South Side Community Art Center

Whitfield Lovell: The Spell Suite | An Initiative of Toward Common Cause
2021-07-17 - 2021-09-25 | IL
Whitfield Lovell: The Spell Suite
An Initiative of Toward Common Cause

SSCAC is beyond thrilled to be participate in this 19 institution collaborative exhibit and excited to showcase new works by Whitfield Lovell!

Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40 explores the extent to which certain resources—air, land, water, and even culture—can be held in common. Raising questions about inclusion, exclusion, ownership, and rights of access, the exhibition considers art’s vital role in society as a call to vigilance, a way to bear witness, and a potential act of resistance. Presented on the 40th anniversary of the MacArthur Fellows Program, Toward Common Cause deploys the Fellows Program as “intellectual commons” and features new and recontextualized work by 29 visual artists who have been named Fellows since the award program’s founding in 1981.
Mining vintage photographs of unknown people for much of his subject matter, Whitfield Lovell (MacArthur Fellow, 2007) aims to, in his words, “illuminate the humanity and richness” of ordinary African Americans who lived between the Emancipation Proclamation and the civil rights movement. Shown here are portraits from Lovell’s Spell Suite, a series name that references a sequence of pieces in music or dance and conjures the mesmerizing quality of enchantment. Lucidly rendered and powerfully expressive, these Black figures contradict the stereotypes of African Americans that have been perpetuated by mass media, such as The Beulah Show recording that plays from Lovell’s installation of radios, After an Afternoon. Together, these works probe the effacement of cultural memory with sensuous tones that activate the legacy of those whose personal histories have been lost.
Whitfield Lovell: The Spell Suite is a collaboration between the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago and South Side Community Art Center. It is an initiative of Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40, which is organized by the Smart Museum of Art in collaboration with exhibition, programmatic, and research partners across Chicago. Toward Common Cause is supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and curated by Abigail Winograd, MacArthur Fellows Program 40th Anniversary Exhibition Curator, Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago.
Whitfield Lovell’s artwork is also on view at the Stony Island Arts Bank from July 15 to December 19, 2021. For more information, please visit towardcommoncause.org.

Image courtesy:
Whitfield Lovell (b. 1959). “Spell no. 12 (Richesse Noire),” 2021, Conte on paper with attached found object. © Whitfield Lovell. Courtesy of the artist and DC Moore Gallery, New York

The Balm: Art for Black Women's Wellness
2021-10-08 - 2021-12-23
The Southside Community Art Center is proud to host a group exhibition that exclusively highlights Black women artists, and there’s never been a more pertinent time to do so.
The Balm: Art for Black Women’s Wellness emerged as a collective artists’ action. Eight women who engage the time-honored tradition of using their artistic practice to give vision and form to our healing have contributed work across a variety of media and points of view. Themes emerged organically, with works that stand in both testimony and conversation. Together, they frame inquiry into the experiences of psychological fragmentation, the sustaining value of breathwork, cultural healing practices of the African Diaspora and healthcare disparities affecting maternal fetal outcomes. Themes of kinship and the restorative powers of the familiar, coalesce around memory of home, especially the south, which weaves its way through many of the works presented and finds its way to us here in Chicago. The alchemy of this project—bringing together artists and communities around a subject that concerns us all—demonstrates the power of Black women’s creative ingenuity.
Organized by visual artist and culture worker Kyrin Hobson, the exhibition will showcase artists based in and outside of Chicago, which include Hobson, Alexandria Valentine, Venise Keys, Jasmine Best, Brie Ortega, Janelle Dunlap, and Ashley January.
The exhibition opens for public viewing October 8th, in addition to an opening reception October 22nd, 6-8pm. RSVP here
Learn more about the participating artists below:

Jasmine Best
Jasmine Best is a true Southern Artist, gathering narratives from her Carolinian family and childhood. The North Carolina based artist uses her personal memories and manipulations of her memories to create dialogues about the black female identity in the south and in predominantly white spaces. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Recently was awarded the Artwork Archive Art Business Grant. She works with tangible and traditional mediums combined with digital means of art making. Her work often depicts maternal figures, each depicting the diversity and qualities that make up the black southern women in her life through several generations.
Jasminebest.com

Janelle Dunlap
Janelle is a Charlotte, NC and Chicago based social practice artist, curator and creative consultant who works to generate intentional and transformational change through her practice. She has a ten year background as a nonprofit professional where she worked in several roles that continue to inform and fuel her creative roles.
Janelle’s broad body of work ranges from micro museum exhibitions to performance art installations and continues to generate institutional and community based funding. Some of her previous funders include Art Science Council, the Knight Foundation, The Institute for Museum and Library Services, Z Smith Reynolds Foundation, and the Sweet Water Foundation in Chicago, IL. She is currently a 2020 recipient of the New Artist Society Scholarship through the Low- Residency MFA program at School of the Art Institute of Chicago and also a current student in the inaugural class of Social and Environmental Arts MFA program at Prescott College.
Beekeeping is a meditation on collective effort for survival. Through the use of abstraction, I use the medium of encaustic paint to articulate what is incommunicable between myself and the bees. This co-species relationship seeks wisdom beyond the anthropocene and gains knowledge through observation, care, and engagement with the honeybee. The west African goddess Oxum, is known for her healing powers that transmute pain into honey for her devotees. As one of Oxum’s totems, the bee is a sacred symbol of the healing power

https://www.janelledunlap.com/

Alexandria Valentine
Alexandria Valentine (b. on the South Side of Chicago, in 1996) uses archival practices, writing, collage, photography and textiles to explore themes of Black latent thought, ancestral landscapes, and the Black Romantic. Informed by the legacy of her loved ones who lived in and traveled from the South during the Great Migration, Valentine seeks to explore the past, create pathways to the future and peer at the spaces in between.
Alexandria received a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from Columbia University School of the Arts and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They are the co-founder of North Star Memory Project, a transmedia archive that prioritizes Black Chicago and Great Migration histories through counter-archive building.
My art investigates the liminal spaces of Black women’s wellness–what happens when we cease to be well and the process of trying to make our way back to wellness. Being Black and woman means that there are many people and structures actively trying to limit our wellness, my work explores the effects of that and the way we act upon those forces in return.
https://www.alexandriavalentine.net/

Ashley January
Ashley focuses on contemporary portraiture informed by her maternal experience. Due to pregnancy complications that led to her son being born premature, her new body of work addresses the crisis of the Black maternal mortality rate in America. This year Ashley has exhibited work with Dominique Gallery on Artsy, and with SoLA Contemporary in LA in 2020. Her work has been exhibited in numerous venues including, the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, IL; Viridian Artists Inc, New York, NY; Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA; Pacific Art Foundation, Newport Beach, CA; and the Irvine Fine Arts Center, Irvine, CA. She was selected as a first-place award winner at the Woman Made Gallery’s Midwest Open in Chicago, in 2018 and won the Beverly Bank Best of Show Award at the Beverly Arts Center’s juried competition in 2017.
Ashley earned her MFA in Painting from Laguna College of Art and Design, Laguna Beach, CA and her BS in Communication with an Advertising concentration and Minor in Studio Art from Bradley University, Peoria, IL. She lives in Chicago with her husband, son, dog, and works from her studio at Mana Contemporary.
I address the growing crisis of the Black maternal mortality and morbidity rate in America through painting and multimedia. Black women are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women. Motherhood, for Black women, is not detached from the state of being “Black” in the United States. For us, the decision to enter motherhood involves considerable risk, personal identity, healthcare disparities, burden-bearing and survival. My first pregnancy abruptly ended with a traumatic delivery. I was diagnosed with preeclampsia at 32 weeks and 4 days. Two days later, I delivered by emergency c-section. My baby boy was born prematurely with a low birth weight of 2 pounds and 13 ounces. Mothers who have suffered similar complications that lead to more adverse birth outcomes are considered to be a “near miss” meaning that they suffered severe maternal morbidity (SMM) in which Black women are disproportionately affected.
While uplifting Black mothers and children, the images and sound narratives serve as a call to action for more awareness, research, and eradication of unnecessary maternal and infant death in the United States of America.
https://ashleyjan.com/

Kyrin Hobson
Kyrin Hobson is a visual artist and independent arts professional dedicated to creating understanding and opportunity among diverse cultures. Her distinctive approach to art making and her commitment to building connections for institutions, audiences and artists define a multifaceted career. Studio work and research interests engage Hobson’s role as a cultural signifier and pragmatic change agent. Hobson’s artistic practice includes narrative figurative painting, portraiture, drawing and mixed-media installations. Multi-layered works fuse autobiography with myth and care giving traditions of New Orleans, Haiti and the Black Diaspora. Finding Guinen is a current body of work that interrogates the racial imaginary with regard to the wholeness and histories of women of African ancestry in the Americas.
Hobson is a 2023 MFA candidate at University of Chicago, in addition she holds a Master of Arts degree in Arts Administration and Museum Studies from New York University and a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art from UCLA.
These works are part of a series considering Black women’s health and wholeness through the lens of history. I use the body as a symbol of collective experience and hope for reconciliation. Fecundity Trick Card, We Spoke of Vessels and No. Money Man. engage imagery of the body and specifically the uterus to explore how we have maintained our wholeness during times when our reproduction has been hijacked and tied to commerce. Bearing witness to our physical legacies of fecundity, commodification and survival is important in the here and now as we cope with threats to reproductive rights, disparities in women’s healthcare and maternal fetal outcomes, and the scourge of human trafficking.
https://www.kyrinhobson.com/bio.html

Venise Keys
Venise Keys is a visual artist, writer, and educator raised on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois. Venise’s art has been exhibited at Front Room Gallery in Brooklyn, NY as well as the Museum Science and Industry, Plus Gallery, Woman Made Gallery, and Intersect Chicago (formally known as SOFA: Sculpture, Objects, and Functional Art & Design Fair) in Chicago.
She has a Bachelors and Master’s degree in Painting with a Certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies for her research on Black Feminist politics. She served as adjunct faculty of art for Illinois Central College, Bradley University, and has lectured at Dillard University on the role of the Black artist. This work is published in the scholarly journal, Kalfou: Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies.
This year, Venise’s writing on art education has circulated to Norway, and she is recently published in a New York arts and culture magazine, Hyperallergic. Venise is currently a visual art teacher at Art In Motion Creative Arts School and is the program director for the Kappa Chapter of Gamma Xi Phi.
The visual aesthetics and rituals of my studio practice explore personal intersections of race, gender, sexuality, age, and class. I use painting, drawing, craftwork, paper cutting, and found objects to explore art history, popular culture, and my childhood memories. Common themes in my artwork are queerness, generational trauma, the Black Arts Movement, intersectionality, Black feminist theory, rootwork spirituality, identity politics, and empowerment.
theartofvenisekeys

Brie Ortega
Brie Ortega is a photographer, digital artist, non-profit do-gooder, and social worker interested in how art can draw attention to health issues and potential solutions, particularly in Black communities. Her work is informed by navigating complex personal and familial health landscapes involving mental illness, traumatic birth, migration, metabolic dysfunction, breathing trouble, abuse, and neglect. Much of her life has been an experiment in healing from these contexts and reclaiming the health and happiness she believes is our birthright. While Brie has oscillated between California and Atlanta throughout her life, her mother is originally from Chicago, where Brie was last present as a toddler in foster care. Participating in The Balm represents a positive and poetic return to a familial place of origin.
Brie is currently living as nomadically as possible after spending 11 years in Los Angeles, where she was inspired to develop an art practice and also rebel against dominant notions of what it means to be an artist and to create in the social media era. It is important for her to use art as a tool for activism and therapy while disrupting the false dichotomy between artist and “non-artist.”
These portraits were created in 2019 as part of a small community effort with friends Krissy Leahy and Monique Hall called The Black Breath Project. In collaboration with members of the Los Angeles Black yoga and wellness community, we developed a zine called Breathing While Black in which participants submitted portraits or had their portraits made by me while engaged in mindful breathing practice. The focus on breath was inspired by its importance as a taken-for-granted yet integral part of life; the way breath can be interrupted by anxiety, respiratory illnesses, and pollution; the attention to breath given by yoga and meditation practices; and Eric Garner’s immortal last words. Accompanying the portraits are “breath testimonials.”
The time during which I created these portraits is very meaningful. I was on a partial sabbatical and really pouring resources into my own health. For the first time, I was managing depression and anxiety through nutrition and without medication. After a string of unhealthy relationships, I was being extra intentional about seeking people out who treated me with kindness and respect. And, of course, this was shortly before COVID put the act of breathing front and center on the world stage. In many ways, these portraits are an ode to that time of discovery.
@mrbrie
*top image credit: Alexandria Valentine. A Cosmic Anger, A Cosmic Rage. Mixed media collage. 2021

THE UNDERWORLD: George Crump
2022-01-14 - 2022-03-26
THE UNDERWORLD: George Crump articulates a collective, yet intimate expression of his mind’s eye through a body of work that makes social statements regarding life experiences, both subjective and observational.
In his most recent body of work, Crump situates his conceptions of “the underworld” by way of the psychological and social afterlives of oppression, with a tone of the spiritual, often positioning his figures between reality and surrealism. Crump applies the principles of discipline, understanding, and compassion to his work through his specific use of color, rich narrative approach, and form.

“The source material of my work is the truth of my past and present life experiences”, Crump says.

George Crump. I Don’t Know. Oil on canvas. 24″x 20″.

Themes of remembrance and the spirit of determination traverse the scope of Crump’s work as he’s concerned with aspects of universal notions of existentialism, affliction, redemption, and triumph.
The exhibition opens for public viewing on January 14th and runs through March 26th. Please RSVP for our opening day here.

George Crump is a Chicago-based native and visual artist. He attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and most recently held a solo exhibition at Faie African Art Gallery.
George developed his focus on the sensual nature of art, aiming to evoke universality and honesty within his practice. So much so, his strong emotional connection to his paintings are open to a variety of rich interpretations that span a wide range of emotions and forms.

RSVP for our timed viewing HERE.

COVID PROTOCOL

How to visit The Center safely:
– Vaccine verification required for entry
– Beginning January 3, in accordance with City of Chicago policy, all visitors 5 and older will be required to show proof of full vaccination.
– Please bring either your vaccine card, a printed copy, or a digital photo of your card.
– Visitors 16 and older will need to provide identification that matches their vaccination record
– Masks will continue to be required by all visitors 2 and older while in the museum.
We continue to require all visitors, vaccinated or unvaccinated to wear masks that cover both your nose and mouth.

An Unapologetic Dream: A MLK Celebration
2022-01-17 16:00 - 19:00 (America/Chicago)
Hyde Park Art Center in collaboration with South Side Community Art Center and Arts + Public Life, presents a free virtual screening of Unapologetic by Chicago filmmaker Ashley O”Shay, a film told through the lens of Janaé Bonsu and Bella Bahhs, two fierce abolitionist leaders, that gives a deep look into the Movement for Black Lives, from the police murder of Rekia Boyd to the election of mayor Lori Lightfoot.

Opening the program will also be an excerpt from Hyde Park Art Center’s Center Program Artist, Cathleen Campbell’s documentary, Martin Luther King’s Unsung Heros in Chicago, shorts from The Black Archive Project: Chicago Uprisings 2020 by local independent filmmaker and documentarian, Resita Cox, and a poetry reading from Leslé Honore, an AfroLatina poet, artivist, and author of Fist & Fire, a collection of powerful, unflinching poems that confront issues of social justice through the lens of real human lives and voices.
The poetry and films will be followed by a discussion with filmmakers Ashley O’Shay, Resita Cox, and Cathleen Campbell, and activists Bella Bahhs and Janaé Bonsu.
Thank you to our promotional partner the Multicultural Affairs Department at the School of the Art Institute. And special thanks to The Jentes Family Foundation for supporting our Public Programs at the Hyde Park Art Center.

*still image courtesy of Ashley O’shay. Unapologetic (2020).

WE ARE HERE: Honoring Women in the Center's Collection
2022-01-21 - 2022-03-26
WE ARE HERE: Honoring Women in the Center’s Collection, features artworks made by several women artists in the Center’s collection.

This exhibition provides us an opportunity to think about the materiality of Black women’s art, while also expanding biographical and visual information on Black women artists. The curatorial project permits the center an opportunity to reflect on impactful key women artists who have shaped and inspired persons in our institution and beyond. The exhibit will not feature the works of every woman artist in the collection, instead it will focus on developing the biographical representations of several artists who are often obscured in favor of others, while also highlighting artists very well documented in the canon of Black Art like Dr. Margaret Burroughs and Barbara Jones Hogu.
Curated by SSCAC Archives and Collections Manager LaMar R. Gayles Jr

EXHIBITING ARTISTS
Margaret Taylor Burroughs
Espi Eph (Frazier)
Madeline Haydon
Yasmin Sabu

BIOGRAPHIES

Espi Eph Espi (Eph) Frazier, is an artist who is initially from the Chicago Area but relocated to the Baltimore area in 1993, included here are a selection of her works from the Center’s collection ranging from wood graphics to a mixed media composition. In the 1980s Frazier created the wooden pieces featured here by partaking in a process of staining wood with ink drawn graphics and detailing those graphics by relief carving into the surfaces. A great deal of her work explores abstraction but some of it also explores representation of women figures especially Black women.

Dr. Margaret Taylor Burroughs is an internationally known artist and educator who is heavily connected to the historical foundations of both the South Side Community Art Center and DuSable Museum of African American History. Burroughs is well known for her work in printmaking and poetry, but was known to work in a plethora of media. Included here are several examples of her painting work coupled with a reproduction of possible prototype sketches she completed while in Mexico which might have served as inspiration for the two paintings.
Yasmin Sabur is initially from Chicago and now works and lives out of California, her work consists of a range of themes from the environment, to visualizing how Black persons interact with their surroundings. In her exhibited piece titled Private Beach- Keep Out we see Sabur reference discrimination that occurred on Chicago beaches in the 20th century when Blacks weren’t allowed on many of the beaches in the city. Sabur renders the clearly Black figures in a popular expressionless monochromatic motif that is seen echoed throughout Black art in the 20th century which often is referencing issues or stigmas in private and or social life.
Madeline Haydon Born in Chicago and later relocating to Hawaii, exhibited in many spaces throughout her career, including the South Side Community Art Center. Haydon defined herself as a realist working with a heightened awareness for color. This proclivity for color is exemplified in the oil painting still life included here in the exhibition which consists mainly of warm toned objects overlaid on top of a green background moving from warm to cold hues.

COVID PROTOCOL
How to visit The Center safely:
– Vaccine verification required for entry
– Beginning January 3, in accordance with City of Chicago policy, all visitors 5 and older will be required to show proof of full vaccination.
– Please bring either your vaccine card, a printed copy, or a digital photo of your card.
– Visitors 16 and older will need to provide identification that matches their vaccination record
– Masks will continue to be required by all visitors 2 and older while in the museum.
We continue to require all visitors, vaccinated or unvaccinated to wear masks that cover both your nose and mouth.

*image courtesy: Madeline Haydon (American artist, b. 1909) Still Life, 1967 Oil on canvas 20 1/8 x 16″. Collection of South Side Community Art Center

Creative Wellness with Marcus Alleyne
2022-02-19 15:00 - 16:00
FEBRUARY 19
3PM CST ON ZOOM

Marcus Alleyne is a Chicago-based artist working in mixed media, primarily painting and collage. His work explores personal and social subject matter such as religion/spirituality, music and culture. As diverse as his work is, he is equally prolific in each of his genres of media. He is passionate about language as an art form and often incorporates poetry and text into his paintings. Transcending time and space, Marcus’ work speaks to the future while addressing the past and nurturing the present.

Join us for an in-depth guided exchange presented by Marcus about his relationship to creative and spiritual wellness practices, and the ways they influence his work.

REGISTRATION: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYscOusqz4oHNzwnrMerdgwePL_l3TZg0tK

COMING TO THE TABLE: In Conversation with Archivist Skyla Hearn
2022-03-17 18:00 - 19:30
Archivist Skyla Hearn and SSCAC Public Engagement lead zakkiyyah najeebah dumas o’neal kick off our Women’s Month and 3831/VOICES series to engage in an informal conversation that traverses Skyla Hearn’s archiving practice, their intersecting connections to Black women arts workers and SSCAC, and the influences that help sustain them in their work.

Grab a cup of tea – or wine, and join us! All attendees are welcome to join in on the conversation, so come ready to talk!

ZOOM REGISTRATION: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEsdO2hpjMuHt1HVb7ylERiBrz0xeDi5EoQ

Skyla Hearn is a proud Chicagoan (South Side) by way of Mississippi. As an archivist, liberatory memory and cultural worker Skyla is most concerned with supporting a community’s attempt to understand, document and share its own history, particularly those aspects that have not been well recorded. Skyla’s passion and dedication towards the creation, management, preservation and accessibility of archives, with particular focus on BIPOC LGBTQIA+ collections, ephemeral materials, knowledge development, and social justice has provided her with unique opportunities to work with diverse individuals, communities and repositories at various capacities nationally and internationally.
Skyla is also co-founder of The Blackivists, a collective of trained Black memory workers who provide expertise on archiving and preservation practices to communities in the Chicago land area; and the inaugural Manager of Archives for Cook County Government under the Offices of the President of the Board of Commissioners.
As a legacy keeper, she recently (March 2021) co-edited the zine publication Our Girl Tuesday: An Unfurling for Dr. Margaret T.G. Burroughs alongside Sarah Ross and Tempestt Hazel with an introduction by Mariame Kaba, published by Sojourners for Justice Press.

https://www.theblackivists.com/

3831/VOICES is a new program series of conversations and lectures featuring Black artists, scholars, curators, historians, and arts workers that invite our community into their creative practices, research, and conceptual processes, and more! 3831 takes after SSCAC’s exact numerical address in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood. Although we recognize ourselves as an iconic historical site for Black artistic and cultural advancement, we continue to evolve as a contemporary hub for new thought practices, creative practices, and innovative frameworks being developed by a diverse array of amazing folks here in our city, and beyond.

Image Courtesy (above): South Side Community Art Center

PROMPT/ DREAM/ BUILD: Andrea Yarbrough & ebere agwuncha
2022-03-24 18:00 - 19:30
Andrea and ebere’s multidisciplinary practices are informed by acts of care and storytelling, that ultimately become actualized within the objects and projects they build out- individually and collectively. Engaging in practices of co-thinking, designing, and building, they both expand on alternative modes for solidarity amongst Black women, restorative design approaches, and a socially informed process of creating.Andrea and ebere will lead us in to a live call and response, directed by their relationships to dreaming, thought processes, and “the work”.

ZOOM REGISTRATION: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUqcuirqTooE9VNHGJRbDjKaWG2dG5FpvoP

ebere agwuncha (b.1997, Chicago) is a designer, maker, and artist based in Chicago via Anambra State, Nigeria. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design from Iowa State University in 2019. Her dexterous practice aims to hybridize various craft and materials including wood, ceramic, and natural fiber. Through creating functional ‘care filled object(s)’ and speculative installations, they aim to preserve Igbo stories through more expansive iterations using a diverse set of techniques. She pushes the cusp of perfection – or imperfection – while intimately using her hands to physicalize ideas. ebere will be an inaugural artist-in-exchange with the Sculpture Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, this spring of 2022. Part of this residency period will be used to produce work for their upcoming first solo show at the Comfort Station (Chicago, IL) this May of 2022.

https://ebereagwuncha.com/

Andrea Yarbrough is a multi-disciplinary artist, curator and educator based on the South Side of Chicago nurturing sites of care through a blend of urban agriculture, civic engagement, and art praxis. Her praxis is embodied through the collaborative placekeeping initiative in c/o: Black women (in care of Black women), bringing together writers, curators, farmers, mamas, dancers, organizers, teachers, cultural producers, youth, and visual artists, to collectively exhume the (in)visibility of care for Black women. Andrea’s process transforms quotidian materials, slated for waste streams, into designed and utilitarian objects that serve as community resources, and incorporates the impact of solidarity and circular economies at the material, individual, and
communal scales. By constructing functionally designed objects, cultivating land, archiving and documenting histories of Black women, and curating exhibitions and public programs, her socially-engaged practice exemplifies how communities can reclaim and reconstruct their surroundings while navigating agency and ownership over underutilized space. She seeks to engage in an arts-integrated ecological approach, as a way to not only treat blight in particular neighborhoods, but to support the restoration of the entire city, all while negotiating new spatial imaginaries, expanding our economies of care. Ultimately, she engages in a community-centered visual arts production that works to reshape land-use policy by activating vacant space as sites
that heal individuals and regenerate collective imaginations. Andrea believes that participatory social praxis art is one of many ways to rewrite a history of redlining, divestment, and violence.

https://incareofblackwomen.us/

3831/VOICES is a new program series of conversations and lectures featuring Black artists, scholars, curators, historians, and arts workers that invite our community into their creative practices, research, and conceptual processes, and more! 3831 takes after SSCAC’s exact numerical address in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood. Although we recognize ourselves as an iconic historical site for Black artistic and cultural advancement, we continue to evolve as a contemporary hub for new thought practices, creative practices, and innovative frameworks being developed by a diverse array of amazing folks here in our city, and beyond.

Image courtesy(above): Andrea Yarbrough

COLLAGE WORKSHOP WITH CECIL MCDONALD JR.
2022-03-30 17:00 - 18:30
With a curated selection of images from the SSCAC archives, Artist Catalyst Cecil McDonal Jr., and Public Art Manager, Dorian Sylvain invite you to participate in an art making activity intended to encourage conversation about community. Prompts exploring community heroes, language, and culture will guide each participant’s project.

The workshop will be held Wednesday, March 30th at 5PM CST via Zoom.
A toolkit including reproductions from the archives and additional art materials is included in registration. Toolkits can be picked up on Saturday, March 26 from 12PM to 4PM.

ZOOM REGISTRATION: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Vzl6UUAtSPq0GaNPKDN9wA

Cecil McDonald Jr. most interested in the intersections of masculinity, familial relations, and the artistic and intellectual pursuits of black culture, particular as this culture intersects with and informs the larger culture. Through photography, video, and dance/performance, he seeks to investigate and question the norms and customs that govern our understanding of each other, families, and the myriad of societal struggles and triumphs. He studied fashion, house music and dance club culture before receiving a MFA in Photography at Columbia College Chicago, where he currently serves as an adjunct professor and a teaching artist at the Center for Community Arts Partnership at Columbia College Chicago.

Cecil has exhibited both nationally and internationally, with works in the permanent collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art, Chicago Bank of America LaSalle Collection, and Museum of Contemporary Photography. His awards include: Joyce Foundation Midwest Voices & Visions Award, the Artadia Award, The Swiss Benevolent Society, Lucerne, Switzerland Residency and the 3Arts Teaching Artist Award. He participated in Light Work’s Artist-in-Residence program in July 2013. In 2016 the ﬁrst edition of his monograph In The Company of Black was published and was shortlisted by the Aperture Foundation for the 2017 First PhotoBook Award.

https://www.cecilmcdonaldjr.com/

BLACK FASHION ARCHIVE: Rikki Byrd
2022-03-31 18:00 - 19:30
Black Fashion Archive was founded in 2018 by Rikki Byrd to offer a digital repository of Black style and Black contributions to the fashion industry. Rikki will share the trajectory of her visual research, Black cultural impacts on the fashion industry, and how an archival approach informs her work.

ZOOM REGISTRATION: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_69LkL96rTTGK9pqRe6bPLw

Rikki Byrd is a scholar, writer, educator and curator with research interests in black studies, performance studies, fashion studies and art history. Her master’s thesis at Parsons, Black, the Color We Wear: Representing Blackness in American Fashion, explored how blackness is centered in popular culture and offered a new approach to reimagining dialogue concerning the black body. Since its completion, her research has led her to creating innovative spaces to engage students, scholars and industry professionals in conversations on race and representation.

https://www.rikkibyrd.com/

3831/VOICES is a new program series of conversations and lectures featuring Black artists, scholars, curators, historians, and arts workers that invite our community into their creative practices, research, and conceptual processes, and more! 3831 takes after SSCAC’s exact numerical address in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood. Although we recognize ourselves as an iconic historical site for Black artistic and cultural advancement, we continue to evolve as a contemporary hub for new thought practices, creative practices, and innovative frameworks being developed by a diverse array of amazing folks here in our city, and beyond.

EMERGENCE: Intersections at The Center
2022-04-15 - 2022-07-02
OPENING RECEPTION:
APRIL 15, 6-8PM

EMERGENCE: Intersections at the Center spotlights The South Side Community Art Center’s historical role in supporting a full spectrum of Black artists through an intersectional viewpoint. The first exhibition of its kind at the South Side Community Art Center, EMERGENCE positions the Center as an important anchor for Black LGBTQ artists who belonged to its community from its founding in 1940 to the 1980s. The exhibition features work addressing identity and community, queer spaces and performance, in collage, painting, sculpture, photography, and more.

Ralph Arnold (1928–2006). Love Sign II. Mixed media, 1995.
Collection of the South Side Community Art Center.

EMERGENCE emphasizes the middle decades of the twentieth century, from the 1940s to the 1980s. For much of this time period, sexual orientation was heavily policed, both literally by the Chicago Police Department, and in a variety of other ways through the imposition of norms by society and its institutions, such as church, family, medical institutions, and school. For this reason, many of the artists in the exhibition, especially in the early decades represented here, were careful to exercise discretion in their life and work. Most did not publicly identify themselves as gay, lesbian, trans, or bisexual. At the same time, particularly in Bronzeville, Chicago’s South Side Black community held spaces that were open to participants of differing sexual orientations and identities. Political movements on behalf of Gay Liberation were active throughout this period, gaining strength in the 1970s and 80s.
EMERGENCE features work by Ralph Arnold, Richmond Barthé, Sylvester Britton, William S. Carter, Mikki Ferrill, Jonathan Green, Juarez Hawkins, Berry Horton, Patric McCoy, Charles Sebree, Allen Stringfellow, and Ellis Wilson.

Curated by LaMar Gayles Jr. & zakkiyyah najeebah dumas o’neal

Juarez Hawkins (1962–). Self-Portrait. Oil pastel and acrylic onmuseum board, 1992. Collection of the artist.

EMERGENCE promo image courtesy:
Mikki Ferrill (1937–). Untitled (Portrait of Terry Readus). Gelatin silver print, 1973. Collection of the South Side Community Art Center. Design by Aay Preston-Myint.

EMERGENCE is supported by a major grant from the Re-envisioning Permanent Collections program of the Terra Foundation for American Art and by a partnership with Northwestern University’s Department of Art History.

TOWARD THE CENTER: In Conversation with Patric McCoy, Juarez Hawkins, and Jonathan Green
2022-04-21 18:00 - 19:30
REGISTER VIA ZOOM

Join SSCAC Archives and Collections Manager LaMar Gayles Jr. for a conversation with EMERGENCE exhibiting artists Patric McCoy, Juarez Hawkins, and Jonathan Green for a conversation centering their individual practices, personal knowledge of artists in the SSCAC archive, and their relationships to Black art communities specific to Chicago’s South Side.
This program is organized in conjunction with SSCAC’S current exhibition, EMERGENCE: Intersections at the Center, with programming support by Northwestern University.

EMERGENCE spotlights The South Side Community Art Center’s historical role in supporting a full spectrum of Black artists through an intersectional viewpoint. EMERGENCE positions the Center as an important anchor for Black LGBTQ artists who belonged to its community from its founding in 1940 to the 1980s and features work addressing identity and community, queer spaces and performance, in collage, painting, sculpture, photography, and more.

BIOGRAPHIES:

Juarez Hawkins

Juarez Hawkins (born 1962) is a painter, ceramicist, curator and educator from Chicago, IL, whose work explores questions of identity, spirituality and the body. Juarez received her B.A. from Northwestern University and her M.A. from Columbia College Chicago. She has exhibited widely, with solo shows at the 33 Collective Gallery, Concordia University and the South Side Community Art Center. She is co-curator of Gallery Programs at Chicago State University and has organized exhibitions featuring artists in the permanent collection, including artists such as Richard Hunt and Marva Jolly. Other recent curatorial projects include The Love Affair Continues at the DuSable Museum of African American History and Intersectional Touch at the Hyde Park Art Center. Juarez is a member of Sapphire and Crystals, a collective of African American female artists and is a two-time recipient of the Community Arts Assistance Program Grant.
Patric McCoy

Patric McCoy (born 1946) is an art collector, curator, environmental chemist and photographer from Chicago whose art collection contains more than one thousand paintings, drawings, sculptures and collages of work made by African American artists. McCoy went to Englewood High School, the University of Chicago and Governors State University and worked as an environmental scientist for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 1976 to 2006. In the 1980s, McCoy developed his practice as a photographer, focusing on everyday lives of people and the landscape of Chicago. In 2003, McCoy co-founded Diasporal Rhythms, a non-profit that promotes the collection of art by living African-American artists. McCoy’s collection was shown at the DuSable Museum of African-American History in Chicago in 2018.

Jonathan Green
Jonathan Green (born 1955) is a painter and printmaker, from Gardens Corner, South Carolina. Green’s work explores narrative realism through depictions of everyday life, often in rural settings. Green was raised by his grandmother, who taught him about the culture and dialect of the Gullah communities of the U.S. South. Green’s relationship to the Gullah culture remains one of the major influences on his work. After serving in the United States Air Force, he attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, receiving his BFA in 1982. Green began working with the South Side Community Art Center in the 1980’s and had a solo exhibition there in 1987. His work is in the permanent collections of several museums, including Morris Museum in August, GA, The African-American Museum in Philadelphia, PA and The Naples Museum of Art in Naples, FL. He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of South Carolina and published the book Gullah Images: The Art of Jonathan Green in 1996. Green has taken part in countless exhibitions, including In the Hands of African American Collectors at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles and Highlights: African American Art from the Norton Collection at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, FL.

image courtesy:
Juarez Hawkins (1962–). Self-Portrait. Oil pastel and acrylic onmuseum board, 1992. Collection of the artist.

EMERGENCE CURATORS CONVERSATION
2022-05-02 19:00 - 20:30
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER VIA ZOOM

In conjunction with EMERGENCE: Intersections at the Center, the current exhibition at the South Side Community Art Center, the exhibition’s curators, zakkiyyah najeebah dumas-o’neal and LaMar R. Gayles, Jr., discuss the exhibition and the research that made it happen. The conversation will be moderated by Greg Foster-Rice ON ZOOM.

EMERGENCE spotlights LGBTQ artists who were part of the South Side Community Art Center’s early decades, from the 1940s to the 1990s, and presents the Center’s historical role in supporting a full spectrum of Black artists through an intersectional viewpoint.

Mikki Ferrill (born 1937). Untitled (The Garage). Gelatin silver print, 1973. Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, The Richard Florsheim Art Fund Purchase.

zakkiyyah najeebah dumas o’neal is a visual artist, arts organizer, and educator based in Chicago.
zakkiyyah has been included in numerous group exhibitions and has had several solo exhibitions at Mana Contemporary, Blanc Gallery, Indiana University, and South Bend Museum of Art. Her work and arts programming has been presented in various forms at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, NADA, The Art Institute of Chicago, The August Wilson African American Cultural Center, Chicago Humanities Festival, DePaul University, and Harvard Graduate School of Design to name a few. She has also curated exhibitions at spaces such as Chicago Art Department, Blanc gallery and Washington Park Arts Incubator at the University of Chicago. She was recently an Artist in Residence at Arts and Public Life at University of Chicago and an Artist in Residence at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN.
zakkiyyah is a Co-founder and organizer of CBIM (Concerned Black Image Makers): a collective of Black artists, thinkers, and curators that prioritize shared experiences and concerns by lens based artists of the Black diaspora, through programming, exhibitions, and dialogues.
LaMar Gayles (a native son of the South Side of Chicago) is an archaeologist, independent curator, material culture scholar, and technical art historian. He is currently completing a PhD in Art Conservation and Preservation Studies at the University of Delaware after completing a MA in Museum and Exhibition Studies from University of Illinois at Chicago’s MUSE program while holding two separate positions: Archive and Collections Manager at the South Side Community Art Center and Executive Director at the Union Street Gallery. Gayles earned a Cum Laude BA with a triple major (art history, archaeology, and ethnic studies) from St. Olaf College. He has researched and curated exhibitions on Black American jewelry and its historical progressions from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first century, including the 2021 exhibition “Divine Legacies in Black Jewelry and Metals” at the National Museum of Ornamental Metals. Gayles’s research methodology combines archaeometry, arts-based research, conservation science, scientific instrumentation, art historical analysis, ethnography, historical reproduction, technical studies, and qualitative research to explore material and visual culture.
Greg Foster-Rice (he/him) is an associate professor of the history of photography at Columbia College Chicago. Most recently, he curated The Many Hats of Ralph Arnold: Art, Identity & Politics, which opened at the Museum of Contemporary Photography (2018) and travels to DePauw University in Fall 2022. For that exhibition, Foster-Rice edited and co-authored a scholarly catalogue of essays surveying Arnold’s extensive career (2018). Previously he co-curated The City Lost and Found: Capturing New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, 1960-1980 at the Art Institute of Chicago (2014) and Princeton University Art Museum (2015) and co-authored that exhibition’s catalogue which received the Philip Johnson Award from the Society of Architectural Historians. He also co-edited Reframing the New Topographics (2011) and contributed to the volumes Romare Bearden in the Modernist Tradition (2011) and Black is Black Ain’t (2013). He has a BA from Rice University and a PhD in Art History from Northwestern University.

AN EVENING WITH SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY & CAMILLE BACON
2022-05-12 18:00 - 19:30
ZOOM REGISTRATION HERE

SSCAC is thrilled to invite you into one of many conversations between SHAWNE MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY and Camille Bacon that have activated feelings of remembrance, love, grief, and longing. For this program they will respond to the liminal, but expansive spaces within EMERGENCE that relate to aspects of desire, yearning, and intimacy specific to the Black queer femme/lesbian gaze and ways of being.

SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY is a new media artist and poet. Known for using sound, video, and performance, HOLLOWAY shapes the rhetorics of technology and sexuality into tools for exposing structures of power. She has spoken and exhibited work internationally in spaces like Performance Space New York, The New Museum, The Kitchen, The Time-Based Art Festival at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. SHAWNÉ is currently teaching in the Film, Video, New Media, and Animation departments at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Camille Bacon is a Chicago-based writer who is cultivating a “sweet Black writing life” as informed by the words of poet Nikky Finney and the infinite wisdom of the Black feminist tradition.

This program is presented in conjunction with EMERGENCE: Intersections at the Center, currently on view until July 2, 2022.
EMERGENCE: Intersections at the Center spotlights The South Side Community Art Center’s historical role in supporting a full spectrum of Black artists through an intersectional viewpoint. The first exhibition of its kind at the South Side Community Art Center, EMERGENCE positions the Center as an important anchor for Black LGBTQ artists who belonged to its community from its founding in 1940 to the 1980s and beyond.

Funding for EMERGENCE programming is generously supported by Northwestern University.

CEREMONIES: A SELECTION OF SHORT FILMS BY MARLON RIGGS
2022-05-19 18:00 - 20:00
RSVP HERE

In conjunction with EMERGENCE: Intersections at the Center, the current exhibition at the South Side Community Art Center, CEREMONIES will be screened IN PERSON, in partnership with South Side Projections.

Co-curator of EMERGENCE and SSCAC Public Programs and Engagement manager zakkiyyah najeebah dumas-o’neal will lead a post-discussion with Aymar Jean Christian, associate professor of communication studies at Northwestern University and co-founder of OTV | Open Television. Aymar also served as an advisory panelist during the organizing phases of EMERGENCE.

A filmmaker unlike any other, Marlon Riggs was an unapologetic gay Black man who defied a culture of silence and shame. Riggs used a bold mix of documentary, performance, poetry, and music to confront the legacy of racist stereotypes and the impact of AIDS on the Black community. He died in 1994 of AIDS-related illness, leaving behind a vital, living body of work that wrestled with the very definition of what it means to be Black.
Marlon Troy Riggs (1957-1994) was an American filmmaker, educator, poet, and gay rights activist. He produced, wrote, and directed several documentary films including Ethnic Notions, Tongues Untied, Color Adjustment and Black Is, Black Ain’t. His films examine past and present representations of race and sexuality in the United States.

CEREMONIES directly references poet Essex Hemphill’s groundbreaking anthology of short stories and poetry Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry, which won the National Library Association’s Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual New Author Award when it was published in 1992. The book’s poems and essays expand on many important social issues at the time, such as the white objectification of Black men, as epitomized by Robert Mapplethorpe’s The Black Book; AIDS in the Black community; and the complex dynamics gay Black men experience in both the white LGBTQ+ community and in Black culture – very much in alignment with Rigg’s exploration of these topics as it appeared in his film works. In addition Essex Hemphill’s poetry was also featured in Marlon Riggs’ documentaries Tongues Untied (1989) and Black Is … Black Ain’t (1994).

This program features three short films by Marlon Riggs: Affirmations (1990), Anthem (1991), and Regrette Rien (No Regret)(1993), of which depict the visual, artistic, and political convictions of a transformative and pioneering filmmaker whose work is a historical document of Black gay sexuality from a Black perspective and still deeply relevant today.

This program is generously supported by, and in partnership with South Side Projections.
Founded in 2011, South Side Projections presents films at locations across Chicago’s south side to foster conversation about complex social and political issues. At many screenings, we enlist scholars, activists, and filmmakers to lead discussions, while other screenings offer opportunities to present seldom-seen films of historical and artistic value to the communities of Chicago’s south side.

Black Magic: A Tintype Photo Project with Adam Davis
2022-06-03 12:00 - 2022-06-04 16:00
Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary artist Adam Davis brings his 1850’s tintype photo practice to the South Side Community Art Center!

On June 3rd and June 4th, South Side Community Art Center will host artist Adam Davis and his ‘Black Magic’ tintype photography project. Through this participatory photo activation, Adam will offer free portrait sessions to members of the Chicago community.

Davis will create 2 portraits per session – one for participants to take home and one for his own archive. Traveling to historically Black cities and communities nationwide, Davis is in pursuit of creating 20,000 tintype portraits of Black Americans with the goal of creating the largest contemporary archive of Black American portraits.

Themes of Afrofuturism, celebrating the Art of Magic, and Queerness have become foundational to Davis’ process throughout the project.
Black historical art spaces, such as SSCAC are critical to Davis’ intent to be in conversation with the legacy of Black artistic innovation, community engagement, and Black archival contributions to the culture.

Please read below on how to participate:

Portrait sessions will take place at SSCAC from 1pm – 4pm.

Each portrait session will take 20 – 30 minutes, which includes a chemical development process. Due to the nature of this process, RSVP time selections are required to participate.

We kindly ask that you select 1 time slot for yourself only, so that we’re able honor each participant per session.

RSVP HERE

Adam Davis (b. 1994) is an American Visual Artist, Educator, and Arts Education Advocate born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Davis obsessively seeks to apply his passion for creativity, communication, and storytelling to assist in finding solutions to problems that hinder diverse and equitable cultural progression at the intersection of the Arts and Education within the Black community. With a degree in Education and 6 years in the classroom, Davis’ work intends to document the lives of Black bodies in a way that educates, empowers, and returns the permission to dictate how they are photographed to the subject. Delving into personal narratives on religion, queerness, mental health, and the greater understanding of the global African diaspora, Davis creates images, both moving and still, from a place of curiosity.

Davis is a resident at the 54 year old Black Owned and operated community arts organization St. Elmo Village in Los Angeles, California. Here Davis developed his darkroom practice on campus in the facilities opened by founder Roderick Sykes. Davis’ second solo exhibition, titled Black Magic, was created at the Village and opened at the Byrd Museum in Los Angeles, where his darkroom practice lies at the center of his practice of making tintype portraits. The exhibition monograph was successfully published soon after by Paper Chase Press and debuted at the New Art Dealers Alliance fair in Miami during Art Basel Week 2021. Davis’ work has been featured in the LA Times, SKEW Magazine, Umber Publications, and AFAR among others.

A Queer History Tour of Bronzeville
2022-06-04 12:30 - 15:00
Join us with Rachael Pierce on Saturday, June 4th for a Queer history tour of the Bronzeville area, as well as learning more about SSCAC’s role in highlighting queer histories as they relate to Black artists!

Rachael will also facilitate a storytelling component on our front stoop with longtime Southsider and elder Sandi Byrd after the tour.

RUN OF PROGRAM:

Walking tour will begin at South Side Community Art Center, and take place from 12:30PM – 1:45PM.

Storytelling back at South Side Community Art Center will take place from 2PM – 3PM.

RSVP HERE

Rachael Pierce is a community builder from the South Side of Chicago. She’s a lover of history, black queer herstory to be exact; and as CEO of her production company, Pi360co, Rachael works to create spaces and platforms for queer BIPOC women to bravely share their stories and explore their spirituality. Her passions meet at the intersection of everything and are influenced by her Queer, Black, Indigenous identity. Rachael believes she is called to empower folks to bravely gather, build community, and share their stories of life and faith.

This program is presented in conjunction with EMERGENCE: Intersections at the Center, currently on view until July 2, 2022.

EMERGENCE: Intersections at the Center spotlights The South Side Community Art Center’s historical role in supporting a full spectrum of Black artists through an intersectional viewpoint. The first exhibition of its kind at the South Side Community Art Center, EMERGENCE positions the Center as an important anchor for Black LGBTQ artists who belonged to its community from its founding in 1940 to the 1980s and beyond.

Funding for EMERGENCE programming is generously supported by Northwestern University.

THE FRONT
2022-06-11 14:00 - 16:00
THE FRONT: FEATURING PERFORMANCES BY DARLING SHEAR, SHANTA NURULLAH, AND ZAHRA BAKER!

We’re excited to host these dynamic performers who will be activating our Burroughs Gallery with performances that respond to themes of the body, queer introspective experiences, Black femme histories, and folklore!!

Calling you to bring friends, family, and chosen family.

ShaZah
2 – 2:45PM

ShaZah is the performing duo of Shanta Nurullah and Zahra Baker. They combine storytelling, singing, poetry and instrumental music to explore a broad range of themes and genres rooted in the African-American experience. “Om Mission,” their recent commission for About Face Theatre’s partnership with the Stony Island Arts Bank, focused on Black lesbians in Chicago. They conducted interviews and developed a video and live performance that recognizes the contributions, struggles, and dreams of their peers. In addition to presenting this show for About Face Theatre’s Kickback Festival, ShaZah presented it at Navy Pier’s Chicago LIVE Again weekend last fall and at Rhode Island Black Storytellers’ Funda Fest.

Shanta Nurullah has been performing, as a storyteller and musician, around Chicago and nationally for over fifty years. A 2021 3Arts Awardee, she plays sitar, bass and mbira, is a member of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians); co-founded the all-women’s groups Sojourner and Samana; and currently leads the band Sitarsys. She received the Zora Neale Hurston Award from the National Association of Black Storytellers as well as the Artist Fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council.

Zahra Baker is folk and jazz vocalist. Her performance history includes vocalist for “Performance duo: In the Spirit” (with Emily Lansana), which has been featured at festivals including several (NABS) National Association of Black Storytellers festivals, National Storytelling Festival Jonesborough, Tenn, and Texas Storytelling Festival. Zahra has been vocalist for jazz ensembles, theater companies, social justice activism and healing workshops.  She has also worked as a teaching artist for over 30 years, primarily in the Chicago area. Currently, she is co-founder of Freedom Song Leaders, Classic Black, and is a member of Shanta Nurullah’s Sitarsys.

Darling Shear
3pm – 3:45PM

Darling Shear is a Chicago Native but has roots in Atlanta where Darling started dance training. Darling has trained in Ballet, Modern, Jazz and African. Her career highlights have been working with Bubba Carr choreographer/artistic director to Cher for 12 yrs and counting, Rhonda Henriksen soloist with Hubbard Street and Twyla Tharp, Tracy Vogt former Philadanco dancer, Hinton Battle the Original Scarecrow from the broadway production of “The Wiz” and Lauri Stallings Hubbard street soloist and founder/artistic director of gloATL.

Darling, a freelance dancer/choreographer in the city has worked with The Fly Honeys of the The Inconvenience, Body Cartography of Minneapolis, Links Hall, Victoria Bradford, Chicago AIDS Foundation, chances dances, no small plan productions, Slo’Mo, the Public hotel, Soho House Chicago, Growing Power inc., EXPO Chicago, Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre, the school of the art Institute, Depaul Art Museum, University of Chicago, University of Illinois in Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago Film Archive, Chicago Athletic Association Hotel, Salonathon, and Open TV beta.

In 2018 Darling was chosen as the cover model and also quoted in Micah Salkind’s Oxford published book ‘Do you remember house? Chicago’s queer of color underground’. Followed by receiving The Between Gestures scholarship to Austria to attend Impulstanz in Vienna also the Chicago Dancemakers Forum fellowship and Links Hall CoMission Fellowship, along with a 3Arts nomination in 2019. Darling’s career has been one with a strong spiritual center and allowance of universal well-being.

“I sit back, observe and consume my surroundings and tell stories from an unbiased perspective. There are 3 sides to every coin and I aim to be the ridged. My work reflects the Contrast and Alignment of the cooperative components of life.”

JUNETEENTH AT THE HOUSE
2022-06-18 12:00 - 16:00
SSCAC CELEBRATES JUNETEENTH WITH MUSIC, POETRY, COMEDY, AND FAMILY ART MAKING ACTIVATIONS – FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!

FAMILY ART MAKING ACTIVITIES
12 – 2PM

*POLAROID PHOTO ACTIVATION
*CYANOTYPE ACTIVATION
*LIMITED EDITION TOTE BAG LAUNCH FEATURING THE WORK OF ARTIST BRANDON BREAUX
*PRINT WORKS BY ARTIST ERIC VON HAYNES
*PHOTO ACTIVATION WITH ARTIST CATALYST CECIL MCDONALD JR.

WE’RE THRILLED TO HOST DJ DUANE POWELL, POET RESITA COX, ARTIST CATALYST CECIL MCDONALD JR. AND COMEDIANS MAX THOMAS & ARLIETA HALL!

1:30 – 4PM

Duane Powell’s love for music started an early age growing up in the 1970’s being exposed to Chicago’s rich soul music scene. He has spun at and has had residencies at many of the most popular venues around Chicago including the House Of Blues, Virgin Hotel, The Promontory and Reggie’s Music Club. In addition, he has opened for many heavyweights in soul music including opening for Frankie Beverly & Maze at The Taste Of Chicago and has shared the bill with many legendary DJ’s and Grammy-winning producers in the dance music world including Joe Claussell, DJ Spinna, Steve “Silk” Hurley, Maurice Joshua, Josh Milan, Timmy Regisford, Ron Trent and more.

As a promoter, he launched the SOUNDROTATION brand in 1999, further cultivating the underground soul scene in Chicago giving many of those acts their performance debuts in the market.

Resita Cox’s films are a poetic portrayal of her community’s irrepressible spirit and resilience in the face of racism. Her documentary film work is people based, meaning it not only features unique, personal stories, but it also prioritizes relationships and is constantly working to reimagine an equitable filmmaking model. Born and raised in the South, her films center Southern, Black communities and use them as a lens to examine topics ranging from environmental justice to racial justice – all themes she also explores through her poetry and performance.
With a degree in journalism from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Resita started her career as a storyteller in TV news as a reporter in North Carolina and later in Chicago. Resita has worked with Kartemquin Films as the Impact Producer on their Emmy-nominated docu-series produced with The Marshall Project, We Are Witnesses.

She is the director of Freedom Hill, a documentary about the environmental racism that is washing away the first town chartered by Black people in the nation, with which she was named a 2021 Hulu/Kartemquin Accelerator Fellow. She holds an MFA from Northwestern University in Documentary Film and is a 2021 Sister’s in Cinema Documentary Fellow. Resita was also recently named a North Star fellow with esteemed documentary organization, Points North Institute.

Max Thomas was raised on the Southside of Chicago. He grew up on Jimi Hendrix, Bernie Mac, & Soy Milk. Max has been featured at Zanies, The Comedy Store, The NBC Break Out Comedy Festival 2017-2019, Jokes and Notes, The Second City Chicago & Hollywood, Laugh Factory, Steppenwolf Theater, Black & Funny Festival, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Detroit Improv Festival, Boston Improv Festival, Out of Bounds Festival Austin, TX, The Hideout Chicago & Boston, The Revival Theater, Keenan Thompson: The Ultimate Comedy Experience and Lollapalooza Music Festival.

His acting credits include Chicago P.D. (NBC), Broke Down Drone (Film), Hot Date (Netflix), Studio B (Web Series), Code-Switched (Web Series) and Othello (CST). His performance training is from The Second City Chicago, The School at Steppenwolf & The British American Drama Academy(BADA).

Arlieta Hall is a host, actress, improviser, stand up comedian, and first time filmmaker from Chicago. She is a 2021 Second City NBC Bob Curry Fellow who recently co-starred as Sadie on Showtimes’ The CHI episodic.

Arlieta is also a caregiver for her father who is a person with Alzheimer’s and takes the power of “Yes, and…” to communicate with him and using their story to make her first film “Finding Your Laughter” Catch Arlieta Hall while you can performing all around the city, zoom, and get a sneak peek of her upcoming documentary

I am most interested in the intersections of masculinity, familial relations, and the artistic and intellectual pursuits of black culture, particular as this culture intersects with and informs the larger culture. Through photography, video, and dance/performance, I seek to investigate and question the norms and customs that govern our understanding of each other, our families, and the myriad of societal struggles and triumphs. I studied fashion, house music and dance club culture before receiving a MFA in Photography at Columbia College Chicago, where I currently serve as an adjunct professor and a teaching artist at the Center for Community Arts Partnership at Columbia College Chicago.

My work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, with works in the permanent collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art, Chicago Bank of America LaSalle Collection, and Museum of Contemporary Photography. I was awarded the: Joyce Foundation Midwest Voices & Visions Award, the Artadia Award, The Swiss Benevolent Society, Lucerne, Switzerland Residency and the 3Arts Teaching Artist Award. I participated in Light Work’s Artist-in-Residence program in July 2013. In 2016 the ﬁrst edition of my monograph In The Company of Black was published and was shortlisted by the Aperture Foundation for the 2017 First PhotoBook Award.

Cecil is currently a SSCAC Artist Catalyst as part of the Public Art & Civic Engagement(PACE) Capacity Building Initiative grant from the Mural Arts Institute, a program of Mural Arts Philadelphia.

MAMA GLORIA: IN HER HONOR
2022-06-23 18:00 - 20:00
A film screening and community gathering in honor of the late Mama Gloria Allen.

Luchina Fisher will screen her film Mama Gloria, in addition to honoring the life and impact of Gloria Allen, a Black transgender icon and activist who dedicated her life to Chicago’s trans community.

Mama Gloria (2020) by Luchina Fisher. 1h 16m

Chicago’s Black transgender icon Gloria Allen (1945 – 2022) blazed a trail for trans people like few others before her. Emerging from Chicago’s South Side drag ball culture in the 1960s, Gloria overcame traumatic violence to become a proud leader in her community. Most famously, she pioneered a charm school for young transgender people that served as inspiration for the hit play Charm. Luchina Fisher’s empathic and engaging documentary is not only a portrait of a groundbreaking legend, but also a celebration of unconditional love, the love Gloria received from her own mother and that she now gives to her chosen children.

LUCHINA FISHER (she/her) is an award-winning director, writer and producer who works at the intersection of race, gender and identity. She is the founder and CEO of Little Light Productions. Her feature directorial debut Mama Gloria, about Chicago trans icon activist Gloria Allen, was nominated for a 2022 GLAAD Media Award. The film premiered at the Chicago International Film Festival and BFI Flare London; won numerous jury awards; and made its broadcast debut on World channel and PBS. Previously, Luchina co-executive produced and co-wrote the critically acclaimed feature documentary Birthright: A War Story, which appeared in more than 70 theaters nationwide, qualified for Oscar consideration and streamed on Hulu. She is the director of two scripted short films, including Danger Word, and has written and produced several nationally broadcast documentaries. She most recently produced two episodes of the upcoming History channel series with President Bill Clinton and is directing a feature documentary on predatory lending in housing. Luchina began her career as a journalist and has written for People, the Miami Herald, The New York Times, O, The Oprah Magazine and ABCNews.com. Luchina is a Sisters in Cinema Documentary Fellow and a member of Brown Girl Doc Mafia, the Black Documentary Collective and Film Fatales. She is an inaugural recipient of the Brown Girl Doc Mafia Black Director’s Grant and a Spark Fund Award Winner from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Firelight Media. Luchina is based in the New York City area.

This program is presented in conjunction with EMERGENCE: Intersections at the Center, currently on view until July 2, 2022.

EMERGENCE: Intersections at the Center spotlights The South Side Community Art Center’s historical role in supporting a full spectrum of Black artists through an intersectional viewpoint. The first exhibition of its kind at the South Side Community Art Center, EMERGENCE positions the Center as an important anchor for Black LGBTQ artists who belonged to its community from its founding in 1940 to the 1980s and beyond.

Funding for EMERGENCE programming is generously supported by Northwestern University.

...of the land: acts of refusal and ratification
2022-07-15 - 2022-09-24
A three-person exhibition featuring new and recent works from Chicago-based artists Ajmal ‘Mas Man’ Millar, Lola Ayisha Ogbara, and R. Treshawn Williamson exploring homeplace through sculpture, self-imaging, & materialism.

R. Treshawn Williamson. Charcoal rubbing, screen printed debris, White Oak, Etched plaque.
Left half. 15 x 20. 2021.

…of the land: acts of refusal and ratification features new and recent works from Chicago-based artists Ajmal ‘Mas Man’ Millar, Lola Ayisha Ogbara, and R. Treshawn Williamson exploring sculpture, self-imaging and history through postcolonial lenses, collective & individual recollection and peculiar materialism. Their use of storytelling holds significance for spatiality and locality to become common ground through the fielding of land, labor and industry.
Ajmal ‘Mas Man’ Millar expands the sculptural form welding metal, Trinidadian carnival culture and identity politics alongside the African diaspora. Lola Ayisha Ogbara merges West African and African American interior design aesthetics with bodily sculptural ceramic forms, with performative photography – that rest and refuse a Western gaze.

R. Treshawn Williamson creates historical context for his own familial roots in the mining of charcoal material for large scale screen-printed tapestries in a careful consideration of laborious processes as praxis. Millar, Ogbara and Williamson engage in practices that consider topographic timelines and performance as an essential tool making for an interesting dialogue about homeplace.

An opening reception will take place July 15th, 5- 8pm.
Please RSVP here

Ajmal ‘MAS MAN’ Millar is a self-taught contemporary visual artist and mas man (carnival costume designer). His work includes mixed–media sculpture that combine collage, painting, repurposed materials, scrap metal, performance, and photography interrogating notions of cultural heritage, sexual and gender identity, and ritual practices as a first-generation African American black queer man born to Trinidadian immigrants. Ajmal earned an undergraduate degree from Morehouse College in 2008 and earned an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2021.

I am working on a collection of works engaging the Yoruba cosmological concept of Chi and its existence in everything, alive or inorganic. I create amalgamations of found objects and scraps of steel combined with encaustic. Inspired from my carnival technique of ‘wire bending’, Afrofuturism, and Afro Surrealism, I have an opportunity to express my emotions and thoughts as experienced in the various environments I collect from and exist in. My welding is drawing in space to depict the transcendent properties in masquerade. My goal is to contextualize a queer blackness rarely experienced through imagination, invention, and the investigation of dreams, magic, and ritual.

He currently lives and works in Chicago, IL.

LOLA AYISHA OGBARA (cultural worker & artist) born and raised in Chicago, Illinois holds many talents under her belt, i.e. sculpture, sound, design, photography and installation art. Ogbara holds a Bachelor of Arts in Arts Entertainment & Media Management from Columbia College Chicago in 2013 and a MFA in Visual Arts from Washington University Sam Fox School of Art & Design.

“My practice explores the multifaceted implications and ramifications of being in regards to the Black experience. I work with clay as a material in order to emphasize a necessary fragility which symbolizes an essential contradiction implicit in empowerments.”

In 2017, Ogbara co-founded Artists in the Room, a collective of artists and scholars who host artists, emerging and established, in hopes of serving as a catalyst for artist development and networking. Ogbara has also received numerous fellowships and awards, including the Multicultural Fellowship sponsored by the NCECA 52nd Annual Conference, the Arts + Public Life and Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture Residency at the University of Chicago, and the Coney Family Fund Award hosted by the Chicago Artists Coalition.

Ogbara has exhibited in art spaces across the country and is currently based in Chicago, IL.

R. Treshawn Williamson is a Chicago based essayist and multidisciplinary artist of Black American descent, from Prince George’s County, MD, by way of Livingston, Alabama, and Augusta, Georgia.

Williamson’s work is a meditation on the obstruction and surveillance of the lived histories of African-Americans. He investigates the application of cultural re-imagination in the African Diaspora through the engagement of oral histories, post-colonial theory, folklore, and ethnomusicology. In 2020 Williamson earned his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

He currently lives and works in Chicago, IL.

Emerging Artist Series featuring Tianna Bracey
2022-08-19 - 2022-10-22
SSCAC IS PROUD TO FEATURE ARTIST TIANNA BRACEY FOR A SOLO PRESENTATION OF RECENT WORKS.

Tianna Bracey is an emerging artist employing portraiture as a vessel for connection. Her most recent series of work reimagine space as connection to ancestry. Her portraits are transformed into whimsical dreamscapes to amplify the presence of generational storytelling through repurposing and reinventing elements from daily surroundings. Each work aims to consider the ways in which familial ties, nostalgia, and memory can be woven into the fabric of daily life as an invitation to find purpose, strength and solace through heritage.

Tianna received a Bachelors of Art in Art History from the University of Missouri (Columbia, MO). Her work has been exhibited at The Chicago Athletic Association (Chicago, IL), Happy Gallery (Chicago, IL), The Martin (Chicago, IL) and Zhou B Art Center (Chicago, IL). In 2021, she was awarded the Curious Creators Grant from curious elixirs (Brooklyn, NY) and the New Futures award from Saatchi Art’s The Other Art Fair (London, UK). The following year, she was a recipient of the SPARK grant from the Chicago Artists Coalition (Chicago, IL).

We’re thrilled to feature Tianna as our first exhibiting artist to be showcased in our micro-gallery, and hope you’ll join us!

DJ ShamPain Wishes will also join us for the opening reception.

ShamPain Wishes is an Artist/DJ/Designer native to St. Louis but based in Chicago.

Inspired by the Spike Lee Joint “25th Hour” where a toast is given stating “Champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends!,” their eclectic sound touches on Dance music from across the African and Club Diasporas.In any given set you’ll touch House, Funk, Soul, Disco, R&B/Soul, Garage, Ballroom and so much more!

OPENING RECEPTION:
Friday, August 19
6-8pm
RSVP HERE

Riddim Rite of Passage: A Sound Activation with Ajmal 'Mas Man' Millar
2022-08-20 13:00 - 14:30
Artist Ajmal ‘Mas Man’ Millar will facilitate a participatory sound activation referencing his Trinidadian heritage.

We invite you to join us with artist Ajmal ‘Mas Man’ Millar for a special rite of passage participatory sound activation using found metal, which the artist uses often within their practice. Traditionally, rites of passages have functioned as a critical tool of individual rejuvenation and cultural interconnection.

Ajmal’s use of metal within this program is inspired by and symbolic of the ‘riddim section’, which is specifically linked to African diaspora percussions.

Each participant is encouraged to bring found metal (without sharp edges) that they have access to.

The session will encompass:

– Introductions and group welcome where each participant will share their found objects with the group
– Several exercises to build cognition, individuality, improvisation, and harmony.
– Ajmal will also provide a variety of metal rods and wooden sticks used to strike the metal, thus collectively producing waves of sound in the likeness of steel drums.

***The session will be sonically recorded, and video documented.

RSVP HERE

D-Composed Gives Family Edition at South Side Community Art Center!
2022-09-03 13:00 - 14:30
D-Composed brings their Music in Color experience to life at South Side Community Art Center!

Founded in 2017 by Kori Coleman, D-Composed is a chamber music experience that celebrates & honors Black creativity and culture through the music of Black composers. To date, D-Composed has gained national recognition with appearances on The Colbert Show alongside Jamila Woods and has collaborated with notable institutions and highly recognized brands such as Apple, The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, & The Rebuild Foundation.

This year D-Composed is featuring commissioned sketches from their Music in Color Vol. 4 coloring book featuring artists Dwight White II, Amoz Wright, Kayla Mahaffey, and Aaliyah Lachele of Peanut Buddarart!

RSVP HERE!

Kori Coleman has crafted the organization’s artistic & programmatic vision with the development of conceptual programming that fosters collaboration with Black artists across mediums and disciplines.

In addition to being the Executive Director and founder of D-Composed, Kori is a brand strategist working in marketing & advertising. She is a graduate of Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia with a B.A. in Philosophy.

Violinist Caitlin Edwards began her musical journey at the age of 8 within a non-profit organization in her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. She gained acceptance into the Alabama School of Fine Arts and music festivals such as the Kennedy Center Summer Music Institute and the National Repertory Orchestra. She later attended the University of Louisville (BM) and DePaul University (MM). Caitlin is a 2022 Esteemed Artist Award recipient from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, a 2021 3Arts/Walder Foundation awardee, 2018 Gateways Music Festival Rising Star, a co-curator with the Fulcrum Point New Music Project, and a former fellow with the Chicago Sinfonietta. In addition, she has received Grammy certificates for recordings on Disney’s “The Lion King” and for albums by John Legend and PJ Morton. She released her debut album, “Exhale,” in 2021.

Caitlin is a classically trained violinist, but she’s inspired by gospel, jazz, hip-hop, and neo-soul. She composes original music and intentionally performs the works of Black composers to make sure that these compositions are remembered and spotlighted for aspiring young BIPOC musicians and the world as a whole. Caitlin is a proud member of D-Composed and Ensemble Dal Niente.

Tahirah Whittington is a Grammy-nominated cellist, and a founding member of D-Composed and the Ritz Chamber Players. She is currently the cellist for the Broadway show Dear Evan Hansen National Tour. Previously, Ms. Whittington was the cellist for Hamilton: An American Musical in Chicago. Studio recordings include The Lion King (2019), Beyoncé’s The Lion King: The Gift, and albums by John Legend and PJ Morton.

Television and film appearances include the movie, “Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” and episodes of “Empire”. Tahirah remotely recorded the cello solo for Rhiannon Giddens’ “Cry No More” arranged by composer Michael Abels. She received her Bachelor’s Degree from New England Conservatory and her Master’s Degree in Cello Performance from The Juilliard School. Tahirah has studied with Laurence Lesser, Joel Krosnick, and Hans Jørgen Jensen.

Metropolis: A City In Black
2022-09-16 19:00 - 20:30
Metropolis: A City In Black, by Cecil McDonald Jr., is a public installation in the historic bay windows of South Side Community Art Center.

South Side Community Art Center invites you to attend and celebrate the launch of Cecil McDonald’s public art installation, programmed alongside the final Bronzeville Art District Trolley Tour!

As a part of the Public Art & Civic Engagement Capacity Building Initiative, granted to the South Side Community Art Center from Mural Arts Institute, a program of Mural Arts Philadelphia, artist Cecil McDonald, Jr. has been commissioned to create a socially engaged public work of art. His project will feature images from SSCAC’s archives intertwined with portraits of Bronzeville community members to celebrate the dual histories and legacies.

Metropolis: A City In Black, by Cecil McDonald Jr., is a public viewing installation in the historic bay window of the venerable South Side Community Art Center. Over six months, McDonald traversed the streets, parks, beaches, porches, and neighborhoods in and around Bronzeville. Photographing friends, strangers, and passersby from a mobile studio, McDonald created both formal and candid portraits; the portraits, collaged with moving abstract imagery, create an odyssey of humanity infused with all the unique sensibility and tempo of black life in the metropolis.

RSVP HERE

Cecil McDonald, Jr. is interested in the intersections of masculinity, familial relationships and the artistic and intellectual pursuits of Black culture—particularly as it intersects and informs the larger culture. He investigates and questions the customs that govern our understanding of each other, our families and the myriad of our shared societal struggles and triumphs. He works to reveal the ordinary experiences, complexities and tenderness in relationships between Black people through photography, video, dance and performance.

“I am especially interested in the spaces free from the white gaze: the few places Black people feel comfortable being themselves. My work often highlights the culture—the art, music, and film—that Black people fill their homes and lives with. My art asserts the full humanity and rich culture of Black Americans.”

All images courtesy of artist Cecil McDonald, Jr.

THE GESTURE ITSELF IS PROTECTION SPELL
2022-09-17 13:00 - 15:00
Performative activations from current exhibiting artists R. Treshawn Williamson & Lola Ayisha Ogbara, with special guest artist Jada-Amina.

Borrowed from Lola Ayisha Ogbara’s video work ‘Bound For Glory’ from her continuing series The Perfect Servant, THE GESTURE ITSELF IS PROTECTION SPELL proposes questions of the body, disruption, labor, acts of looking, and materiality through movement, sound, and mythmaking.
Williamson, Ogbara, and Amina engage in multidisciplinary practices that reference homeplace, memory, and the “gaze” that take place across photography, video, sculpture, sound, and printmaking.

THE GESTURE ITSELF IS PROTECTION SPELL will feature a collaborative live sound activation by R. Treshawn Williamson and Jada-Amina followed by Lola Ayisha Ogbara’s video work ‘Bound For Glory’, in which Ogbara uses Chicago’s labor intensive history, centralizing Black women domestic workers, to envision a radical future for Black lives. Ogbara finds an additional dialogue between sculpture and experimental photography that challenges our relationship to viewership. Ogbara questions, “What lengths are we willing to go to in order to protect what is rightfully ours?” as she begins to imagine a collective disruption in the way we use our bodies to perform artistic labor.

In the same ways Ogbara imagines collective disruption and Black women’s labor , R. Treshawn Williamson and Jada-Amina also explore the Black maternal and cultural re-imagination through sound mixing and oral histories, through what Amina describes as “a sonic meditation grounded in incantation and afro-sentimentality…”

Image courtesy of Lola Ayisha Ogbara. Bound For Glory. 4 minutes 36 seconds. 2021

This program is the final program related to our current exhibition “…of the land: acts of refusal and ratification” , which features new and recent works from Chicago-based artists Ajmal ‘Mas Man’ Millar, Lola Ayisha Ogbara, and R. Treshawn Williamson exploring sculpture, self-imaging and history through postcolonial lenses, collective & individual recollection and peculiar materialism.

*Top Image courtesy of artist Jada-Amina. Revolutions. 00:01:35 min. B&W Super 8 scanned to digital, 2017.

HOMECOMING: ON THE YARD
2022-10-01 13:00 - 17:00
HOMECOMING: ON THE YARD 2022

HOMECOMING will be SSCAC’s first large-scale outdoor program, intended to be a city-wide call and response to Black artists!

RSVP HERE

HOMECOMING will be SSCAC’s first large-scale outdoor program, intended to be a city-wide call and response to Black artists to further celebrate our legacy as the first Black arts center in the nation, reconnect with past artists, as well as commemorating the new and expansive ways we are moving forward as an organization! We’re calling our community to come back home!

We invite you and your families to celebrate with us alongside live musical performances from Sam Thousand and Team Jukeboxx Mas Band with special guest DJ Rae Chardonnay hosted by “Toaster” (Tim Henderson)!

Sam Thousand (formally known as Sam Trump) is a multi-instrumentalist, singer/writer, producer/composer and a 3Arts Recipient with 15+ years of experience in live performance art, curation, and self-management. Since picking up the trumpet at age 7, his artistry has allowed him the opportunity to perform in all corners of North America as well as overseas.

Sam Thousand has become a fixture in Chicago’s music scene through various stages from the Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park to a cozy nook in a low-lit speakeasy in Fulton Market. He has maintained years of performance residencies and has curated special events from tributes to artist showcases. In addition to performing and curating, he has served as a booking manager to facilitate performance opportunities for other musicians. Sam Thousand is co-founder of multiple Chicago-based organizations and is a business owner and entrepreneur. Everywhere he goes, he brings a sophistication that engages & uplifts.

Rae Chardonnay is a DJ and cultural programs producer based in Chicago. She is the Founder of Black Eutopia, a series of segmented programming intended to cultivate space for marginalized communities; and co-founder of the award winning Party Noire where joy for Black queer, trans and gender non-conforming people is centered.

Since Rae began her DJ career, she’s been noted as one of Chicago’s Top 5 DJ’s by NPR, and Chicago’s Best DJ by the Chicago Reader.

Team Jukeboxx Mas Band is a carnival inspired performance company founded by Stacy “Jukeboxx” Letrice. The mas band first made their debut in 2018 at Windy City Carnival, a not-for-profit festival and colorful parade that takes place in Chicago during the month of August. In just one year, the band took home the title of “Band of the Year” and won the award for “Best Dance Performance”.

This big win opened the doors for the group to perform at various festivals and cultural events within the Chicagoland area and surrounding states. Their mission is to educate their audiences about Caribbean culture while providing a small taste of the beauty and artistry of Caribbean Carnival.

Toaster is the Co creator of Big Kid Slam, a poetry slam invested in centering marginalized voices and terrible prizes. He has competed at every level of poetry slam, most recently competing as an Individual World Poetry Slam finalist.

Toaster has been featured in poetry events all over America, Vancouver and most recently Germany. His work can be found on Button Poetry, All Def Digital, Sofar Sounds and National Public Radio.

Featured Food Vendor

Dozzy’s Grill!

Special Thanks to Pigment International & Department for Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE)!

ReSource Symposium: Art and Resourcefulness in Black Chicago
2022-10-07 10:00 - 17:00
This convening will help shape the research questions, thematic structures, and community connections for the South Side Community Art Center’s “ReSOURCE” exhibition, scheduled for 2024 as part of the Terra Foundation’s Art Design Chicago program.

This symposium brings together artists and academics, agricultural practitioners and community organizers, to learn from one another’s ideas and practices. A private portion of the symposium will allow participants to convene in a smaller group to discuss plans for the exhibition and associated programming with the goal of ensuring the project is shaped by input from people representing a range of community organizations as well as artists, curators, and researchers.

The exhibition, scheduled for 2024 explores the historical and contemporary resourcefulness of African American artists and cultural creators in Chicago who form a tradition of creative genius that “makes do,” recycling materials, repurposing skills, and building on personal and community resources.

The public symposium on October 7 will take place on zoom and will include panel discussions with scholars, urban gardening community leaders, and artists, followed by a private session on Saturday the 8th.

All panels will take place virtually via Zoom CDT. For more information regarding the public symposium, please see the full site here

OCTOBER 7 SYMPOSIUM PARTICIPANTS

ERIKA ALLEN
Co-Founder & CEO of Urban Growers Collective | Speaker and Advisor

Erika Allen (she/her) is the Co-Founder & CEO of Programs and Development Strategy for Urban Growers Collective and the President of Green ERA Educational NFP and Co-Owner of Green Era Sustainability Partners.

Erika has been appointed by Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker for the IL Leadership Council for Agricultural Education (ICAE) for a 3 Year term (2022-2024). Allen was recently appointed by the Biden Administration to join the Farm Service Agency Committee for Illinois. She was awarded the 2022 James Beard Leadership award.
Erika received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MA in Art Psychotherapy from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She uses her experience as a visual artist to consult with individuals and organizations to support their visioning of social and economic changes. She is passionate about social justice and working with multicultural groups in the elimination of racism, related oppressions, and the root causes of poverty by integrating creative and therapeutic techniques alongside food security and community development.

MEKAZIN ALEXANDER Founder of Earl’s Garden Mae’s Kitchen | Speaker and Advisor

Over the past 20 plus years Earline “Mekazin” Alexander has been committed to ensuring that underserved residents in the City of Chicago receive equitable services to improve the quality of their lives and promote their wellbeing. She has worked in a variety of capacities serving children, youth, adults, and seniors, and the developmentally disabled and states that “the challenge is making sure you always have a continuum of service and to make certain that you are doing what is necessary to take people to the next level while addressing their critical needs.”

Earl’s Garden Mae’s Kitchen community garden evolved to create a safe space where all generations in the Englewood community and its surrounding areas could have a place to just be. Be involved with food education and healthy eating, artistic expressions, community events. Earline Alexander believes “creativity creates a balance in life” and she foresees Earl’s Garden Mae’s Kitchen being a part of that balance.

BASIA BROWN
Director of Development at SkyART | Advisor

Basia has worked with various non-profit organizations throughout Illinois including Springfield Urban League, Robert R. McCormick Foundation and Chicago Housing Authority in a variety of roles ranging from development, case management, program administration and more. She began serving the community through an artistic lens during her collegiate career providing Art Therapy sessions to cancer patients and their families at Decatur Memorial Hospital in Decatur, IL.

After completing her BA in Human Services form Millikin University she took on the challenge of connecting others to communities in need which led to becoming the Director of Development for Howard Area Community Center in Rogers Park. After receiving her certification in Nonprofit Management from the University of Illinois at Chicago extended campus and two years of service to northern Chicago, she joined SkyART as the Assistant Director of Development in January 2020 and later promoted to Director of Development in July 2021.

ASHLEIGH DEOSARAN
PhD Student, Northwestern University | Panel Moderator

Ashleigh Deosaran (b.1992, Trinidad and Tobago, she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist and scholar. She is currently a doctoral student in Art History and a Gender and Sexuality Studies Mellon Fellow at Northwestern University. She researches modern and contemporary art with a focus on the Anglophone Caribbean, through the lenses of queer theory, cultural studies, and postcolonial thought. After earning a B.A. in Fine Arts & Psychology from Pace University (’16), she completed an M.A. in Modern Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies at Columbia University (’19). She has held curatorial research positions at the Dia Art Foundation and the Public Art Fund in New York City.

Most recently, she co-curated a video program for Alice Yard’s presentation at documenta fifteen and was awarded the Block Museum Curatorial Fellowship (’22-’23). Her critical writing has been published in Hemisphere: Visual Cultures of the Americas, Field Magazine, and Pree Literary Magazine.

CHELSEA FRAZIER
Black feminist ecocritic and assistant professor of African American Literature and Culture at Cornell University | Speaker and Advisor

Chelsea Mikael Frazier, PhD is a Black feminist ecocritic—writing, researching, and teaching at the intersection of Black feminist theory and environmental thought. Across a diverse array of platforms, all of Dr. Frazier’s work is geared toward creating paths toward harmonial Worlds that no longer rely on the harm of Black people, the destruction of our environment, or the exploitation of femininity to keep spinning.
In 2019, she founded Ask An Amazon, an educational hub where she designs educational tools, curates community gatherings, gives lectures, and provides consulting services meant to help students, professionals, and organizations with their intellectual and creative development. Dr. Frazier is an assistant professor of African American Literature and Culture at Cornell University’s Department of Literatures in English.

Dr. Frazier is currently at work on her first book manuscript, a years-long ecocritical investigation of contemporary Black women artists, writers, and activists. Frazier illuminates the cultural histories and creative contributions of Black women who’ve carved-out a rich and transformative practice of ecological ethics alternative to the “environmentalisms” that are readily legible in Western society.

CANDACE HUNTER
Chicago Visual Artist and Water Rights Activist | Speaker and Advisor

Candace Hunter is a self-sustaining visual artist residing in Chicago and calling the world home. Her touring solo shows, DUST IN THEIR VEINS: a Visual Response to the Global Water Crisis, HOODED TRUTHS, and SO BE IT. SEE TO IT. have enjoyed robust viewings in multiple cities. Her multi-disciplined work, LOSS/SCAPE, the Landscape of Loss, examined the major loss of human capitol on the Western shores of Africa during the TransAtlantic Slave Trade.

Hunter is a proud recipient of the 3Arts NEXT LEVEL/SPARE ROOM Award (2021), the Tim and Helen Meier Family Foundation Grantee 2020 and honored by the collective, Diasporal Rhythm’s (2014/15).

SEITU JONES
Multi-disciplinary artist and Community Organizer | Speaker and Advisor

Seitu Ken Jones is a multidisciplinary artist, advocate and maker based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Working between the arts and public spheres, Jones channels the spirit of radical social movements into experiences that foster critical conversations and nurture more just and vibrant communities from the soil up. He is recognized as a dynamic collaborator and a creative force for civic engagement.

Jones is a recently retired faculty member of Goddard College in Washington State. He holds a BS degree in Landscape Design and a MLS in Environmental History from the University of Minnesota. He’s been a Senior Fellow in Agricultural Systems in the College of Food, Agriculture and Natural Science Resources at the University of Minnesota and is a member of the board of managers for the Capitol Region Watershed District.

ALEXANDREA KEITH
PhD Student, Northwestern University | Panel Moderator

Alexandrea Keith is a third-year doctoral student in the Department of History at Northwestern University. She studies 20th century Black cultural politics and history in the United States, United Kingdom, and English-speaking Caribbean. Her research interests include Black arts activism, Black Power, and racial liberation politics. She is particularly interested in how Black women across the Atlantic have used theater as a form of cultural politics and activism.

In addition to her scholarship, Alexandrea serves as the Graduate Student Advisor for the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship at Northwestern where she supports undergraduates students of color interested in pursuing careers in academia. Prior to attending graduate school, she graduated magna cum laude with majors in History and African and African American Studies from Dartmouth College in 2020.

FAHEEM MAJEED
Chicago Visual Artist and Co-founder of the Floating Museum | Speaker and Advisor

Faheem Majeed (American, b. 1976) is an artist, educator, curator, and community facilitator. Through his unique experience, he creates works focusing on institutional critique and meaningful community dialogues. As part of his studio practice, Majeed transforms materials such as particle board, scrap metal and wood, discarded signs, and billboard remnants, breathing new life into these often overlooked and devalued materials.

From 2007-2011 Majeed was the former executive director of the South Side Community Art Center. Currently, he is the co-director and founder of the Chicago based arts collective, Floating Museum.

Majeed is a recipient of the 2020 Field and Macarthur Foundation’s Leaders for a New Chicago Award and the 2020 Joyce Foundation Award. His work has been exhibited in numerous institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, SMFA at Tufts, and the Hyde Park Art Center. Majeed received his BFA from Howard University and his MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

GERVAIS MARSH
PhD Candidate, Northwestern University | Panel Moderator

Gervais Marsh is a writer, scholar and curator whose work is deeply invested in Black life, concepts of relationality and care. Their writing, artistic and curatorial work is rooted in Transnational Black feminist theory and praxis. They are a PhD candidate in Performance Studies at Northwestern University and their dissertation explores the generative possibilities of difficult intimacies through the work of several Black queer visual and performance artists. Their writing has been published in ARTS.BLACK, Musée Magazine, Sixty Inches from Center, Sugarcane Magazine and PREE: Caribbean Writing, among others.

They are an editor with Ruckus Journal and recent curatorial projects include Heather Brammeier’s Maybe Never and A.J. McClenon’s Notes from VEGA, both at the Hyde Park Art Center. They grew up in Kingston, Jamaica, a home that continues to shape their understanding of self and relationship to the world.

MEIDA MCNEAL
Artistic and Managing Director of Honey Pot Performance | Speaker and Advisor

Meida Teresa McNeal works with the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events’ Executive Administration team as the Senior Manager of Arts & Community Impact Investments building and implementing artist recovery programs and creative placemaking grantmaking initiatives.

Prior to this role, Meida worked with the Chicago Park District as Arts & Culture Manager supporting community arts partnerships, youth arts, cultural stewardship, and civic engagement initiatives. Projects included cultural planning projects from neighborhood cultural center activations and citywide asset mapping, and a cultural stewardship training program focused on neighborhood resource development through the lens of arts & culture in communities.

Meida is also Artistic and Managing Director of Honey Pot Performance. She received her PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and her MFA in Choreography & Dance History from Ohio State University. She has produced numerous creative projects as both a solo artist and with Honey Pot Performance, performing in Illinois, Rhode Island, Ohio, California, and Trinidad.

ROSALYN OWENS
Executive Director of Bronzeville Neighborhood Farm | Advisor

“Rosalyn Owens” is Director-In Training for the Bronzeville Neighborhood Farm. After the unfortunate death of her husband, Johnnie L. Owens, Jr., she immediately without much thought about what she was doing, made the decision to continue her husband’s work at the garden in Bronzeville feeling that he would want her to continue his legacy.

Rosalyn left corporate after working for: AT&T, CHA and, Arthur Andersen to pursue an education career. Obtaining her graduate degree in Curriculum and Instruction, she found her true calling; helping students attain knowledge. Roz has taught students from pre- kindergarten through adult. Her philosophy is founded on the premise that all students deserve a good education from an educator who is passionate about their students learning.

She’s excited about the work ahead and, is determined to continue Johnnie’s work in Bronzeville as a place for folks to gather, enjoy nature and exchange ideas amongst each other.

FAWN POCHEL
Co-Founder, First Nations Garden | Speaker and Advisor

An advocate for social and environmental justice, Fawn is the co-founder of the First Nations Garden located in Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood. Fawn has over a decade of community organizing and advocacy experience focusing on raising awareness of Native Peoples living in Chicago with the goal of contributing to the personal sovereignty, healing, and educational pursuits of Native youth. Fawn has worked closely with communities across the city to incorporate land-based pedagogies and Indigenous worldview into curricula and policy while developing and implementing innovative community programming through an Indigenous lens focused on the preservation of native plants, heritage foods and dismantling systems of white supremacy.

In her free time Fawn prides herself on being an Auntie to an autonomous grassroots collaborative, Chi-Nations Youth Council, whose mission is to create safe space for Native Youth through Arts, Activism and Education.

DEJAH POWELL
Frontloading Structure & Culture Coordinator with Sunrise Movement Chicago | Advisor

Dejah (she/her) is an organizer based in Chicago, with Sunrise Movement, a youth-led movement to stop the climate crisis and create millions of good jobs. Dejah has a fierce commitment to building a multi-racial, cross-class movement that will win Green New Deal legislation federally and locally. During her time in Sunrise, Dejah was a volunteer in the Chicago hub, leading in fundraising and trainings. She started full-time, as a Regional Organizer and Lead Organizer, providing coaching and organizing support for Sunrise hubs around trainings, electoral organizing, and actions across the Midwest. She’s also led several organizing programs, including a 2020 BIPOC Organizing School, training black and brown youth in key skills to win a Green New Deal.

When Dejah’s not cooking up plans to grow the movement and build power to win a Green New Deal, she enjoys reading, roller skating, and meditation. Dejah is a 2018 graduate of Cornell University with a degree in Environmental and Sustainability Science.

TARYN RANDLE
Farm, Food, Familias Coordinator at LVEJO, Founder of Getting Grown Collective | Speaker and Advisor

Taryn is a farmer, learner-teacher and connector. Born and raised on the southside of Chicago, Taryn is committed to connecting Black and Brown people with the land, each other and practices that train present and future generations to survive the unexpected.

Taryn began growing with the land in 2017 through co-founding Getting Grown Collective(GGC) with family, friends and neighbors on 63rd & Morgan in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood. Currently Taryn is a Farm, Food, Familias Program Coordinator with the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization(LVEJO) and a Farm Liaison for Grow Greater Englewood(GGE)

ANTON SEALS
Executive Director, Grow Greater Englewood | Speaker and Advisor

L. Anton Seals Jr. is a South Shore Chicago, IL native. Seals is a multidimensional servant leader, organizer, entrepreneur, educator, community connector and impact producer. Anton is currently the Lead Steward/Executive Director of Grow Greater Englewood (GGE). Transforming vacant city lots into farm businesses, via a network of Black and brown urban farmers, GGE is a social enterprise focusing on building an equitable and resilient local food system, fostering protections of vacant land in divested communities, and connecting those residents with community wealth building opportunities. Seals focuses on authentic “equity in action” and also works in the arts and cultural space, producing campaigns for nationally broadcasted documentaries.

In 2019 Seals founded OURS, a vertical Cannabis and Hemp company. Anton is a 2018 Next City Vanguard Fellow and 2010 German Marshall Fellow. Seals serves as a Trustee for the Woods Fund of Chicago and is Chair of the South Shore Works Planning Preservation Coalition.

RASHAD SHABAZZ
Associate Professor in African American Studies and Geography at Arizona State University | Speaker and Advisor

Rashad Shabazz’s academic expertise brings together human geography, cultural studies, gender studies, and critical race studies. His research explores how race, gender, and cultural production are informed by geography. His most recent work, Spatializing Blackness,(University of Illinois Press, 2015) examines how carceral power within the geographies of Black Chicagoans shaped urban planning, housing policy, policing practices, gang formation, high incarceration rates, masculinity, and health.

Professor Shabazz’s scholarship has appeared in the journals Souls, The Spatial-Justice Journal, ACME, Gender, Place and Culture, Cultural Geography, Occasions, and Places. In addition, Shabazz has also published several book chapters and book reviews. Professor Shabazz’s scholarship is also public facing. He has also appeared on local, national, and international news programs such as the BBC, Time Magazine, and 20/20. He is currently working on a book that uncovers the development of the Minneapolis music scene from its beginning in the mid-19th century to the release of Prince’s magnum opus, Sign O’ The Times, in 1987. Professor Shabazz received his Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness from the University of California-Santa Cruz in 2008.

TAMARA BECERRA VALDEZ
Visual artist and Educator | Advisor

Tamara Becerra Valdez is an artist and educator who works at the intersection of archives, oral histories, material studies, and ecology. She has participated in national and international multi-disciplinary projects focused on art, preservation, and ecology, including: Tender House Project, City of Chicago Park District, Political Ecology: Platform Chicago, Whole Life Academy, and The Anthropocene Campus with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin.

She has held residencies at ACRE and BOLT Residency at the Chicago Artists Coalition. In 2021, she was awarded a 3Arts Make A Wave grant. She received her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and BFA from the University of Texas at Austin. Tamara is also a gardener, seed saver, and collective member at El Paseo Community Garden in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago.

9 Artists/ 9 Months/ 9 Perspectives
2022-10-08 - 2022-12-17
9 Artists/ 9 Months/ 9 Perspectives features work by the collective, Dandelion Black Women Artists.

OPENING RECEPTION RSVP HERE

Nine Black women artists engaged in collaborative efforts to create artworks that transcend and transform events in the year 2020. In their eyes, art-making became a transgressive act through activism, documentation and vision. Utilizing book-making, craft-making and works on paper, 9 Artists/9 Months/ 9 Perspectives presents a birth of vision under hardship felt worldwide, collectively allowing us to reckon with our own perspectives, reflections and welfare.

This exhibition presents the conception, gestation, and birth of a collaborative artists’ books created by nine Black women artists of the collective, Dandelion Black Women Artists. Their responses, perspectives, and reflections were inspired by the continuous struggle for health, social, and economic welfare of marginalized people during COVID-19, the lack of response from the federal government, and the political allyship of socio-political grassroots movements like Black Lives Matter. Craft-making became a transgressive act through artivism, perspective, and vision.

Their work embraces Black feminism as theorized by artist/art historians such as Freida High Wasikhongo Tsesfagiorgis, in which art created by Black women artists depict the Black woman as: 1) subject rather than an object; 2) the exclusive or primary subject; 3) active rather than passive; 4) sensitive to the self-recorded realities of Black women; 5) imbued with the aesthetics of the African continuum—sustaining a personal vision that embraces Afrocentric tastes in color, texture, and rhythm.

Exhibiting artists include:
Adjoa J. Burrowes, Julee Dickerson-Thompson, Aziza Claudia Gibson-Hunter, Michele Godwin, Francine Haskins, Pamela Harris Lawton, Gloria Patton, Gail Shaw-Clemons, and Kamala Subramanian.

9 Artists/ 9 Months/ 9 Perspectives will be on view from October 8 – December 17, 2022.

Dandelion Black Women Artists Talk
2022-10-08 13:00 - 15:00
Members of the Dandelion Black Women Artists collective will join SSCAC Exhibitions Manager & Curator Lola Ayisha Ogbara in conversation.

RSVP HERE

Our upcoming exhibition 9 Artists/ 9 Months/ 9 Perspectives features work from the Dandelion Black Women Artists collective. These nine Black women artists engaged in collaborative efforts to create artworks that transcend and transform events in the year 2020. In their eyes, art-making became a transgressive act through activism, documentation and vision.

We hope you’ll join us with coffee and cake, for what will be an unforgettable and memorable intergenerational panel!

Gloria Patton. I Hear You. Monotype. 14′ x 11′. 2022

All based in the DMV region, otherwise known as the Beltway – SSCAC is proud to welcome this dynamic collective for a conversation moderated and facilitated by SSCAC Exhibitions Manager & Curator Lola Ayisha Ogbara, who worked exclusively with the artists in organizing 9 Artists/ 9 Months/ 9 Perspectives for it’s Chicago premiere at SSCAC.

Exhibiting artists include:
Adjoa J. Burrowes, Julee Dickerson-Thompson, Aziza Claudia Gibson-Hunter, Michele Godwin, Francine Haskins, Pamela Harris Lawton, Gloria Patton, Gail Shaw-Clemons, and Kamala Subramanian.

9 Artists/ 9 Months/ 9 Perspectives will be on view from October 8 – December 17, 2022.
