-racist direct action

Key projects of Reyes’ include flagship social practice conference Open Engagement (2007—2019) which showcased and launched a generation of socially engaged art; community urban garden Garbage Hill Farms in Chicago’s Southwest Side; The Disappearing Birds of North America: 389 Birds on the Verge of Extinction, a multi-faceted project with 389 artists and designers; and presentations including “Matching Minorities//Doubtful Doubles” (2020), an online workshop which called out racist practices in museums and educational institutions.

This retrospective exhibition, organized by Anthony Stepter, Astria Suparak and Nick Wylie, illuminates more than twenty years of artmaking, organizing, writing, and radical teaching by Jen de los Reyes. Through careful consideration of her life and career, patterns emerge that connect Reyes’s work to broader social contexts and art movements.
On the occasion of this exhibition, Co-Prosperity has produced a three book risograph publication series contextualizing the artist’s career and impact. The publication includes essays by Sampada Aranke; René De Guzman; Tom Finkelpearl; Eliza Gregory, Mark Menjivar, and Lexa Walsh; Zoë Heyn-Jones; Lee Painter-Kim; Stephanie Parrish; and Anthony Stepter, Astria Suparak, and Nick Wylie. Publication was designed by Josh Cook and Oscar Solis.

The opening reception for the exhibition will take place on Friday June 21 from 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.

Public Programming

Class In Progress: LAND: Art, Ecology, and Environmental Activism

Saturday, June 22, 2024, 3:00 p.m.

Free admission

As part of the Pedagogies section of this exhibition, Reyes will be sharing a glimpse into her own classroom. Class In Progress: LAND: Art, Ecology, and Environmental Activism outlines the syllabus, content, motivations, and assignments from her forthcoming class. In this moment of climate collapse the relationship of art to the land has an urgent new meaning. The course surveys artist’s engagement with land from a material, historical, spiritual and political perspective.
The talk will consist of twelve micro lectures that are a portrait of the weekly progression of the semester. Attendees will leave with an in progress reading list, and draft assignments and engagements.

Artist Talk Radio Broadcast

Wednesday, June 19, 12:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.

WLPN-LP 105.5FM

Broadcasting on Lumpen Radio, tune in for an artist talk by Reyes interspersed with song selections related to the artist’s practice. The live broadcast will be archived and available for listening at the exhibition.

Dance Party

Friday, July 26, 2024, 7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

As a nod to over a decade of Open Engagement dance parties that capped off each of the annual convenings, the exhibition will close with a dance party that will bring together some of the conference’s favorite DJs.

How to Make a Scene

Saturday, July 27, 2024 3:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. at Co-Prosperity and streaming live on lumpen.tv
www.lumpen.tv

Join Jen de los Reyes and a panel of artist organizers from Chicago past and present as they discuss their projects and practices as part of a series of talks in collaboration with Art + Design Chicago.

If there's an overarching ethos to Jen de los Reyes’s art practice, it might be: how should a person be? The existential question, investigated by writer (and fellow Canadian) Sheila Heti in her 2010 novel, encompasses both life and work—the intersection where Reyes’s expansive, genre-defying practice comfortably exists. For Reyes, teaching, organizing, farming, making, and living are all of a piece; each facet of her work/life seamlessly bolsters the other areas.

In Concert With Jen de los Reyes, a mid-career retrospective lovingly curated by Anthony Stepter, Astria Suparak, and Nick Wylie in coordination with the artist, deftly illustrates Reyes’s decades-long commitment to modeling how art can serve as a catalyst for a more ethical, sustainable, caring way of life.

The earliest work on view, Daughter Mother Daughter: Joy Luck Experience, consists of the artist watching the end of the film The Joy Luck Club with her sister and mother. It’s a simple, everyday activity yet one layered with emotion; it’s personal and political, playful and deeply considered. It cleverly paves the way for the work that has followed, separated here into the themes of ecologies, pedagogies, and scene building, though it could be argued that any project could fit into each of those sections.

For The Disappearing Birds of North America: 389 Birds on the Verge of Extinction, Reyes invited 389 artists to depict one of the birds highlighted in a National Audubon Society report on the species at risk of extinction due to climate change. The renderings are installed in a vast wall collage; the beauty and diversity of the birds makes the impact of the human-made climate crisis tangible and painful. The project is accessible and action-oriented (proceeds from a planned book will go toward conservation efforts); it invited in others and is informative without being heavy-handed or overly didactic. Such is Reyes’s way.

Open Engagement, the itinerant social practice conference that Reyes founded and ran for over a decade, is depicted through conference materials and takeaways. Perhaps the artist’s best-known project, Open Engagement was where I first learned about Reyes’s work, via the 2017 justice-oriented iteration, which was headquartered at UIC. I was just beginning to write about Chicago’s art community, and Reyes was one of the first artists to make me feel that there was an exciting current of energy pulsing through the city.

Though all these projects are awe-inspiring and illustrative of Reyes’s oeuvre, it is the artist’s teaching materials that feel the most representative. According to the publication that accompanies the exhibition, Reyes knew from a young age that she wanted to be an art professor. On display are a grid of Reyes’s syllabi over the years, ranging from courses on the history of social practice to the potential of printed media to the relationship of art to land. A cursory look through the pages is like a window into Reyes’s mind. Beautifully designed and carefully crafted, the classes are rich in material while also lending considerable attention to student’s wellbeing. An ethics of care agreement urges students to “approach conflict with care” and “make as much space as you take.” One poetic class assignment requires students to view either the sunrise or sunset each day and write down their observations.

If you’ve ever had the privilege of hearing Reyes’s speak, you’ve likely noticed her intrinsic, easy ability to impart knowledge. As such, this exhibition offers an abundance of information, through past lectures, books and other reading materials, and from the aesthetic and well-designed projects. (Reyes makes social practice and sustainability look good.) To me, the biggest takeaway of the artist’s work is her generosity. Through her teaching, community building, and small-scale, big-impact farming, Reyes models a holistic way of working and living that is more just, more caring, more beautiful. Like the best social practice art, Jen de los Reyes makes work that remakes the everyday; her “art is the forgetting of art.” Or, as artist Sister Corita Kent—one of Reyes’s lodestars put it, “The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all the time who eventually catch on to things.” Through Reyes’s unflagging work ethic, she’s inviting us to catch on.

-Kerry Cardoza

Artist's Bio:

Jen de los Reyes, born in Winnipeg, Canada, is an artist, educator, writer, and radical community arts organizer. With roots in the Riot Grrrl and DIY music scene, her practice incorporates pedagogical, ecological and organizational methodologies. She founded and directed Open Engagement, an international conference on socially engaged art that was active from 2007–2019. She worked within Portland State University from 2008–2014 to create the Art and Social Practice MFA program with a curriculum focused on place, engagement, and dialogue. She is the author of several publications, most recently Defiantly Optimistic: Turning Up in a World on Fire. Reyes was the Associate Director of the School of Art & Art History of the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she taught in the departments of Art and Museum and Exhibition Studies. She is currently Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Diversity and Equity at the Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. She splits her time between Chicago, where she founded Garbage Hill Farm, and Ithaca, NY. She describes herself as “defiantly optimistic, a friend to all birds, and proponent that our institutions can become tender and vulnerable.”

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Listen to the conversation here

20

to Oct 26

How to Make a Scene

Thu, Jun 20, 2024 2:00 PM 14:00 Sat, Oct 26, 2024 3:00 PM 15:00
Google Calendar ICS

How to Make a Scene is a conversation series about artist-run cultural ecosystems of the 1980s and 1990s in Chicago. The series launched June 20th on Lumpen Radio, and continues through October with more radio broadcasts with the live conversations started at Co-Prosperity on July 13th, 2024. This series is a collaborative effort between the Public Media Institute and MdW, with support from the Terra Foundation for American Art as part of the city-wide initiative, Art Design Chicago.

The project aims to connect veteran artist organizers with those working today through a combination of intimate events at Co-Prosperity, broadcasts on Lumpen Radio, and live streams on LumpenTV. The series offers audiences trailheads for further exploration of Chicago's storied history of alternative gallery spaces, independent publications, and socially engaged collectives.

The series continues through fall to include sessions moderated by Ben Foch, Nicole Marroquin, Mary Patten, and Greg Ruffing, with more names to come!

All of the panels will be archived on Mixcloud, Vimeo, and the 2024 MdW Atlas, which will be printed as a book in 2026.

HOW TO MAKE A SCENE #8
Nicole Marroquin in conversation with: Juarez Hawkins, Sarita Hernández, Selva Zafiro Luna
& Virginia Martinez

Aired Thursday, October 31, 2024 at 11 am CST

or watch it here:

About the moderator:

Nicole Marroquin is a transdisciplinary artist and educator who explores Black and Latinx Midwest histories of youth resistance movements, belonging and spatial justice. Her essays have been published in the Visual Arts Research Journal, Counter Signals, Chicago Social Practice History Series, Organize Your Own: The Politics and Poetics of Self-Determination Movements, Revista Contratiempo, The Quarantine Times and AREA Chicago Magazine. She has won multiple Propeller Awards, a 3Arts Make a Wave grant, an Envisioning Justice grant from Illinois Humanities, the Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz Women of Excellence Award for her work in her community. She is a member of the justseeds and Chicago ACT artist collectives. In 2020 Marroquin was the recipient of the USA Fellowship She is Professor at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan.

About the panelists:

Juarez Hawkins is an artist, educator and curator. She received a B.A. from Northwestern University, and her M.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts from Columbia College Chicago. Juarez has exhibited widely, hosting solo exhibitions at Concordia University, the 33 Collective Gallery, and the South Side Community Art Center. As Co-Curator of Gallery Programs at Chicago State University, she has organized exhibitions from the permanent collection, as well as student work and established artists, including Richard Hunt and Marva Jolly. Recent curatorial projects include Black Clay and Shirley Hudson: VisionQuest at Chicago State; The Love Affair Continues at the DuSable Museum; Intersectional Touch and Bill Walker: Urban Griot at the Hyde Park Art Center. Juarez is a member of Sapphire and Crystals, a collective of African American female artists.

Sarita Hernández is a teaching artist, oral historian, piemaker, garden caregiver, and print/zinemaker from salvadoréxican Califas based in Chicago. Sarita is co-founder of marimacha monarca press, a queer and trans artist familia based in Chicago’s South Side since 2017. They are interested in artistic interventions with the historical archive and imagining alternative forms of social documentation, preservation, and activation of everyday histories, survivals, and resistances. They make queer & erotic plant based pies in their DIY artist project @pleasurepies shop, rasquache prints, and sad boi zines. Website: saritamaritza.wordpress.com

Selva Zafiro Luna is an interdisciplinary artist + educator. Their practice integrates print media, garment design, word + symbol to highlight queer opulence. As an educator they've worked in schools across Chicago for more than a decade. Selva is co-founder of Marimacha Monarcha Press.

Virginia Martinez is a significant figure in the Chicana feminist movement, a Chicago-native attorney, and an advocate for women and children. She was one of the first Latinas to be licensed to practice law in Illinois and co-founded the Latino Law Student Association. Martinez was the first Regional Counsel in the Chicago office of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), where she won redistricting cases that led to Latina/os being elected to the Chicago City Council and Illinois legislature. She also served as Executive Director of Mujeres Latinas en Acción and was appointed to the Illinois Prisoner Review Board in 2017. Martinez has received numerous awards for her work, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Hispanic Lawyers Association of Illinois and the Outstanding Leadership Award from the Illinois Legislative Latino Caucus Foundation. Throughout her career, she has worked in nonprofits and volunteered with projects like the CARA Pro Bono Project, providing legal assistance to women in detention seeking asylum. An attorney, mother, and speaker, Martinez has always fought for change and recognition for Chicana women, working tirelessly to ensure the movement continues.

HTMS #7 Ben Foch in conversation with Iain Muirhead and Taylor Payton

Tune in here to listen

or here to watch:

Ben Foch (New Capital) in conversation with Iain Muirhead (NFA SPACE) and Taylor Payton (Grunts Rare Books/Sulk Chicago).

Ben Foch (b. 1977) is an artist living and working in Chicago, IL. Recent solo exhibitions include “PROOF OF WERQ” (2024) and “Hood Ornament” (2021) at M. LeBlanc, Chicago, IL, and inclusion in the group exhibition “Tricky Passage” (2022) curated by Ben Gill at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago IL. In March of 2022 he launched “Cult of Cheetah” an NFT project. He co-founded and directed New Capital (2010-2017) an artist-run exhibition space in Chicago’s East Garfield Park neighborhood.

Iain Muirhead co-founded the artist-run gallery NFA SPACE (1996-2002) in Chicago. NFA SPACE (1996-2002) was a youthful and aggressive program of curated exhibitions challenging artists to work in site-specific environments produced at museum quality standards. NFA SPACE presented more than 30 shows in just over 5 years. The program was recognized critically in Art Forum, Art Papers, Sculpture Magazine, Contemporary Visual Arts, Zing Magazine and New Art Examiner.

Taylor Payton is a researcher and curator based in Chicago, IL. Payton co-founded Grunts Rare Books in October 2024. Grunts Rare Books is a programmatic bookstore and project space in Douglass Park specializing in uncommon publications of modern and contemporary art as well as rotating exhibitions by emerging artists. From 2021 to 2024, Payton operated Sulk Chicago, an apartment gallery in Printers Row supporting young artists through ambitious and considered modes of exhibition centering approaches to new media. Payton received her baccalaureate in Art History, Theory and Criticism from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2023. She has presented her research at the University of Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and she has discussed her work with artists on numerous panels. Payton is currently curating a Hans Bellmer exhibition that will open at Grunts Rare Books in November 2024.

HTMS 5+ 6
Mary Patten, Greg Ruffing, Rebecca Wolfram, and others from Axe Street Collective’s history
September 19th, 2024 11:00AM - 12:00PM
& September 28th, 2024 12:00 - 2:00PM

Tune in here to listen to the first part of the conversation! and here for the second part.

We recommend you watch the second part here, though, as there are many archival photos and videso;

Axe Street Seance part 2

Join us for a very special two-part How to Make a Scene conversation hosted by Mary Patten, Greg Ruffing, Rebecca Wolfram, and others from Axe Street’s history. For this iteration of "How to Make a Scene,” we will create a kind of metaphorical séance, what we call “More Tales of (the) Subversive Axe.” This two-part transmission will conjure the spirit of Michael Piazza, Bertha Husband, and Elizam Escobar through their words, their music, and their art making, while we also summon the bodies, hearts, and minds of Axe Street’s survivors, its children, its collaborators and memory-keepers – that is, ourselves.

Axe Street was a community arts center located in the Logan Square of Chicago that was founded in 1985 and closed in 1989.

This two-part discussion on The Axe Street Arena Collective featured Mary Patten, Greg Ruffing, Rebecca Wolfram, and others.

HTMS 4:
Salem Collo-Julin with panelists travis, P. Michael, Da Wei Wang, & Rosé Hernandez
August 31st, 2024, 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Tune in here to listen
or watch it here:

htms 4: Salem Collo-Julin, ONO & Rosé Hernandez

The August 31st conversation featured four individuals who both create art/music and generate opportunities for others, with a focus on performance art. The discussion is moderated by Salem Collo-Julin with panelists travis, P. Michael, Da Wei Wang, & Rosé Hernandez. Following the panel, ONO will perform a special set featuring travis, P. Michael, Da Wei Wang, and Benjamin Karas.

Moderator:
Salem Collo-Julin: is editor in chief of the Chicago Reader. Collo-Julin has served on the editorial staff of the Reader since 2019. From 1999-2014, Collo-Julin was a member of the midwestern art group Temporary Services, and co-edited the book Prisoners’ Inventions (Whitewalls, 2003). She also co-founded Temporary Services’ publishing imprint, Half Letter Press. In addition to her work with the Reader, their writing has been found in Windy City Times, the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, Lumpen, AREA Chicago, the book Organize Your Own (ed. Anthony Romero, Soberscove Press, 2016), and other publications. They are a native Chicagoan and their favorite Chicago alt-biweekly besides the Reader is the (defunct) Chicago Seed (1967-1974). Photo: Sarah Joyce

Panelists:
Rosé Hernandez is a multifaceted artist and healer based in Chicago, originally from Dallas, Texas. Since moving to Chicago in 2006 to study at the School of the Art Institute, she has become a prominent figure in the local arts scene. Hernandez co-leads the arts collective Burning Orchid and founded The Energetic Body, focusing on wellness through energy healing, herbalism, and performance art. Her work explores themes of body, desire, and spirituality, often integrating practices like butoh and Reiki to foster human connection and healing. Photo: Morgan Ciocca

travis is the frontman of ONO, a legendary experimental band from Chicago that has been pushing the boundaries of music and performance art since 1980. Known for his powerful vocal performances and unique stage presence, travis channels deep themes of trauma, spirituality, and conflict into the band's immersive shows. His collaboration with ONO's co-founder, P.Michael, has made the group a staple of Chicago's underground music scene, offering audiences a profound and transformative experience.

P. Michael, a founding member of the noise gospel band ONO since 1980, was born in Hyde Park, Chicago, into a music-loving family—his father was a jazz saxophonist, and he is related to Pete Cosey, who played with Miles Davis. Raised in the West Chesterfield neighborhood, known for its influential black musical artists, P. Michael is a multi-instrumentalist trained in music theory by soul arranger James Mack. He attended the School of the Art Institute for film and printmaking, St. Xavier University for pre-med Biology, and graduated from Roosevelt University with a Bachelor of Arts in arts and science in 1984.

Da Wei Wang is a prominent figure in the Chicago avant-rock scene, known for his work with the industrial-gospel-punk band ONO and as an improviser in Street Tentacle. His fractured, atonal guitar style blends elements of dada funk, existential doom, and ambient raga, using extended techniques to create dense, textured soundscapes. His solo album, *Liquid Metal Core*, released by Asian Improv Records in 2021, showcases his distinctive, rough guitar work and features drummer Ben Karas from ONO.

Performers:
ONO bandleader P. Michael Grego and frontperson travis had met before 1980, sharing a love for written and spoken word, the transcendent, and the genuine. Through continual poking and prodding, P Michael convinced travis to join him in ONO, the name coming from shortening “onomatopoeia,” and underscoring a desire to create “noise not music.” P Michael would handle the audio. travis the words. Since January 5, 1980, ONO’s roster has changed drastically, but always fiercely defended a singular construct: “The ONO STATEMENT OF PURPOSE: Experimental Performance, NOISE, and Industrial Poetry Performance Band; Exploring Gospel's Darkest Conflicts, Tragedies and Premises.” ONO band photo: Trip Warner.

Saturday, July 27, 2024, 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
with a panel discussion from 3:30 PM - 4:30PM

Moderator Jen delos Reyes will speak with panelists Joanne Aono (Director of the alternative art project, Cultivator - Chicago Art Exhibitions & Farm Art Projects), along with Brian Holmes & Claire Pentecost (Watershed Art and Ecology, Chicago)

This conversation between four artist organizers focused on ecologies will take place, fittingly, in the “Ecologies” section of the exhibition “In Concert with” showcasing the work of De Los Reyes and her collaborators for the past 20+ years.

How to Make a Scene is part of Art Design Chicago, a citywide collaboration initiated by the Terra Foundation for American Art that highlights the city’s artistic heritage and creative communities.

Moderator Jen de los Reyes, born in Winnipeg, Canada, is an artist, educator, writer, and radical community arts organizer. With roots in the Riot Grrrl and DIY music scene, her practice incorporates pedagogical, ecological and organizational methodologies. She founded and directed Open Engagement, an international conference on socially engaged art that was active from 2007–2019. She worked within Portland State University from 2008–2014 to create the Art and Social Practice MFA program with a curriculum focused on place, engagement, and dialogue. She is the author of several publications, most recently Defiantly Optimistic: Turning Up in a World on Fire. Reyes was the Associate Director of the School of Art & Art History of the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she taught in the departments of Art and Museum and Exhibition Studies. She is currently Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Diversity and Equity at the Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. She splits her time between Chicago, where she founded Garbage Hill Farm, and Ithaca, NY. She describes herself as “defiantly optimistic, a friend to all birds, and proponent that our institutions can become tender and vulnerable.”

Joanne Aono is a visual artist, curator/administrator, and holistic farmer. Her research- based drawings, paintings, and installations address identity, immigration, and the environment. She directs the alternative art project, Cultivator - Chicago Art Exhibitions & Farm Art Projects and serves on the exhibition committee of the Riverside Arts Center. Aono has received several Chicago DCASE grants, an Illinois Arts Council grant, and an Artist Run Chicago HPAC grant.

Cultivator was founded in 2015 with the first exhibitions in Aono’s Ravenswood studio and on Bray Grove Farm in north central Illinois where the artist moved to in 2014. Since then, thirty-two artists have exhibited their art with the alternative arts venue. Cultivator with Aono have been featured in Lumpen Magazine, Bad At Sports, Hyperallergic, and in an Arts Midwest film.

Brian Holmes is a polyglot essayist, artist and researcher, focusing on political ecology. He lived in Paris from 1990 to 2009, where he worked with artist-activist groups, served as translator and English editor of Documenta X publications and was on the editorial board of the journal Multitudes, while publishing across Europe and the world, in edited books, museum catalogues, radical journals, tracts, websites, etc. Upon returning to the United States he took up online cartography as a visual research practice and began working closely with the environmental art group Casa Río in Argentina. In Chicago he has been a member of the Compass group and more recently of Deep Time Chicago. With the latter group he has engaged in extensive collaborations with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (now Geoanthropology) and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt’s Anthropocene Curriculum program (now Anthropocene Commons). Brian’s cartographic work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Photography and at Gallery 400, both in Chicago; at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois; at Artists’ Alliance in New York; at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon; at Centro Cultural Parque de España in Rosario, Argentina; and at Antenna in New Orleans. He is co-founder of the space (with Claire Pentecost) Watershed Art and Ecology in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago.

Claire Pentecost is an artist and writer whose poetic and inductive drawings, sculpture and installations test and celebrate the conditions that bound and define life itself. Her projects often address the contested line between the natural and the artificial, focusing for many years on food, agriculture, bio-engineering, and anthropogenic changes in the indivisible living entity that animates our planet. Since 2006 she has worked with Brian Holmes, 16Beaver and many others organizing Continental Drift, a series of seminars to articulate the interlocking scales of our existence in the logic of globalization. She is also a founding member of Deep Time Chicago, dedicated to cultural change in the Anthropocene. She is co-founder of the space Watershed Art and Ecology in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago.

A sample of Pentecost’s exhibition venues include dOCUMENTA(13); Whitechapel Gallery; the 13th Istanbul Biennial; Nottingham Contemporary; the DePaul Art Museum; the Third Mongolian Land Art Biennial; Sursock Museum, Beirut; Times Museum, Guangzhou. Institutions inviting her to lecture include MIT; CalArts; RISD; Northwestern University; Rice University; The University of Virginia; Creative Time Summit and many others. She is represented by Higher Pictures, New York, and is Professor Emeritus at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC).

July 13th, 2024 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Click here to listen to this panel discussion!

Moderator Anthony D. Stepter is an organizer, educator, and curator from Grand Rapids, MI, now based in Chicago. He is the Programs Director at ACRE (Artist's Cooperative Residency & Exhibitions). Previously, Anthony was the assistant director of the Museum and Exhibition Studies program at UIC. He has an MA from SAIC and undergraduate degrees from Grand Valley State University. Anthony has worked at the Art Institute of Chicago, SAIC, and Grand Rapids Art Museum.

As an independent curator, he has organized exhibitions and projects for venues like ACRE, University of Chicago's Arts Incubator, and Open Engagement. Anthony aims to foster connections between arts institutions and communities. Guided by antiracist and feminist perspectives, his work invites publics to meaningfully engage with art and ideas while building supportive networks.

Carlos Arango, former executive director of Casa Aztlan and president of Frente Nacional De Inmigrante, is a prominent artist based in Chicago, associated with Casa Atzlan, a cultural and community center in the Pilsen neighborhood. Carlos Arango joined Casa Aztlan in 1986 after moving to Chicago from Los Angeles, where he had previously relocated from Mexico. He became the executive director of Casa Aztlan in 1994. Before his official involvement, he was already familiar with Casa Aztlan due to its notable advocacy work for immigrants and residents.

Under Arango's leadership, Casa Aztlan continued to provide crucial services to the community, including education, immigration assistance, and cultural programs. He was significantly involved in community activism, notably organizing a major march for immigration reform in 2006 that drew over 500,000 participants, including Chicago's Mayor Richard M. Daley. Arango remains committed to helping immigrants become informed about social issues and participate in matters of social justice.

Ed Marszewski is the Director of Public Media Institute (PMI), publisher of Lumpen Magazine and other titles. PMI launched the low power community radio station, Lumpen Radio (WLPN-LP) on 105.5 FM. PMI also programs the long-running cultural center, Co-Prosperity Chicago and the Buddy store located in the Chicago Cultural Center. Ed is also the co-founder of Maria’s Packaged Goods & Community Bar, Kimski, Marz Community Brewing Co., and other projects.

Felicia Grant Preston is a visual artist and retired art instructor. She was raised in Chicago where she attended Chicago Public Schools. Her talent was recognized as a child and she received nurturing and encouragement from her parents and teachers. Preston received a BA in art from Southern Illinois University in 1976, an MS ED from Northern Illinois University in 1979, and an MA from Chicago State University in 2003. In addition, she has studied at the University of Illinois, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Governor State University and The Savannah College of Art and Design. Her work has been included in the Paul R. Jones collection at the University of Delaware, which is considered the largest collection of African American art. Recent publications include the University of Delaware’s 2005 date book, Abstract and All That, University of Delaware exhibition catalogue, and African art: the Diaspora and beyond by Daniel T. Parker.

Preston’s work has been exhibited in Chicago at the Museum of Science and Industry’s Black Creativity exhibition, A.R.C. Gallery, Woman Made Gallery, R.H. Love Contemporary Gallery, Artemisia Gallery, Hyde Park Art Center, South Side Community Art Center, Susan Woodson Gallery, Beacon Street Gallery, Nicole Gallery, The South Shore Cultural Center, Neleh Artistic Expressions and Guichard Gallery to name a few. She has also exhibited at The Arsenal Gallery in New York, Fort Wayne Museum of Art Alliance, in Fort Wayne Indiana, Vaughn Cultural Center in St. Louis Missouri, The Art Exchange Gallery in Detroit Michigan, The Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah Georgia, Florida Community College in Jacksonville Florida, Art Jaz Gallery in Philadelphia Pennsylvania, in addition to numerous private collections.

Thursday, June 20th at 11:00 am on Lumpen Radio

Click here to listen to this panel discussion!

The first conversation launches with moderator Anthony Stepter joined by panelists Patricia Nguyen (Axis Lab), Nell Taylor (Read/Write Library), and Andrea Yarbrough (in c/o Black Women) live on Lumpen Radio (105.5 fm) on Thursday, June 20th at 11:00 am.

Moderator Anthony D. Stepter is an organizer, educator, and curator from Grand Rapids, MI, now based in Chicago. He is the Programs Director at ACRE (Artist's Cooperative Residency & Exhibitions). Previously, Anthony was the assistant director of the Museum and Exhibition Studies program at UIC. He has an MA from SAIC and undergraduate degrees from Grand Valley State University. Anthony has worked at the Art Institute of Chicago, SAIC, and Grand Rapids Art Museum. As an independent curator, he has organized exhibitions and projects for venues like ACRE, University of Chicago's Arts Incubator, and Open Engagement. Anthony aims to foster connections between arts institutions and communities. Guided by antiracist and feminist perspectives, his work invites publics to meaningfully engage with art and ideas while building supportive networks.

Patricia Nguyen is an artist, educator, and scholar born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. With a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and currently an assistant professor in American Studies at the University of Virginia, she has over 20 years of experience in arts education, community development, and human rights. Co-founder and executive director of Axis Lab, a community-centered art, food, and design studio in Uptown, Chicago, Patricia focuses on inclusive and equitable development for the Southeast Asian community. Axis Lab critically engages socio-economic concerns through creative programming that draws on cultural and historical knowledge of the immigrant and refugee population to incite equitable development. The organization reflects an intersectional approach, centering marginalized voices to address structural injustices and exploring creative possibilities to envision a just world.

Nell Taylor is the founder and executive director of Read/Write Library and a user experience, data, and discovery consultant. Clients range from global NGOs, government, and Fortune 500 brands to arts education data. Previously, she led planning, research, and communications at an artist's studio that produced interactive video installations for Esquire, Qualcomm, Sundance Film Festival, and the National Portrait Gallery. Nell has spoken at SXSW Interactive, TEDActive, MIT, DPLAFest, Code4Lib, and ORD Camp, among others. She was a 2015/16 National Arts Strategies Creative Communities Fellow. Read/Write Library has been featured in the New York Times, on NPR’s All Things Considered, and as the cover story in the Chicago Reader.

Andrea Yarbrough is a multi-disciplinary artist, curator, and educator based on the South Side of Chicago. Leading the initiative "in c/o: Black women," she focuses on creating sites of care through collaborative placekeeping efforts, transforming vacant spaces into community resources. This project unites writers, curators, farmers, and artists to reclaim and regenerate neglected spaces, emphasizing care work and solidarity for Black women. Yarbrough's practice integrates urban agriculture, civic engagement, and art, using everyday materials to create functional objects and installations that address issues like redlining and divestment. She holds a Master’s degree in Museum and Exhibition Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago and is committed to ecological and community restoration through art.

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More Beautiful, More Terrible: Humans of Life Row

Apr

27

to Jun 6

More Beautiful, More Terrible: Humans of Life Row

Sat, Apr 27, 2024 7:00 PM 19:00 Thu, Jun 6, 2024 8:00 PM 20:00
Co-Prosperity (map)
Google Calendar ICS

Photo credit: Collectivo Multipolar.

“American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.”

— James Baldwin

RSVP

Public Opening Reception: 7:00 - 9:00 PM, April 27, 2024

OPEN HOURS: Saturdays 12-5pm and by appointment (email: info @ publicmediainstitute . com).

More Beautiful, More Terrible: Humans of Life Row is a counter-narrative, a sustained act of resistance, an exhibition that reveals the intimate experiences, transformative ideas, and beautiful dreams of people facing the stark realities of life sentencing in Illinois. These sentences are commonly described as death by incarceration because they condemn people to confinement until their death. Nevertheless, as contributing artist, Reginald BoClair, states, “Though sentenced to die in prison, we are alive.”

In the United States, more than 200,000 people are serving life sentences. In Illinois, approximately 4,300 people are serving life or de facto life, a sentence of forty years or more. In 1978 Illinois eliminated parole, making it one of the six states where all life sentences are imposed without the possibility of parole. Of the people serving life without parole in Illinois, 67% are Black and 53% are 55 years old or older, statistics that underscore the racism and decades-long impact of life sentencing. Yet, every human represented in these numbers is so much more than a statistic.

Inspired by the popular Humans of New York photography project highlighting stories and photographs of the varied people on the streets of New York, More Beautiful, More Terrible: Humans of Life Row explores the views, hopes, worries, aspirations, and everyday lives of the diverse array of people concealed by the logics and structures of mass incarceration. Through personal narratives, artistic expressions, installations, and poetic verse, this exhibition shines a light on the people who inhabit 'life row.'

The collected works create space for contributing artists, family members, policy makers, public officials, and the wider public to learn more about themselves, each other, society, and the consequences of life sentencing in hopes to inspire alternative forms of justice, accountability, and healing.

P+NAP Think Tank

This exhibition is part of a broader Humans of Life Row initiative that emerged from the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project (PNAP) Think Tank at Stateville Prison. The Think Tank is composed of scholars, writers, and artists who seek to transform the material and ideological conditions created by carceral logics through in-depth research, policy analysis and advocacy, alongside creative cultural projects. The Think Tank seeks to make key interventions and offer critical insights to the broader movement to end mass-incarceration from within one of the most brutal geographies of the prison-industrial-complex. As Devon Terrell, an inaugural Think Tank member, put it: “[we] walk into the future by visualizing it today.”

The Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project is a visual arts and education project that connects teaching artists and scholars to incarcerated students at Stateville Prison through classes, workshops, guest lectures, and a think tank.

Featuring contributions from:

Carlos Barberena, Michael Bell, Reginald BoClair, Stephanie Bonds, Sarah Brannon, Dorothy Burge, Carri Cook, Monica Cosby, Robert Curry, Michelle Daniel Jones, Devon Daniels, Dignidad Rebelde (Jesus Barraza & Melanie Cervantes), Christian Dior Noel, Joseph Dole, Raul Dorado, William Estrada, Darrell W. Fair, Charles Hill, Renaldo Hudson, Candace Hunter, Antonio ‘TK’ Kendrick, Darnell Lane, Lisa Lee & the National Public Housing Museum, Damon Locks, Rodney Love, Lucky Pierre, (Kevin Kaempf, Michael Thomas, & Mary Zerkel), Juan Luna, Breanna Maldonado, Jerel Matthews, Shaneva McReynolds, Pablo Mendoza, Ryan Miller, Lakeshia Murph, Leslie Peace, Daniel Perkins, Maria Pike, Fernanda Ponce, Steven P. Ramirez, Erika Ray, Olivia Mikolai Ridge, Benny Rios DonJuan, Sarah Ross, Carlvosier Smith, Lonnie Smith, James Soto, Michael Simmons, Michael M. Sullivan, Johnny Taylor, Devon Terrell, Chip Thomas, Antwon Tyler, jina valentine & Sylvan Palm Valentine, Connie Vantlin, Angie Varriale, Decedrick Walker, Eric Watkins, Anna Martine Whitehead, Carl Williams, and more

This exhibition is presented by Co-Prosperity, the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project, and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture’s Beyond Prisons Initiative at the University of Chicago and is supported in part by Illinois Humanities, Woods Fund Chicago, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Special thanks to Antony Ablan and Rebirth of Sound, Victoria Alvarez, Ben Austen, Ahniya Butler, Anaga Dalal, Raphel Jackson, Noah Karapanagiotidis, Tierra Kilpatrick, S.Y. Lim, Tracye Matthews, Pablo Mendoza, Marilyn Richardson, Arianna Salgado, Gina Samuels, Indigo Wright, and Nick Wylie.

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

Note: Given the legionnaires crisis inside IDOC, the exhibition will serve as a water collection site in collaboration with the Coalition to Decarcerate Illinois. Attendees are invited to bring sealed bottles of water to the collection site to be donated to communities in Stateville.

Opening Reception

Saturday, April 27, 2024, 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM

Join Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project in celebrating the opening More Beautiful, More Terrible: Humans of Life Row. Exhibition organizers and artists will share reflections and insight on the featured artworks. The program will conclude with a special performance by Anna Martine Whitehead responding to Lonnie Smith’s poem “Am I a Person.”

[There will be a private light reception at 6:00 PM for contributors and family members.]

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Parole Illinois Throughout the Years

Thursday, May 2, 2024, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Join Parole Illinois for an insightful program that sheds light on the evolution of parole systems in Illinois. Through panel discussions, and fundraising efforts, attendees will be invited into meaningful conversations on parole reform and its impact on communities. Panelists include Jimmy Soto, Kevin Blumenberg (Swack), James Lenoir, Ben Austen, and Shaneva McReynolds moderated by Ashton Hoselton

Chicago Humanities Festival

Saturday, May 4, 2024

11:00 AM | Everyday Objects from the Public Housing to Prison Pipeline

Join Lisa Lee (Executive Director, National Public Housing Museum), Dorothy Burge (artist and educator) and Colette Payne (Director, Reclamation Project, Women's Justice Institute) in conversation about the Everyday Objects from the Public Housing to Prison Pipeline. After the discussion Aaron Hughes, Exhibition Co-organizer and Co-curator, will lead the gallery walk.

1:00 PM | Two Tales of (In)Justice: Fighting Death by Incarceration from the Inside Out

Join James Soto and Renaldo Hudson as they share their stories and pathways to freedom moderated by Alice Kim. Both men survived decades of long-term incarceration.

Lessons & Learnings from Teaching at Logan

Thursday, May 16, 2024, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Join Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project for a comprehensive report back and update on PNAP’s two-year initiative at Logan Prison. Starting as listening sessions, the Logan Initiative has evolved into various course tracks and reading groups inside. As we continue to shape the initiative, our team is visualizing & dissecting the long term implications of our work at Logan. Members of our team will dive into the various aspects of this work and show a snapshot of our current zine project set to be shared in June.

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Power of Art

Tuesday, May 21, 2024, 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM

Join More Beautiful, More Terrible: Humans of Life Row featured artists to discuss the exhibition and the transformative power of art.

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Closing Program

Saturday, June 1, 2024, 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Join Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project for a reception to celebrate the closing of More Beautiful, More Terrible: Humans of Life Row. Attendees of all ages will be invited to write letters, make buttons, and screen print designs from the artists at Stateville Prison with William Estrada and Aaron Hughes.

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Apr

26

to Jun 7

Moon Healing Escalation

Fri, Apr 26, 2024 7:00 PM 19:00 Fri, Jun 7, 2024 8:00 PM 20:00
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Co-Prosperity is excited to announce the exhibition, Moon Healing Escalation, by Bay Area-based multimedia artist Gericault De La Rose. The exhibition will take place April 26 – June 7 at Co-Prosperity’s window vitrines. Opening reception is April 26th, 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM. This will be De La Rose’s first solo exhibition in Chicago.

Adorning the window vitrines with lustrous satin, rhinestones, sequins, and glitters, Moon Healing Escalation, composed of both previous work and new creations, is a ritualistic triptych that unfolds as a passage that bridges the past and the present through magical and spiritual transcendence. The window exhibition invites the viewers into a celebration of love and friendship, a liminal space where beautiful metamorphosis is constantly being materialized. It is nonetheless also a deeply personal installation for De La Rose to look back at her life, ingest her past trauma as a trans woman surviving in this world, and trace the journey of her healing imbued with support and compassion from her community.

The first work is a mark of history, of something old. Severance includes two larger-than-life tapestries the artist made for a previous performance. Loosely draped from the wall by the top corners, the jacquard-loom-woven fabrics are soft photographs that show the exposed bellies of De La Rose’s parents: Her mom’s stretched marks from her pregnancies juxtaposed to her dad’s scar from an operation. In De La Rose’s previous performance, the artist wore a jacquard overall that showed an image of her own scarred body. She pulled on the threads to unravel the hanging tapestries, creating wrinkles, folds, but also irreversible damage to the laboriously made weaves. These ruptures are visible in the display and the suit will also be shown in the installation.

Scars should be celebrated as the body’s history, its perseverance and resilience, time-marked by vitality. Scars, of which the past tense is wounds, visible and invisible, literal and metaphorical, thread through this exhibition that endorses them as portals to possibilities and openings for umbilical cords to form new and strong bonds. Reveal, the centerpiece, is a new ambitious performance that draws the connection between magical girl transformations, drag, and transition. The performance is inspired by Sailor Moon, the Japanese manga series and anime that has enraptured the hearts and imaginations of fans around the world with its embodiment of courage, compassion, and camaraderie. One of the most memorable moments in this anime is undoubtedly the magical girl transformations, where the adventurous protagonists go through spectacular bodily upgrades from daring middle-schoolers to powerful guardians of the Earth. Reveal considers these liminal moments and reframes them as rituals of passage in a queer context. Shrouded by glittering embellishments, ornaments, wig hair, and radiant fabric, De La Rose will perform drag to high-energy hyperpop music, enacting the moment of phenomenal rebirth like how a butterfly leaves its cocoon.

The final panel of the triptych consists of a brand-new tapestry and prints the artist makes for this exhibition. A panel dedicated to found and chosen family, Tethered is a piece of weaving—made in a similar process as that of Severance—with images of the artist’s and her friends’ hands, nodding to the hand signs prominently featured in Sailor Moon’s magical girl transformations. The tapestry is framed by colorful prints produced by De La Rose’s signature dermatographia skin stamping technique. Dermatographia is a skin condition for which the skin is prone to pressure and will produce a welt in the shape of the applied external force. Creatively turning this condition to her advantage, De La Rose uses her skin as a canvas and printing surface. In Tangled, she invites her friends to each describe their friendships or their first encounters and to write these words with fingertips directly onto her skin. After Time does her magic, the slightly elevated skin surface becomes a printing block that can yield a few prints before the swelling clears out. Conversing with the permanent scars recorded and commemorated in Severance, dermatographic prints evoke temporary scars that are themselves expressions of love and acceptance. Like temporary tattoos but only in reverse, De La Rose uses this body print technique as a poetic vehicle to mark “tattoos” as proofs of touch and intimacy, of her presence in relation to others, and of her body—a body that has suffered and will suffer but chooses to only suffer fabulously. - Nicky Ni

Gericault De La Rose is a queer trans Filipinx, multidisciplinary artist, and educator. While developing her art practice, she worked as a Co-curator of Philippine Objects at the Field Museum of Natural History where she organized a series of monthly events called Pamanang Pinoy using the objects within the collection as conduits for community discussion. After graduating with a BFA with an emphasis in Art History from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she formed an artist collective, Export Quality, together with other Queer Filipinx alumni. De La Rose has also showcased her work in group shows in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Johnson City, New York, Toronto, and Oakland. De La Rose attended the ACRE residency in Steuben, Wisconsin and the HATCH artist residency for the Chicago Artist Coalition in 2020. Most recently in 2022, she received the San Francisco Foundation’s Jack K. and Gertrude Murphy Award and received her MFA from UC Berkeley in 2023.

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Nicole Eisenman and David Velasco in Conversation

Apr

6

3:00 PM15:00

Nicole Eisenman and David Velasco in Conversation

Saturday, April 6, 2024
3:00 PM 5:00 PM 15:00 17:00
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Co-Prosperity is thrilled to host Nicole Eisenman and David Velasco in Conversation on April 6th at 3:00 PM. This talk will be recorded. Please RSVP by joining the guest list as spots are limited.

Nicole Eisenman: What Happened opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago on April 6th and will be on view until September 22, 2024.

RSVP

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Mar

20

7:00 PM19:00

TENGGER Concert with KIKÙ HIBINO

Wednesday, March 20, 2024
7:00 PM 10:00 PM 19:00 22:00
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Co-Prosperity in collaboration with 062 is thrilled to present TENGGER. TENGGER is a traveling musical family, made up of Pan-Asian couple ITTA (from South Korea) and MARQIDO (from Japan), who create their brand of psychedelic New-Age drone magic through the use of voice, Indian harmonium, and toy instruments (played by ITTA), and synths and electronics (played by MARQIDO). The duo originally started out with the moniker “10,” but since the birth of their son RAAI (who joins them on tour and playing voice, synth, toy instruments, and dance performance on stage) in 2012, have called themselves TENGGER (meaning ‘unlimited expanse of sky’ in Mongolian) to mark the expansion of the family. It also means ‘huge sea’ in Hungarian. Travel, as a spiritual experience in real environments, and the sound between the space and the audience have been central themes of their works. The family’s yearly pilgrimages inform every aspect of their art.

Kikù Hibino will be opening the night and this concert is FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Please join us on March 20, 2024. Doors open at 7:00 PM.

Sound artist Kikù Hibino has dedicated his career to exploring the complex interplay between nature's inherent structures and the human imagination through electronic music. Inspired by the intricate beauty of human languages, natural patterns, optical illusions and moirés, Kikù crafts electronic compositions that challenge traditional rhythmic structures and melodies, inviting listeners into a world where linear and non-linear converge harmoniously.

Represented by the Italian record label Superpang, Kikù's innovative work has been showcased in venues across the States, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, and Experimental Sound Studio, among others. His contributions to sound art have been recognized with a 2017 Individual Artist Grant from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and a 2021 Outer Ear Artist in Residency at Experimental Sound Studio.

Photo by Collectivo Multipolar.

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Mar

8

9:00 PM21:00

Drag in the Round

Friday, March 8, 2024
9:00 PM 10:30 PM 21:00 22:30
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Photo credit: Collectivo Multipolar.

Co-Prosperity is thrilled to present “DRAG IN THE ROUND”, a night of queer performance curated and hosted by Celeste.

Please join Irregular Girl, Stephanie, Po’Chop, Dutchesz Gemini, Alex Jenny and Celeste on March 8th from 9:00 PM - 10:30 PM at Co-Prosperity. This event is free and open to the public!

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Mar

8

to Apr 14

Men I Have Ever Met

Fri, Mar 8, 2024 7:00 PM 19:00 Sun, Apr 14, 2024 8:00 PM 20:00
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Image Credit: Eugene I-Peng Tang

Co-Prosperity is thrilled to present Men I Have Ever Met, a group exhibition anchored on 100+ written encounters revisiting Sungjae Lee's queer journey navigating interpersonal relationships. Lee invited 5 queer Asian artists, Club Chow, Eugene I-Peng Tang, Jay Carlon, Jinu Hong, and Vincent Chong who are based in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York to present creative responses to Lee’s stories. Please join the opening reception on Friday, March 8th from 7:00 to 9:00 PM (Live drawing by Vincent Chong from 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM and music by Club Chow from 8:00 PM to 8:45 PM).

Click here to view a map of the exhibition.

What started as a solo exhibition for Sungjae (SJ) Lee turned into a collaborative fruition between himself and five other queer Asian artists. Lee’s Men I have Ever Met, is an ongoing project that describes his queer journey of navigating interpersonal relationships. These range from dating to one night stands since 2008, which have been documented here in written, redacted responses. This documentation begins in 2008 when Lee came out publicly in Seoul, until present day in Chicago. Aside from written responses, Lee has used performance, and installation as a means of activating the many encounters. In the past, he used ASMR (Autonomous Sensorial Meridian Response) podcast readings as a way to explore how audience members can digest his work outside of just reading through the texts.
By using redactions in his work, Lee is keeping certain elements of his life confidential. As he is restricting himself, simultaneously, he is making space for the artists involved to fill in the holes. The five artists being extended an invitation to do so are Vincent Chong, Eugene I-Peng Tang, Jay Carlon, Jinu Hong, and Club Chow. By randomly selecting episodes, which is what Lee calls individual encounters, the artists are asked to translate the episodes into their own mediums. Chong paints queer and trans chosen family but also mixes this medium with traditional art, which includes calligraphy and performance. Tang uses photography much like Lee to capture intimate encounters. Carlon uses performance and sculpture to explore ideas of decolonization, resistance and pleasure embedded within his queer and Filipinx experience. Hong uses his graphic design background to challenge standard guidelines of printing. Club Chow uses music and mixing skills which will be used during the opening to activate words from the episodes.
Though all the artists share similar identities, each one will expand on their lived experience, and overall shine a light on what futures can be dreamt up by bringing these individual and collective narratives to the foreground.

- Cristobal Alday, 2024

Lumpen Radio Special Series:

Men I Have Ever Met with host Sungjae Lee & Club Chow

Airs Fridays, 11PM - Midnight

The radio show Men I Have Ever Met is a program in relation to the group exhibition with the same title at Co-Prosperity, presenting 6 queer Asian artists: Sungjae Lee, Club Chow, Eugene I-Peng Tang, Jay Carlon, Jinu Hong, and Vincent Chong. Responding to Lee’s redacted text installation, DJ Club Chow creates music employing words or sentences from the text as musical elements. Tune in to listen to the full context of the text in an ASMR style and queer Asian themed music! Every Friday, from March 15 to April 12, 11pm – 12am. An hour-long episode is composed of 4 or 5 stories and music in between.

About the Artists

**Sungjae** **(SJ) Lee** (이승재, he/they) is a Seoul-born, Chicago-based artist, educator, and writer who makes performance, installation, text, sound, and video. He received his B.F.A. in Sculpture from Seoul National University in 2014, during which time he discovered his deep interest in performance, writing, and other time-based mediums to represent the voices of marginalized groups. To further develop his practice as a performance artist, he pursued his M.F.A. in Performance Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and graduated in 2019. While residing in the US, his practice has centered on the need for visibility and representation of queer Asians in a Western context. His work has been presented globally in South Korea, Sweden, Canada, New Zealand, and the US. He has had residencies at ACRE, High Concept Labs, HATCH Projects, Vermont Studio Center, Millay Arts, and Yaddo. He was selected for the 2022-2023 Kala Art Institute Fellowship, Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art 2021-22, and the 2020 AHL Foundation Artist Fellowship. In 2021-23, he has given readings of his manuscript Men I Have Ever Met in the Chicago-based READINGS series organized by Maud Lavin at different venues like the Poetry Foundation and Watershed.

**Club (Kevin) Chow** (周克文, he/they) is a Taiwanese-American DJ and promoter currently based in Chicago. An omnivorous selector, he blends music across genres and eras with a common undercurrent of euphoric energy and playfulness. Sonic influences include house, UKG, club music, and breakbeat. He holds a DJ residency at Steamworks Baths, organizes the queer day party Forbidden Fruitz, and soundtracks community-focused LGBTQ events in the city such as Dim Sum & Drag, a drag brunch showcasing queer AAPI performers. Club Chow's taste and versatility have brought him behind the decks at notable Chicago nightclubs such as SmartBar and Podlasie Club, as well as around the US - playing parties in Brooklyn, San Francisco, Atlanta, and throughout the Midwest.

**Jinu Hong** (홍진우, he/him) is a graphic designer and art director based in New York. He currently works as a member of art team at Alexander Wang and previously worked at Verizon and OnePlus as a branding creative. He also maintains an independent practice on the side with architects, artists, curators, and brands, primarily on prints, branding, websites, and exhibitions. He graduated from Yale School of Art with an MFA in Graphic Design in 2020. He has taught a class at Parsons School of Design and Pratt Institute and served as a guest critic and lecturer at Yale School of Architecture, Columbia GSAPP, Parsons School of Design, Pratt Institute, Boston University, and Northeastern University.

**Jay Carlon** (he/they) is a performance artist, choreographer and community organizer whose work is grounded in a collective journey toward decolonization and sustainability. His work facilitates shared healing and the exploration of post-colonial identity, ancestry, and the complex queer and Filipinx experience in relationship to site and space. The youngest of 12 in a Filipino Catholic migrant family, Carlon connects a global network of Filipinx creatives, organizing community around art and food. Carlon’s continued work with these collectives spans opera, dance, and installation. Named Dance Magazine’s 25 to Watch, Jay has performed and choreographed for the Metropolitan Opera, 2014 Olympics, 2019 Superbowl, Kanye West, Solange Knowles, and Mndsgn. He received the 2023 National Dance Project Award from the New England Foundation of the Arts to develop and tour his forthcoming work *WAKE*, a queer postcolonial ritual and meditation on grief (premiere 2024, touring through 2027).

**Eugene I-Peng Tang** (湯翊芃, he/him) is a Taiwanese artist based in Chicago. Using a conceptually-based photography practice, he explores intimate encounters and unconventional relationships that meld personal life experiences with those of his subjects. His work, A Fly on the Wall, a Deer in the Headlights, which addresses his youthful Asian gay body in relation to other stereotypes of race/age/class, has been shown at multiple galleries and screenings, including the Gene Siskel Film Center, The Plan, Ohklahomo, TNL, and SAIC Galleries. He works in photography, video/sound installation, and sculpture with an emphasis on provocative methodology. With a background in anthropology and filmmaking, he draws influences from relational aesthetics, queer studies, and his own desires. Tang has been awarded the Daniel Berger & Barbara DeGenevieve Graduate Merit Scholarship for Graduate studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, an Ox-Bow Scholarship, and the Jim Zanzi Scholarship to complete his MFA degree in 2023. He received the Student Leadership Award, and recently has been awarded a Berlin Institut Für Alles Mögliche Residency. He co-authored a book, ‘Grandma's Girlfriends - the Splendid Youth of Elder Lesbians’(阿媽的女朋友：彩虹熟女的多彩青春), which won 'Best Daily Book of the Year' of 'Openbook Award Taiwan (Openbook好書獎．年度生活書), in 2020.

**Vincent Chong** (莊志明, they/them) is a queer mixed-race Chinese-American artist working in Chinese calligraphy, seal carving, painting, drawing, and performance. They paint portraits of members of their QTAPI and QTBIPOC community and create performances combining high camp drag/gogo/gymnastics aesthetics with live large-scale calligraphy demonstration. They have shown work at Armature Projects, Lehman College, La MaMa, SoMad, Skånes Konstförening, Center for Book arts, Bodeguita 718, The Museum of Chinese in America, Site Brooklyn, and PAAM. They have performed at Columbus Park, Center for Performance Research, QNA, Inter Arts Center, Skånes Konstförening, MoMA PS1, Abrons Art Center, Movement Research, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Center for Book Arts. Residencies include ISCP, Gallim, the WOW Project Storefront Residency, Center for Book Arts Book Artist Residency, and Fire Island Artist Residency. Awards include NYFA/NYSCA fellowship, City Artist Corp Grant, and Huayu Enrichment Scholarship.

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9

6:00 PM18:00

Good Grief

Saturday, December 9, 2023
6:00 PM 9:00 PM 18:00 21:00
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Photo credit: Collectivo Multipolar.

Co-Prosperity is excited to present Good Grief, our last window exhibition of this year! Connecting the visual and cultural cues of my personal grieving/healing processes and the funerary customs of the Black Diaspora, Good Grief reflects the jubilant spirit that carries both the living through the dark and the deceased to the light. Often referred to as a Homegoing or Celebration of Life, death in the Christian African American tradition has served as a catalyst for fellowship, and grief has been the seed of many movements. From Yoruba Ancestral Masquerading rituals (known as Egungun), to Second Line Jazz Funerals and Black Masking Indians, practices of pageantry and parading are as sacred and integral to both collective and individual psyche as the balms of food, song, and prayer. With these elements, this exhibition is a reflection of the healing that has come through celebrating life, honoring death, building community, and holding space for the experiences and emotions that lie in between.

Please join our opening reception on December 9th, from 6-9 PM.

Artists Bio:
Jade Williams (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and writer whose practice reflects the ways that she engages in the radical traditions of alteration, adornment, collecting, and congregating. Using textiles, family heirlooms, embellishments and other reflective materials, her world-building works investigate how she is both building and becoming an ideal home for her inner child and future selves. Jade received her BFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign and is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her works have been exhibited at spaces including the Krannert Art Museum, the Evanston Art Center, the Leather Archives and Museum, Dominican University, and Woman Made Gallery. Jade is up a 2021 HATCH Artist Resident with the Chicago Artists Coalition, a 2022 Luminarts Cultural Foundation Fellow in Visual Arts, and a 2022 Economic Securities Project Artist Fellow. She currently lives and works in the Chicago Area where she's tending to her collective, The Black Bloom Project.

The Black Bloom Project: Under the care of Jade Williams and Cristable Reynosa-Martinez, The Black Bloom Project is a collective of creators, changemakers, cultivators and cultural innovators working to curate safe spaces for Black and Brown Womxn and Femmes. Through the creation of fiber-based installations—known as Bloomscapes—we advocate for radical self-love, acceptance, and healing amongst our respective communities. This project is supported by the Together We Heal Creative Place Program (DCASE, 2022), the Ignite Fund (3Arts, 2022), the Artist Project Fund (NBAF, 2020–2021), Chicago Art for Black Futures (2020), and the One State Artist Grant (Art Alliance Illinois, 2020). Currently, we are working in partnership with We Sow We Grow, a Black Woman owned urban farm and non-profit located on the far south side of Chicago in the historic West Pullman neighborhood. Our partnership, Roots + Blooms is a cross-discipline initiative that ties together various disciplines including Fiber/Textile Arts, Soil and Earthwork, Photography and Digital Arts, and more–using them to honor our cultural histories and transform our communities.

Cristabel Reynosa-Martinez (she/her) is an Indigenous Mexican Immigrant, living and working in the Chicago Area. Brought here as a child, Cris has been in love with every part of Chicago and the possibilities the city presents since first arriving on Fourth of July. Seeing the vivid colors of the fireworks displays, finally feeling her mother’s embrace (after a year apart), and smelling the scent of her mother’s Herbal Essence’s rose shampoo—she recalls this moment as one of her fondest and most influential memories. The fascination that it brought has stood as the basis for the experiences she works to create today.

With an interest in the body’s relation to the senses, space, and material, Cris has spent years creating captivating retail experiences that are rooted in storytelling; and, is now applying that knowledge to art and design. Focusing on experiential displays, sensory based experiences, and handling elements with care—she has worked with a variety of brands including Sephora, Nordstrom and Bloomingdale's, serving in roles that include, Color artist, visual merchandising, merchandising, styling, administration. Recently, Cristabel has worked as a studio assistant, and now serves as the Creative Co-Lead of The Black Bloom Project.

Between her cultural and professional backgrounds, Cris cites her grandmothers’ sewing and spiritual rituals as her biggest influences. Using their early teachings as groundwork for her own practices, she now explores a variety of mediums (especially textile and fiber-based materials) to help people address their healing, and create interactions that give them new insight or perspective on life. When addressing her works, Cris states that she wants others to see life in a different light, to see the good above the bad, and to make them stop for just a second in stillness—stillness from all the chaos around life. “I’m curious to discover people’s stories and the impact that color, smells, touch has on them. I think it will help them reflect in a way that can help them heal, heal in a way of experience through self-reflection”.

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9

3:00 PM15:00

Potential Energy

Saturday, December 9, 2023
3:00 PM 9:00 PM 15:00 21:00
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Photo credit: Collectivo Multipolar.

Co Prosperity is thrilled to present Potential Energy. Please join our opening reception and Puppets in Progress program on December 9th from 3:00 PM - 9:00 PM.

Chicago is home to a rich and growing ecology of puppet artists whose work bridges disciplines and communities of makers. This sampling of works by local artists is intended to challenge expectations about puppetry and inspire makers from all disciplines. Take the rare chance to look closely at sculptural works usually only seen in motion at a distance. Celebrate material and formal invention, trace networks of collaboration, and discover some of the exciting questions and possibilities that are animating puppet art today.

Exhibiting Artists: Alonso Galue, Christopher Knowlton, Eda Yorulmazoglu, Jacky Kelsey + August Boyne, Jacqueline Wade, Jaerin Son, Jerrell Henderson + Caitlin McLeod, KT Shivak, Manual Cinema, Mike Oleon, Myra Su, Pablo Monterrubio, Tom Lee, Wonder Wagon

Curated by Will Bishop + Grace Needlman
Flyer Design: Oscar Solis

Programming:
Puppets in Progress + Opening Party
Dec 9th, 3:00 PM - 9:00 PM

3:00 PM - 5:00 PM: Join an informal gathering for testing out new puppet and object-based performances. Bring whatever you're working on and get encouragement and feedback from other Chicago puppet-folks! This workshop is FREE, and perfect for puppet fans of all skill levels.
Puppets in Progress is a project of Rough House Theater.

5:00 PM - 9:00 PM: Party with puppet friends!

Music of Puppetry
Dec 15th, 7:00 PM: A concert and conversation with musicians who collaborate with puppet artists. Enjoy live music and participate in a conversation about what it is like to compose and perform for puppetry. Artists: Hunter Diamond, Michael Zerang, and Ahmed Al Abaca. Hosted by Sam Lewis.

Pop-up Puppetqueers
Jan 13th, 2024 7:00 PM - Puppetqueers is an evening of short form adult puppet theater made for the queers (and their allies), by the queers. Artists include: Anastar Alvarez, Christopher Knowlton, Kimzyn Campbell, Leah Lara, Madigan Burke, and Mak Scheel. Curated and created by Lindsey Ball.

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Oct

21

to Dec 3

PAPER JAM

Sat, Oct 21, 2023 7:00 PM 19:00 Sun, Dec 3, 2023 9:00 PM 21:00
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Co-Prosperity and Chicago Printers Guild is excited to co-present PAPER JAM. The opening reception will be at Co-Prosperity Chicago on September 29th from 7-11 PM.

Introducing the inaugural  CHICAGO PRINTERS GUILD PAPER JAM:  A Month-Long Celebration of Printers  & Printmaking. Click here for programming information!

This fall, all are welcome to join the celebration of all things print at the CHICAGO PRINTERS GUILD PAPER JAM at Co-Prosperity  (3219 S. Morgan St.) every weekend from Sept. 29 — Oct. 21.

The month-long residency will feature four weekends of exhibitions, panels and workshops celebrating the past, present and future of print in Chicago —-- concluding with the glorious return of the annual CPG publishers fair, featuring artwork and publications created by the finest printmakers from the home of Printers Row and the birthplace of Cooper Black.

Let’s jam, Chicago!

Recent Exhibitions

Sep 5, 2025 – Sep 7, 2025

Sep 5, 2025 – Sep 7, 2025

Jul 17

Jul 17, 2025 – Jul 27, 2025

Subversion Summer Camp

Jul 17, 2025 – Jul 27, 2025

Jun 27, 2025 – Aug 1, 2025

Numbers Game

Jun 27, 2025 – Aug 1, 2025

Jun 27, 2025 – Aug 1, 2025

La Basurita

Jun 27, 2025 – Aug 1, 2025

Jun 13

Jun 13, 2025 – Jun 15, 2025

The Bridge Performance Incubator

Jun 13, 2025 – Jun 15, 2025

May 2, 2025 – Jun 14, 2025

Parallel To Hell

May 2, 2025 – Jun 14, 2025

May 2, 2025 – Jun 14, 2025

How To See In The Dark

May 2, 2025 – Jun 14, 2025

Feb 28, 2025 – Apr 11, 2025

The possibility of an expanse and what interrupts it

Feb 28, 2025 – Apr 11, 2025

Feb 28, 2025 – Apr 11, 2025

BAUBO UNEARTHED: A Trove of Mystery, Laughter in the Face of Grief, A Conjuring

Feb 28, 2025 – Apr 11, 2025

Dec 6, 2024 – Jan 17, 2025

FRUIT COCKTAIL CAKE

Dec 6, 2024 – Jan 17, 2025

Dec 6, 2024 – Jan 17, 2025

Entre ritos y portales

Dec 6, 2024 – Jan 17, 2025

Oct 23

Oct 23, 2024 – Nov 3, 2024

2024 Let's Co-Prosper Fundraiser and Online Auction

Oct 23, 2024 – Nov 3, 2024

Oct 4

Oct 4, 2024 – Oct 13, 2024

Landscapes from Under the Rubble

Oct 4, 2024 – Oct 13, 2024

Sep 13

Sep 13, 2024 – Oct 25, 2024

Bebesota

Sep 13, 2024 – Oct 25, 2024

Aug 12

Aug 12, 2024 – Aug 23, 2024

DEMOCRAZY: DNC Counter-Programming at Co-Prosperity

Aug 12, 2024 – Aug 23, 2024

Jun 21, 2024 – Jul 26, 2024

Of Love: A Labor

Jun 21, 2024 – Jul 26, 2024

Jun 21, 2024 – Jul 27, 2024

In Concert with Jen de los Reyes

Jun 21, 2024 – Jul 27, 2024

Jun 20

Jun 20, 2024 – Oct 26, 2024

How to Make a Scene

Jun 20, 2024 – Oct 26, 2024

Apr 27

Apr 27, 2024 – Jun 6, 2024

More Beautiful, More Terrible: Humans of Life Row

Apr 27, 2024 – Jun 6, 2024

Apr 26

Apr 26, 2024 – Jun 7, 2024

Moon Healing Escalation

Apr 26, 2024 – Jun 7, 2024

Apr 6

Apr 6, 2024

Nicole Eisenman and David Velasco in Conversation

Apr 6, 2024

Mar 20

Mar 20, 2024

TENGGER Concert with KIKÙ HIBINO

Mar 20, 2024

Mar 8, 2024

Drag in the Round

Mar 8, 2024

Mar 8, 2024 – Apr 14, 2024

Men I Have Ever Met

Mar 8, 2024 – Apr 14, 2024

Dec 9, 2023

Good Grief

Dec 9, 2023

Dec 9, 2023

Potential Energy

Dec 9, 2023

Oct 21

Oct 21, 2023 – Dec 3, 2023

PAPER JAM

Oct 21, 2023 – Dec 3, 2023

Sep 29

Sep 29, 2023 – Nov 11, 2023

Gathering, Then Losing

Sep 29, 2023 – Nov 11, 2023

Aug 5, 2023 – Sep 23, 2023

Contigo, Diana Solís

Aug 5, 2023 – Sep 23, 2023

Aug 5, 2023 – Sep 17, 2023

PROVE ME WRONG vol. 1

Aug 5, 2023 – Sep 17, 2023

View Event →

Sep

29

to Nov 11

Gathering, Then Losing

Fri, Sep 29, 2023 7:00 PM 19:00 Sat, Nov 11, 2023 5:00 PM 17:00
Google Calendar ICS

Co-Prosperity is excited to announce Gathering, Then Losing, Tong Liu’s first solo show in Chicago. Please join our opening reception on September 29th, from 8 - 11 PM!

Gathering, Then Losing, Tong Liu’s first solo show in Chicago, juxtaposes his two dramatically different and chronologically related projects: eating burgers and losing weight. The former begins two years ago and includes a large number of burger-oriented, surprisingly wide-ranging graphic works, small objects/sculptures, and videos. The project arose out of Tong’s passion for burgers, and in order to reasonably eat more burgers, the artist found a plausible excuse: making art from the byproducts of eating them. The project augmented and expanded, the possibilities of the form were appropriated and exhausted. After he had fully satisfied his appetite and overly gained weight, he ironically had to embark on the second project, which would simultaneously fulfill his personal desire to lose weight successfully that he had been craving and struggling with for a decade. The thought that this was for the sake of creating art gave the artist a strong motivation to stick to the diet and fitness plan. Tong eventually lost 71 pounds and conveyed his physical and mental suffering from this four-month "art project" in the most minimal format—an exhibition label. Again, the artist utilizes art as a means to help him reach his realistic and mundane desires, and this actually is his real art practice content.

While the two projects have great formal contrasts, they attest to Tong's consistent interest and thinking, i.e., what is the purpose of making works? The viewer can easily notice that he imitates the common forms in contemporary art, experiments with materials, and simulates some potential themes of the artworks. We may laugh and feel frustrated by these absurdized artistic formulas, and further rethink how much effort is required for something to be defined as art, at the very least?

"They were the means I used to coexist with my situation at the time," Tong says. His practice is always his reaction to his changing status, his specific intervention in specific reality. He believes in individuals’ creative practice in the face of their respective situations, and that art is only one of the solutions.

-Yutian Liu

Recent Exhibitions

Sep 5, 2025 – Sep 7, 2025

Sep 5, 2025 – Sep 7, 2025

Jul 17

Jul 17, 2025 – Jul 27, 2025

Subversion Summer Camp

Jul 17, 2025 – Jul 27, 2025

Jun 27, 2025 – Aug 1, 2025

Numbers Game

Jun 27, 2025 – Aug 1, 2025

Jun 27, 2025 – Aug 1, 2025

La Basurita

Jun 27, 2025 – Aug 1, 2025

Jun 13

Jun 13, 2025 – Jun 15, 2025

The Bridge Performance Incubator

Jun 13, 2025 – Jun 15, 2025

May 2, 2025 – Jun 14, 2025

Parallel To Hell

May 2, 2025 – Jun 14, 2025

May 2, 2025 – Jun 14, 2025

How To See In The Dark

May 2, 2025 – Jun 14, 2025

Feb 28, 2025 – Apr 11, 2025

The possibility of an expanse and what interrupts it

Feb 28, 2025 – Apr 11, 2025

Feb 28, 2025 – Apr 11, 2025

BAUBO UNEARTHED: A Trove of Mystery, Laughter in the Face of Grief, A Conjuring

Feb 28, 2025 – Apr 11, 2025

Dec 6, 2024 – Jan 17, 2025

FRUIT COCKTAIL CAKE

Dec 6, 2024 – Jan 17, 2025

Dec 6, 2024 – Jan 17, 2025

Entre ritos y portales

Dec 6, 2024 – Jan 17, 2025

Oct 23

Oct 23, 2024 – Nov 3, 2024

2024 Let's Co-Prosper Fundraiser and Online Auction

Oct 23, 2024 – Nov 3, 2024

Oct 4

Oct 4, 2024 – Oct 13, 2024

Landscapes from Under the Rubble

Oct 4, 2024 – Oct 13, 2024

Sep 13

Sep 13, 2024 – Oct 25, 2024

Bebesota

Sep 13, 2024 – Oct 25, 2024

Aug 12

Aug 12, 2024 – Aug 23, 2024

DEMOCRAZY: DNC Counter-Programming at Co-Prosperity

Aug 12, 2024 – Aug 23, 2024

Jun 21, 2024 – Jul 26, 2024

Of Love: A Labor

Jun 21, 2024 – Jul 26, 2024

Jun 21, 2024 – Jul 27, 2024

In Concert with Jen de los Reyes

Jun 21, 2024 – Jul 27, 2024

Jun 20

Jun 20, 2024 – Oct 26, 2024

How to Make a Scene

Jun 20, 2024 – Oct 26, 2024

Apr 27

Apr 27, 2024 – Jun 6, 2024

More Beautiful, More Terrible: Humans of Life Row

Apr 27, 2024 – Jun 6, 2024

Apr 26

Apr 26, 2024 – Jun 7, 2024

Moon Healing Escalation

Apr 26, 2024 – Jun 7, 2024

Apr 6

Apr 6, 2024

Nicole Eisenman and David Velasco in Conversation

Apr 6, 2024

Mar 20

Mar 20, 2024

TENGGER Concert with KIKÙ HIBINO

Mar 20, 2024

Mar 8, 2024

Drag in the Round

Mar 8, 2024

Mar 8, 2024 – Apr 14, 2024

Men I Have Ever Met

Mar 8, 2024 – Apr 14, 2024

Dec 9, 2023

Good Grief

Dec 9, 2023

Dec 9, 2023

Potential Energy

Dec 9, 2023

Oct 21

Oct 21, 2023 – Dec 3, 2023

PAPER JAM

Oct 21, 2023 – Dec 3, 2023

Sep 29

Sep 29, 2023 – Nov 11, 2023

Gathering, Then Losing

Sep 29, 2023 – Nov 11, 2023

Aug 5, 2023 – Sep 23, 2023

Contigo, Diana Solís

Aug 5, 2023 – Sep 23, 2023

Download the Press Release Here.

Aug 5, 2023 – Sep 17, 2023

PROVE ME WRONG vol. 1

Aug 5, 2023 – Sep 17, 2023

View Event →

Aug

5

to Sep 23

Contigo, Diana Solís

Sat, Aug 5, 2023 6:00 PM 18:00 Sat, Sep 23, 2023 9:00 PM 21:00
Google Calendar ICS

Co-Prosperity is excited to present Contigo, Diana Solís an exhibition of artists co-curated by Nicole Marroquin and Deanna Ledezma convening around the works of Pilsen-based photographer Diana Solís. The opening reception will be at Co-Prosperity Chicago alongside PROVE ME WRONG, by Isaac Couch, on August 5th from 6-9PM!

Closing event for Contigo, Diana Solís on Friday, September 22nd from 6:30–8 PM: Join us for a conversation with artists Oscar Arriola, Samantha Friend Cabrera, Marylu Herrera, Colleen Keihm, Juan Molina Hernández, and Diana Solís, moderated by Deanna Ledezma.

Download the Exhibition Guide Here.

Download the Closing Reception and Panel Discussion Information Here.

*Robert Ford, Cecilia “CC” Hunt, Trent Adkins (co-founder of* Thing magazine with Ford), and Diana Solís after a portrait session at Solís’s apartment and photo studio, above the Swan Club on North Clark Street, 1981.

Contigo, Diana Solís, co-curated by Nicole Marroquin and Deanna Ledezma, is a convening of photographs, artists, and communities. Rather than being structured as a “solo show,” Contigo: Diana Solís commemorates the social- and community-based dimensions of Solís’s photographic practice by bringing artists into creative dialogue. Born in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico in 1956, Diana Solís (they/them) has lived and worked in Chicago for over sixty years. This exhibition features Solís’s newly printed photographs, originating from film shot in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as their recently created digital photographs, made since their return to photography in 2020. These past and present photographs attest to Solís’s enduring commitment to documenting the people, places, and activities that form Latinx, LGBTQIA+, immigrant, and feminist communities in Pilsen and across Chicago. The recirculation of Solís’s archival photographs and revitalization of her practice today are intertwined, sustained by care, reciprocity, and labor. As the photographs in this exhibition underscore, portraiture is a strong source of this continuity. Whether their subject is a friend, acquaintance, or someone they just met, Solís’s honorific portraits exemplify their awareness of how photography, as a fundamentally social medium, asks us to behold each other.

The artists taking part in this exhibition reflect how Solís, as an educator, activist, and photographer, has long collaborated intergenerationally and continues to forge ever-expanding networks across generations in and beyond Chicago. The exhibition invites visitors to locate resonances among works by Solís and participating artists, while recognizing the specificities of their distinct social commitments, personal and collective histories, and sensibilities. In creative correspondence with Solís, these works act as points of intersection that help us understand art making as a practice done together, for our communities, and in response to others.

Including Works By:

Sandra Antongiorgi, Oscar Arriola, Samantha Friend Cabrera, Elle Muñoz Diaz, William Estrada, Maria Gaspar, Jackie Guataquira, Juan Molina Hernández, Sarita Hernández, Marylu E. Herrera, Colleen Keihm, Sam Kirk, Nicole Marroquin, Mony Nuñez, Sandra Oviedo, Clau Rocha, Vanessa Sanchez, CHema Skandal!, Akito Tsuda, and Nicholas Zepeda.

About the Artist

Diana Solís (b. 1956, Mexico) is a Chicago-based visual artist, photographer, and educator who has documented queer activism and Latinx daily life for almost five decades. They studied studio and experimental photography and worked as a photojournalist for twenty-five years, occasionally halted by recurring breast cancer. They have photographed poets including Sandra Cisneros, many consecutive years of Chicago and Mexico Pride marches, IV Encuentro Feminista de América Latina y el Caribe, early years at Latino Youth, marches and demonstrations, Chicago women’s rugby and women’s marathons, women’s bars, feminist gatherings, Chicano theater, and their neighborhood of Pilsen. They have been a teaching artist, painter, illustrator, and photographer for over forty years and currently reside in Pilsen. Solís is a 2023–24 recipient of the U.S. Latinx Art Forum (USLAF) Latinx Artist Fellowship.

http://dianasolis.com

This exhibition is co-sponsored by:

Recent Exhibitions

Sep 5, 2025 – Sep 7, 2025

Sep 5, 2025 – Sep 7, 2025

Jul 17

Jul 17, 2025 – Jul 27, 2025

Subversion Summer Camp

Jul 17, 2025 – Jul 27, 2025

Jun 27, 2025 – Aug 1, 2025

Numbers Game

Jun 27, 2025 – Aug 1, 2025

Jun 27, 2025 – Aug 1, 2025

La Basurita

Jun 27, 2025 – Aug 1, 2025

Jun 13

Jun 13, 2025 – Jun 15, 2025

The Bridge Performance Incubator

Jun 13, 2025 – Jun 15, 2025

May 2, 2025 – Jun 14, 2025

Parallel To Hell

May 2, 2025 – Jun 14, 2025

May 2, 2025 – Jun 14, 2025

How To See In The Dark

May 2, 2025 – Jun 14, 2025

Feb 28, 2025 – Apr 11, 2025

The possibility of an expanse and what interrupts it

Feb 28, 2025 – Apr 11, 2025

Feb 28, 2025 – Apr 11, 2025

BAUBO UNEARTHED: A Trove of Mystery, Laughter in the Face of Grief, A Conjuring

Feb 28, 2025 – Apr 11, 2025

Dec 6, 2024 – Jan 17, 2025

FRUIT COCKTAIL CAKE

Dec 6, 2024 – Jan 17, 2025

Dec 6, 2024 – Jan 17, 2025

Entre ritos y portales

Dec 6, 2024 – Jan 17, 2025

Oct 23

Oct 23, 2024 – Nov 3, 2024

2024 Let's Co-Prosper Fundraiser and Online Auction

Oct 23, 2024 – Nov 3, 2024

Oct 4

Oct 4, 2024 – Oct 13, 2024

Landscapes from Under the Rubble

Oct 4, 2024 – Oct 13, 2024

Sep 13

Sep 13, 2024 – Oct 25, 2024

Bebesota

Sep 13, 2024 – Oct 25, 2024

Aug 12

Aug 12, 2024 – Aug 23, 2024

DEMOCRAZY: DNC Counter-Programming at Co-Prosperity

Aug 12, 2024 – Aug 23, 2024

Jun 21, 2024 – Jul 26, 2024

Of Love: A Labor

Jun 21, 2024 – Jul 26, 2024

Jun 21, 2024 – Jul 27, 2024

In Concert with Jen de los Reyes

Jun 21, 2024 – Jul 27, 2024

Jun 20

Jun 20, 2024 – Oct 26, 2024

How to Make a Scene

Jun 20, 2024 – Oct 26, 2024

Apr 27

Apr 27, 2024 – Jun 6, 2024

More Beautiful, More Terrible: Humans of Life Row

Apr 27, 2024 – Jun 6, 2024

Apr 26

Apr 26, 2024 – Jun 7, 2024

Moon Healing Escalation

Apr 26, 2024 – Jun 7, 2024

Apr 6

Apr 6, 2024

Nicole Eisenman and David Velasco in Conversation

Apr 6, 2024

Mar 20

Mar 20, 2024

TENGGER Concert with KIKÙ HIBINO

Mar 20, 2024

Mar 8, 2024

Drag in the Round

Mar 8, 2024

Mar 8, 2024 – Apr 14, 2024

Men I Have Ever Met

Mar 8, 2024 – Apr 14, 2024

Dec 9, 2023

Good Grief

Dec 9, 2023

Dec 9, 2023

Potential Energy

Dec 9, 2023

Oct 21

Oct 21, 2023 – Dec 3, 2023

PAPER JAM

Oct 21, 2023 – Dec 3, 2023

Sep 29

Sep 29, 2023 – Nov 11, 2023

Gathering, Then Losing

Sep 29, 2023 – Nov 11, 2023

Aug 5, 2023 – Sep 23, 2023

Contigo, Diana Solís

Aug 5, 2023 – Sep 23, 2023

Aug 5, 2023 – Sep 17, 2023

PROVE ME WRONG vol. 1

Aug 5, 2023 – Sep 17, 2023

View Event →

Aug

5

to Sep 17

PROVE ME WRONG vol. 1

Sat, Aug 5, 2023 6:00 PM 18:00 Sun, Sep 17, 2023 9:00 PM 21:00
Google Calendar ICS

Co-Prosperity is excited to present PROVE ME WRONG vol. 1 , a solo-exhibition by Isaac Couch. The opening reception will be at Co-Prosperity Chicago alongside Contigo, Diana Solís on August 5th from 6-9PM!

“Contrasting the soft quality of fabric with a harsh reality, PROVE ME WRONG vol. 1 is the beginning of a critique on the agreements found within traditional American society. The statements stitched into the handmade tarps come directly from my experience of childhood up until the last few turbulent years we’ve experienced worldwide. They can range from ideas on the socioeconomic climate, to ideas on love or relationships. Are these statements the truth? As of right now they are mine, but as an artist I’m always looking for truth, so engage with the artwork. Engage with me. Give me your opinion and PROVE ME WRONG.”

Recent Exhibitions

Sep 5, 2025 – Sep 7, 2025