Unconditional Love is a two-person exhibition by Onieta Jackson and Andrew Emil opening on Saturday, February 11th until February 19th. Join us at Co-Prosperity for an opening reception with DJ sets by Sean Doe and Duane Powell on Saturday, February 11th from 6-9PM

Cultural Artifacts is a vehicle to cultivate and curate artists worldwide, with an emphasis on local ones. From photography to fine art, Cultural Artifacts will feature a wide range of multimedia artists, producing exhibits, limited editions, and collector's items, manufactured in Chicago via the curation of its founder, Howard Bailey. For the first of the exhibit portion of Cultural Artifacts, Bailey is presenting two artists at the Unconditional Love launch event on Feb 11th, 2023 at Co-Prosperity in Bridgeport, Chicago.

"These are orthographic painted art pieces that combine her signature handwriting painted over breathtakingly vibrant hearts using the lowercase letters "l-o-v-e”, along with her trademark wit and poetic literary style to provoke her audience. Though she used pen and paper when she began producing her l-o-v-e letter hearts in 2015, she was compelled to pick up a paintbrush this year, she says after a five-month-old was shot and killed in the South Shore neighborhood, where she painted eight heart murals, hoping to inspire neighborly to love and respect."

About The Artists

Oneita Jackson is a Detroit satirist with an English degree from Howard University. She was a copy editor for 11 years at the Detroit Free Press. During that time, she served as a public editor, wrote music reviews, edited on the Features, Nation/World, and Web desks, and received awards for her headline writing. She emerged as a leader on the News Copy Desk, conducting workshops, speaking to students, and presenting at seminars.
She was a member of the Accuracy and Credibility Committee and the Editorial Endorsement Board for the 2008 City of Detroit mayoral and City Council elections. She also wrote O Street for three years. It received the newspaper’s 2008 Columnist of the Year award. She stopped writing the column in May 2010 and returned to the News Copy Desk, where she stayed until August 2012.
Her next adventure was driving a yellow cab. She was featured in the local and international media (“First Block,” HOUR Detroit, “Under the Radar: Michigan,” Al Jazeera English) for her unique approach to the job. Mercedes-Benz International honored her on its She’s Mercedes platform. She was also a professional fixer during that time, working with international journalists, including teams from Paris, France (Le Petit Journal); Madrid, Spain (TVE-Television España); Copenhagen, Denmark (Jyllands-Posten), and Montreal, Quebec (Radio Canada). She also worked with an executive team from Martha Stewart.
She has worked in Detroit's fine dining and fast food restaurants as a manager, hostess, barback, cashier, and dishwasher. She now consults in the restaurant and hospitality industry, focusing on customer service and etiquette through the lenses of her books.
The Dayton, Ohio, native spent her summers in New York City and has lived in Washington, D.C., and Albany, N.Y. Her family is from Birmingham, Alabama. She still has a passion for newspapers and is often asked to guest-lecture to journalism classes when she’s not crafting sentences to leave a literary legacy for her son, Jay.
The Longtime Chicago House Music DJ and Producer, Neal Andrew Emil Gustafson, has been a respected fixture and familiar face in the vibrant Chicago and global music scene for over two decades. Part of Chicago’s 3rd wave of house music artists, his musical background begins with being a concert-trained percussionist since age 11.
Originally from KCMO, he earned a chair in the Kansas City Symphony before moving to Chicago in the late nineties to attend Columbia College Chicago. While studying acoustical engineering and music composition with Gustavo Leone, Ilya Levinson, and Andy Hill, Emil began his recording career as an assistant engineer to Vince Lawrence at Chicago Trax Studios. It was during this time that he embarked on a prolific production discography—racking up over 200+ production credits—diligently producing projects for some of house music’s most prominent labels.
In addition to his career in music production, Emil’s sound design and content editorial work have seen him become the Marketing Partners Manager for the benchmark international effects processing pioneers, Waves Audio, as well as the former Plug-in Marketing Strategist at GRAMMY® Award-winning audio effects firm, Eventide Audio.
As a music tech journalist, copywriter, and content editor, he is well known for his celebrated editorial with articles regularly making best-of lists (Best Of Attack 2019), such as The Genesis of Synthesis: Ten Reasons Why The Juno Is The Greatest Synthesizer Of All Time.
An avid photojournalist his whole life, Emil first started taking pictures intently in high school as a photojournalism student. Always working exclusively in the black-and-white medium, his work portrays a unique noir perspective that presents sometimes common things in many uncommon ways, while contrasting the architecture of Chicago against an ominous melancholy.
Originally from Chicago’s Westside, Howard Bailey has spent his entire life curating culture, starting with his introduction to the nightlife of the northside. While attending Lane Tech High School, he became the doorman at one of the most influential approaches to curative nightlife programming and amalgamation, the legendary Medusas Night Club on Sheffield Ave. He would become an entrepreneur and community leader in Chicago’s music and nightlife industries. From his Beat Parlor record store in ‘90s Wicker Park and opening the seminal mid-00s Goose Island destination for dance with Slick’s Lounge, to taking it back to the Southside with the Dream Cafe. Starting at the top of the year, Cultural Artifacts will see Bailey using his community of Englewood as the backdrop for presenting some of the most relevant multimedia artists in his network, and the world at large.