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”.