DEADLINE APPROACHING: Subversion Summer Camp Proposals!
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?
upcoming ExhibitionS
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 that reimagines the legacy of her great-great-grandfather, Reverdy C. Ransom—a pioneering civil rights leader, AME bishop, and founder of the Institutional Church and Social Settlement in1896 at 3825 Dearborn Street. Through digitally fabricated sculptures, archival media, and interactive optical devices, Ransom traces how her great-great grandfather’s institution fused faith, education, health, and social services to support Black migrants arriving during the early Great Migration. The work draws on Ransom’s alliances with Jane Addams and Clarence Darrow, his leadership in the Niagara Movement alongside W.E.B. Du Bois, and his defiance of policy gambling networks, which led to a bombing of his church in 1903 by Policy Sam. Central to the exhibition are small 3D printed sculptures based on objects found in an original copy of Aunt Sally’s Policy Players Dream Book, published by Model Publishing Company at 542 S. Dearborn Street. Symbols such as bells, books, keys, and bricks—once used to assign numbers in the underground policy gambling game through dreams—are reimagined here as sculptural forms of resistance, mobility, and visionary intent, echoing the moral and political commitments of Reverdy C. Ransom. These objects speak to Ransom’s efforts to uplift and protect his community through education, spiritual leadership, and activism. Positioned before black obsidian mirrors—tools historically used in spiritual and divinatory practices for scrying, ancestral communication, and accessing hidden or intuitive knowledge—these forms invite reflection on Ransom’s legacy and the layered meanings of resistance across time. Inspired by Reverdy’s visit to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, where the groundbreaking Yerkes Telescope was first unveiled, the exhibition’s teleidoscopes refract archival and contemporary images into shifting patterns, inviting viewers to consider how history is continually reshaped through personal perspective, collective memory, and the act of looking itself. Together, these elements position Numbers Game as a site of historical excavation and speculative looking—where memory, place, and imagination converge in the ongoing pursuit of justice.
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.
Parallel to Hell
Le Hien Minh
May 2nd - June 14th, 2025
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.
Past PROGRAMS and exhibitions
exhibition texts
Co-Prosperity started an initiative in 2021 with the help of our Co-Pro Council that commissions writers to produce responses that document/review/analyze/discuss/talk about their experiences of our exhibitions. Are you a writer? Get added to our Writer’s Bank here!
About Co-Prosperity Chicago
Co-Prosperity is a gallery and HQ for Public Media Institute: a non-profit organization that brings you independent media projects like Lumpen Magazine, Lumpen Radio, and Lumpen TV, a gallery in upstate New York, Buddy (an artist store at the Chicago Cultural Center), and MdW: a coalition of artist-run organizations in the Midwest!
Come visit us at 3219 S MORGAN ST, Chicago, IL, and follow us on Instagram to see our Open Hours!