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X-WR-CALDESC:Events for South Side Community Art Center
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230707T170000
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DTSTAMP:20260428T181822
CREATED:20230706T202751Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230706T202915Z
UID:9849-1688749200-1688760000@sscartcenter.org
SUMMARY:Black Light Cinema Project and Homecoming: Black Craft & Design in Chicago
DESCRIPTION:Join us for an opening reception to celebrate and kick off our summer exhibitions!\n  \n \n  \nIn a world rich with diverse cultures and histories\, the concept of belonging and homeplace holds profound significance. Within the tapestry of human experiences\, one thread stands out with resilience\, creativity\, and an indomitable spirit – the Black cinematic experience. SSCAC is debuting the ‘Black Light Cinema Project’ to explore the intricate interconnectedness of Black life through new media and film. This inaugural iteration explores themes of belonging\, homeplace\, and identity\, while celebrating the vibrancy of our urban landscapes\, partnered alongside our 2nd floor Cortor gallery exhibition ‘Homecoming: Black Craft & Design in Chicago’.\nAt its core\, ‘Black Light Cinema Project’ seeks to dismantle conventional notions of homeplace and embrace a more nuanced understanding through the exhibiting of the underrepresented medium of film in art space. We invite visitors to venture beyond the physical spaces we call home\, encouraging them to delve into the emotional\, spiritual\, and ancestral landscapes that define our sense of belonging. Through ongoing screenings of film shorts\, we offer a multifaceted exploration of the Black experience\, revealing the complex interplay of history\, memory\, and identity.\n  \nFeatured Artists: Jada Amina \, zakkiyyah najeebah dumas-o’neal\, Cameron Granger \, Paige Taul\, and cai thomas\n  \nThis exhibition is curated by SSCAC Exhibitions Manager and Curator Lola Ayisha Ogbara.\n  \n \nCameron Granger. Heavy as Heaven. 2022\, 11 mins\, 3-channel\, Sound\, Digital file. \n\n  \n‘Homecoming: Black Craft & Design’ in Chicago utilizes the varying practices of several Black craft artists in Chicago working in the mid to late 20th century and pairs their work with historical archival materials from the socio-political movements in the city during the Black Arts Movement\, of the 60’s and 70’s.\nChicago is internationally known as a diverse cultural landscape that is rooted in segregation and discrimination\, but this exhibition aims to explore how studio craft artists are using their practices and connections to spaces like the South Side Community Art Center to explore these themes. This exhibition seeks to present the complex multivalent histories of Black artists with varying connections to the South Side Community Art Center during its early years in the mid-twentieth century. These artists all in some way play with the performative presentations of body and self through creating ambiguous figures or forms. These artists have explored complex themes of Black cultural representation\, concepts around object functionality and performativity\, issues in presentation of self through objects\, and methods of socio-cultural identity making through creative expression.\nThe exhibition will present the biographical backgrounds of the artists included while exploring how they technically executed their works (both professionally and personally)\, as well as reflecting on the conceptual subjects that fueled their practices.\n  \nFeatured Artists: Elizabeth Catlett\, Irene Clark\, Bobbe Cotton\, Jeremiah Drake\, Espi Eph\, Clinton Foreman\, Eselean Henderson\, William McBride\, Geraldine McCullough\, El Roi Parker\, Marva Jolly Pitchford\, Allen Stringfellow\, Teresa Staats\, and Bill Walker.\n  \nThis exhibition is curated by SSCAC Archives and Collections Manager LaMar Gayles Jr.\n  \n  \n \nWilliam McBride. Balancers. Oil on canvas. 1945
URL:https://sscartcenter.org/event/black-light-cinema-project-and-homecoming-black-craft-design-in-chicago/
LOCATION:IL
CATEGORIES:Events,Exhibitions
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230708T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230708T150000
DTSTAMP:20260428T181822
CREATED:20230706T204039Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230706T204148Z
UID:9857-1688824800-1688828400@sscartcenter.org
SUMMARY:The New School: QTPOC Pathways
DESCRIPTION:Join us for a panel discussion navigating the shift in the representation of Black gay/queer/trans/non-binary identities in Chicago from the 1980s to today.\n  \n \n\n  \nIn the 80s\, the heat of bodies could be felt throughout downtown Chicago from the clubs to the streets. Passersby called out to each other and occasionally locked eyes holding a knowing sultry gaze. Black men of all ages\, fluid in their sexual preferences\, crowded the South Loop bars and warehouse raves. As the photographer Patric McCoy moved through the streets and crowded venues\, he candidly captured Black men the way they wished to be seen in their spectrum of identities\, countering mass media narratives. These photographs\, now on view at Wrightwood 659 in Patric McCoy: Take My Picture\, document an essential view of an underground culture that has since grown and transformed over the past 40 years.\n\nModerated by Patric McCoy\, “The New School: QTPOC Pathways” features contemporary voices from the arts community\, including Jared Brown\, an interdisciplinary artist who uses fragments of Black subcultures to investigate the history and the digital space; LaMar Gayles\, an archaeologist and curator with a special focus on the work of artist Berry Horton and the Black queer arts communities in Chicago; and Najee-Zaid Searcy\, an educator and artist who employs strategies of collaboration and organizing to create safe QTPOC spaces.\n  \nABOUT THE SPEAKERS\n  \n \nNajee-Zaid Searcy (any pronouns with respect) is an interdisciplinary artist rooted in Chicago\, IL\, originally home to the Council of Three Fires. Najee-Zaid designs\, sustains\, and transitions spaces for LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC beings through performance art\, facilitation\, respite\, and music. Najee-Zaid is a co-founder of the Queering the Parks Initiative (Chicago Park District) and the Otherhood Collective. They debuted their EP and performance artwork both titled “Immersion” at the Elastic Arts Foundation in 2022 and will further showcase their project through the 2023/2024 season.\n\nLearn more at najeezaidsearcy.com\n  \n  \n \nLaMar R. Gayles Jr. (a native son of the South Side of Chicago) is an archaeologist\, independent curator\, material culture scholar\, and technical art historian. He is currently enrolled in the PhD program in Art Conservation and Preservation Studies at the University of Delaware. Gayles is a 2021 graduate from the University of Illinois Chicago’s Museum and Exhibition Studies (MUSE) masters program and a 2019 BA (Cum Laude) graduate from St. Olaf College with a triple major in Art History\, Ethnic Studies\, and Ethno-Aesthetics & Archaeological Materiality. He has researched and curated exhibitions on Black American material culture and its historical progressions from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first century.\n\nOne of Gayles’s most recent exhibitions was the 2021 exhibition Divine Legacies in Black Jewelry at the National Museum of Ornamental Metals. Gayles’s most recent curatorial project was the 2022 Terra Foundation of American Art funded co-curated exhibition Emergence: Intersections at the Center which explored the trajectories and complex interwoven legacies of the South Side Community Art Center and Chicago LGBTQ+ communities. Gayles’s personal research methodology combines archaeometry\, arts-based research\, conservation science\, art historical analysis\, ethnography\, historical reproduction\, and technical studies to explore material and visual culture.\n  \n \n  \n\n\n\n\n\n\nJared Brown is an interdisciplinary artist born in Chicago. In past work\, Jared broadcasted audio and text-based work through the radio (CENTRAL AIR RADIO\, 88.5 FM)\, in live DJ sets\, and on social media. They consider themselves a data thief\, understanding this role from John Akomfrah’s description of the data thief as a figure that does not belong to the past or present. As a data thief\, Jared Brown makes archeological digs for fragments of Black American subculture\, history\, and technology. Jared repurposes these fragments in audio\, text\, and video to investigate the relationship between history and digital\, immaterial space. Jared Brown holds a BFA in video from the Maryland Institute College of Art and moved back to Chicago in 2016 in order to make and share work that directly relates to their personal history.
URL:https://sscartcenter.org/event/the-new-school-qtpoc-pathways/
LOCATION:IL
CATEGORIES:Events
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230710T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230710T153000
DTSTAMP:20260428T181822
CREATED:20231003T185613Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240925T170742Z
UID:9949-1688990400-1689003000@sscartcenter.org
SUMMARY:All of Living is Risk | Opening Reception
DESCRIPTION:  \nJoin us for an opening reception to celebrate and kick off our fall/winter exhibitions alongside curators Rikki Byrd\, and Gervais Marsh\, with artist Cory Perry! \n  \n  \n \n  \n  \nAll of Living is Risk (2nd floor Cortor Gallery) brings together works by Cory Perry (b. 1989\, Fayetteville\, Arkansas) and Nnaemeka C. Ekwelum (b. 1990\, Boston). Drawing on Afrodiasporic textile practices of quilting and weaving\, respectively\, Perry and Ekwelum explore the juxtaposition of Black queer grief\, joy\, and belonging. Combining second-hand textiles and deconstructed clothing objects given to them by Black queer people whose voices have been underrepresented across the South – and specifically in their hometown of Fayetteville\, Arkansas – Perry pays homage to the region’s traditions of quilting. Strung along and suspended from string\, Perry’s installation recalls a clothesline. They critically engage quotidian and gendered gestures of homemaking to reflect on the ways that queer people in the South build relationships and foster collectivity\, despite the ruptures and ephemerality of these spaces caused by harmful societal reactions attempting to stifle their existence.\n\n  \n \nImage courtesy of artist Cory Perry. 2023. \n\nEkwelum creates grief cloths using a West African upright loom inspired by Nigerian “abata” cloths\, which are used to honor the dead during funerals. The artist extends the intent of these cloths as an archive of feeling to consider his life as a Black queer American-born\, Nigerian person. Combining weaving\, sculpture\, and installation\, found and purchased art materials\, Ekwelum’s practice puts pressure on and blurs the antiquated delineation between craft and fine art. Central to his artistic materials is a plastic lacing known as “gimp.” Often considered a tool for creative experimentation for children\, the artist uses it to represent his “inner child work.” In this exhibition and others\, Ekwelum “moves according to feeling\,” sculpting each cloth in response to gallery architecture\, exhibition themes\, and history of location. Perry and Ekwelum engage textiles and found objects as conduits for histories imbued with personal memories\, delving into the interiority of Black queer life. They meditate on what cannot be immediately “seen” or “known”\, and imagine possibilities for healing while creating spaces for living through joy and collective care.\n  \n \nImage courtesy of Nnaemeka C. Ekwelum. 2023. \n\n\nVisitors are invited to gently move their bodies through Perry’s installation and closely observe Ekwelum’s cloths\, inspiring the beauty of wonderment. Please honor their practices while being respectful and careful with their work. This exhibition is titled after scholar Kevin Quashie’s reflection in his essay “Queer. Caribbean. Miami. Boy: A Personal Geography”: “The truth is\, all of living is risk\, sometimes more so because of one’s age\, gender\, race\, but all of living is deep risk.”\n  \nIt is organized by independent curators Gervais Marsh and Rikki Byrd with support by the South Side Community Art Center\, Art Noir Jar of Love Fund\, and the Black Arts Consortium at Northwestern University.\n  \n \n  \nCory D. Perry (b. 1989\, Arkansas) is a multimedia quilting and performance folk artist based in Chicago\, IL. My art practice and research investigate the possibilities of what queering Black spiritual space can and could be through textiles\, images\, beads\, and various materials. They received their Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Arkansas School of Art and attended the Post-baccalaureate program in Sculpture and Museum Research at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi\, Ghana. Perry received their Master’s degree of Fine Arts and graduate certificate of Black Studies from Northwestern University. Perry is a recipient of the 2019 Windgate-Lamar Fellowship and the 2022 Sexualities Project at Northwestern University Award. In 2019 they were an honorary international artist for Chale Wote Performance Art Festival in Accra\, Ghana. Most recently\, they were a participant artist for the 2023 Smithsonian Folklife Festival\, where they created and performed “Queer Black Sunshine” a meditative protest on the National Mall in Washington\, DC.\n“My art practice and research investigates ways to expand the possibilities of what Black queer space can and could be through textiles\, images\, beads\, and various materials. For me\, “to be Black and queer” is the potentiality of another world through self-identifying and self-actualizing gestures. I’m interested in what the materials can tell us through their palimpsest beauty. By layering various translucent textiles and allowing collaged fabrics to shift in composition from different perspectives\, windows are created for the seen and unseen. Black queer space is always in a state of flux\, and I want to explore that in my work.”\n  \n  \n \nRikki Byrd is a writer\, educator and curator who works across the academy\, arts and fashion industries. She has participated in curatorial projects with the Block Museum of Art\, SkyART\, and most recently curated the fashion presentations in the traveling exhibition The Culture: Hip Hop & Contemporary Art in the 21st Century\, co-organized by the Baltimore Museum of Art and Saint Louis Art Museum. Her research focuses on Black aesthetic practices including fashion\, performance\, and contemporary art\, and she has lectured at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Washington University in St. Louis\, where she created new courses on fashion and race. Her writing appears across exhibition catalogs\, academic journals\, books\, and arts and fashion media such as Hyperallergic\, Cultured and Teen Vogue.\nShe is the co-founder and editor of the Fashion and Race Syllabus\, founder of Black Fashion Archive\, and an editorial advisory board member for Bloomsbury Fashion Publishing. Rikki is currently completing her PhD in the Department of Black Studies at Northwestern University. Her work has been supported by fellowships from the Modern Ancient Brown Foundation\, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation\, and the Presidential Fellowship at Northwestern University.\n  \n \n  \nGervais Marsh is a writer\, curator and scholar whose work is deeply invested in Black life\, concepts of relationality and care. They received a PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and are currently a Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow with the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. Their writing\, artistic and curatorial work is rooted in Transnational Black feminisms\, with recent curatorial projects including To be pained is to have lived through feeling with Canada NYC and Rupture: Interventions of Possibility with Art at a Time Like This. Their writing has been published in several books and exhibition catalogs including Denzil Hurley (monograph)\, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art\, Forgotten Lands Vol. 5\, KMAC Museum Triennial (2022)\, as well as online art publications such as Hyperallergic\, C Magazine\, Brooklyn Rail\, ARTS.BLACK\, Musée Magazine\, and PREE: Caribbean Writing\, among others. They have received fellowships and curatorial support from the Jamaica Art Society\, Terra Foundation for American Art\, VisArts Center\, The Gay and Lesbian Review\, Northwestern University\, and Independent Curators International.\nThey have taught undergraduate/graduate courses focused on Black Feminist theory\, praxis and performance\, and Black queer studies. They are an editor with Ruckus Journal and research interests include Black Studies\, Art history\, Caribbean Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies. They grew up in Kingston\, Jamaica\, a home that continues to shape their understanding of self and relationship to the world.\n\n 
URL:https://sscartcenter.org/event/9949/
LOCATION:IL
CATEGORIES:Events,Exhibitions
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20230715T130000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20230715T150000
DTSTAMP:20260428T181822
CREATED:20230706T205240Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230708T161354Z
UID:9866-1689426000-1689433200@sscartcenter.org
SUMMARY:Before I Let Go: Film Screening & Discussion
DESCRIPTION:Join us for a special film screening hosted by filmmaker Cameron Granger\, with guest filmmakers cai thomas and Bobby T. Luck. \n  \n \n  \nWe invite you to join us for a special screening of Cameron Granger’s film Before I Let Go\, created during his residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2022\, alongside Change The Name (2021) by cai thomas\, and Was It Your Trigger Finger (2023) by Bobby T. Luck. A short Q&A session will follow the screening.\nBefore I Let Go is the latest film from artist Cameron Granger. Set in the fictional town of Bad City\, 5 years after a giant monster attack leveled the city’s east side neighborhood\, the film follows a documentary filmmaker’s experience covering the community’s recovery efforts.\n  \nThe Before I Let Go Summer Tour is a series of free screenings at several community and artist-run spaces across the midwest and east coast. Each screening is free and features two filmmakers from or making work in each specific venue.\nEach stop on the tour is self funded. If you would like to support the programmers of the tour you can do so here. Your donation will go towards travel\, guest filmmaker stipends\, and each hosting venue.\n  \nYou can read more about the tour\, and see what other venues they’ll be stopping at here.\n  \n \n\nCameron A. Granger is Sandra’s son & came up in Cleveland\, Ohio. Inspired by the rigorous archival & homemaking practices of his grandmother\, Pearl\, Granger uses his work as a means to quilt his communal and familial histories\, into new\, not just potential\, but inevitable futures. He’s an alumni of Euclid public schools\, Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture\, and the Studio Museum in Harlem AIR program.\n\n  \n \ncai thomas is a documentary filmmaker and cinematographer based in Chicago telling stories at the intersection of location\, self determination\, and identity about Black youth and elders She grew up in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood and is deeply interested in stories rooted in place. Her film Change The Name which follows young activists organizing in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival and was broadcast on BET. Her previous film Queenie about a Black lesbian elder in Brooklyn’s Bed Stuy neighborhood premiered at NewFest in 2020 winning the NY Short Grand Jury award and is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel. cai recently completed Beneath The Surface which documents data scientist and journalist Trina Reynolds Tyler investigation into gender based violence at the hands of the Chicago Police Department and is digitally distributed by PBS’ Independent Lens. cai is a proud NeXt Doc Fellow.\n  \nAn intimate portrayal of Black youth organizing on the west side of Chicago\, ‘Change The Name ‘follows a group of 5th graders from Village Leadership Academy as they embark on a campaign to rename Stephen A. Douglas Park after freedom fighters Anna Murray and Frederick Douglass. Over the course of the three-year grassroots campaign the students tackle bureaucratic Chicago Park District systems\, underestimations of their capacity to make real change as well as a pandemic and global uprising.\n  \n \n\n\n\n\nBobby T. Luck is a visual artist and education activist based in Chicago\, IL who works in film\, multimedia collage\, sculpture\, and installation. After relocating to Columbus from Philadelphia he jump-started the Free Skool for Humans initiative\, co-founded MINT Collective\, and taught collage and film theory workshops across the country. Luck now works as Program Director for Roots & Culture Contemporary Art Center.\n  \nWhere do your values begin and your influences end? Who told you you weren’t safe? Did you believe them? We have been trained since childhood via pop culture government intervention to pull the trigger for a country that had us constantly in its sites. Prison bed\, coffin\, or barracks?\n  \nOur protectors offer us an illusion of choice\, while the soft buzzy blue hands of the tv stroke and mold our foreheads\, assuring that our personal triggers were imported. ‘Was it Your Trigger Finger’ blurs the line between fact and fiction\, exploring how military propaganda in media has shaped our views of where our country’s traumas lie\, not within the home\, but with a foreign adversary.
URL:https://sscartcenter.org/event/before-i-let-go-film-screening-discussion/
LOCATION:IL
CATEGORIES:Events
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