May
2
to Jun 14

Parallel To Hell

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

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.

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Jul
17
to Jul 27

subVersion Summer Camp

subVersion Summer Camp

July 17-27, 2025 in Chicago

Facilitated by Public Media Institute (Lumpen Radio, Buddy Chicago, Co-Prosperity, MdW, etc)

PMI is a part of The Buddy System

subVersion Summer Camp is a Do-It-Together series of gatherings and calls to action! 

We invite artists, educators, musicians, filmmakers, activists, designers, and workers of all stripes converging in Chicago this summer to help us make posters, music, t-shirts and merit badges while we make friends, comrades, and plans. Let’s make camp.

Join us in Bridgeport, the Community of the Future (and beyond), for ten days of camaraderie, fun and resistance to the spread of fascist culture. subVersion Summer Camp will foster collective re-education through public conversations, workshops, classes and happenings. We’ll present a broad range of creative forms of protest, and participants will be able to choose their own solidarity adventure… kickball or tag, puppets or banners, ballots or stink bombs?

How do I get involved? 

The goal of Summer Camp is to help each other impart strategies for creative solidarity and tactics for building coalition. Do you have an idea on how we might get this done? Sign up to become a “Camp Counselor” and run a program of your design! Or become a “junior counselor” who wants to chip in on other people’s programs! Or help open more space to do more stuff- talks at your apartment gallery, kickball in the park across the street from you, or mischief making in your alley.

We invite you to submit a proposal to present or take part in, or host a series of exhibitions, talks, lectures, public art interventions, screenings, performances, demonstrations, and actions.

Here are some more detailed examples we imagine you might want to help make happen:

  • Performances (concert, dance, reenactment, happening, etc)

  • Talks (panel, lecture, class, workshop, reading discussion and more )

  • Art Builds (printmaking session, puppet build, tie dye, wheat paste batching, street art, and more )

  • Printervention ( Submit designs for prints that can be made and distributed at subVersion - Themes of designs can include calls for solidarity, public service, supporting XYZ , promote action, imagining the world you want to see ) Sizes of prints will be:  [ 11” X 17” -  18” X 24”   - 24” x 36” ]

  • Moving image (live stream content, screening, outdoor projection, and more )

  • Radical Hospitality (cooking it, making bug juice, donating food from a restaurant you work at, and more )

  • Happenings (pitch in to a cookout, dj a dance party, set up games to play etc)
    Other (other?)

Have questions? 
Ask “FAQ-y” questions in public by commenting on: https://www.instagram.com/p/DJ49AE-v7c_/

Ask questions in private by writing to:
edmarlumpen@gmail.com and nick@publicmediainstitute.com

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Feb
28
to Apr 11

The possibility of an expanse and what interrupts it

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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

  • Google Calendar ICS

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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FRUIT COCKTAIL CAKE
Dec
6
to Jan 17

FRUIT COCKTAIL CAKE

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.  

Image Credit: Eugene I-Peng Tang 

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. 

Image Credit: Eugene I-Peng Tang 

Image Credit: Colectivo Multipolar 

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. 

Window Two: 
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Image Credit: Eugene I-Peng Tang 

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

manipulate my material manipulate my material manipulate my material
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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. 

Image Credit: Eugene I-Peng Tang 

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. 

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

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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Entre ritos y portales
Dec
6
to Jan 17

Entre ritos y portales


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.

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