An Epithet curated by Jory Drew and Joelle Mercedes
March 13th at 5:55pm to April 30th, closing at 8:00pm
Make an appointment HERE.
An Epithet is a constellation of ubiquitous materials, a multimedia exhibition featuring artists who use playful strategies of resistance to create sacred monuments and excavate the structures of domination that use language to exclude, consume and mold subjects. As a slur, a classification, or a synecdoche, an epithet can conjure consent, pain, discernment, and lamentation. Consider the tenacious poltergeists who haunt, tickle, and reconfigure our bodies, domestic spaces, and technologies. In this mischief, an epithet demands rebirth.
This exhibition is curated by Jory Drew and Joelle Mercedes. It is presented at Co-Prosperity and with primary support from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The show opens on March 13th and runs until April 30th. The Gallery hours begin at sunset every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday by appointment only. Make an appointment HERE.
To set an appointment or find more information about the exhibition check out Epithet.info.
Programming:
SVAK (Weak)
Produced and funded by INTERNS (a digital residency) SVAK is a 7 part Norwegian language web-drama written, edited and directed by Justin Chance. Exploring the possibilities, materialities and failure of language learning, SVAK (Weak) follows a different day of the week.
Trap Door
Trap Door' is a performance sculpture by Nerieda Patrica that uses narrative device, sound, and movement to explore trans politics of visibility and abstraction. Mortality, bodily precarity and embodiment are problematized as ways of seeing and being seen, ignored, clocked, and passing.
Video of the activated performance will be released on Lumpen.TV. Date TBD
Panels
Online conversations between curators Joelle Mercedes, Jory Drew and artist Jacobo Zambrano-Rangel regarding An Epithet .
Streaming on Lumpen.TV. Date TBD
Curated By:
Joelle Mercedes: is an artist and educator whose work is grounded in collage techniques that puncture the restrictions of the two dimensional frame, examining and stretching concepts of origin, ancestry, birth and history. Their work has been presented in various forms at: ACRE Projects, Links Hall, Chicago Cultural Center, Compound Yellow, Roman Susan, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Threewalls, Sherman Park Branch Library, Hyde Park Art Center, Sullivan Galleries (Chicago), Lynden Sculpture Garden Gallery (Milwaukee), California Institute of the Arts (Valencia, CA). Their work has also been published by KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Recodo.sx.
Jory Drew: is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in Chicago, IL. Their work reckons with the social constructions of race, gender, and love which influence the economic, legal, and political conditions that subsequently manifest and determine the lives of black people. They have exhibited locally and nationally and have participated in residencies at Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, IL), ACRE (Steuben, WI/Chicago, IL.), Open Kitchen (Milwaukee, WI.), and Hot Box (Austin, TX.).
They are currently a co-lead artist for the Teen Creative Agency at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and may also be recognized as a Co-founder of F4F, a domestic venue in Little Village, and a Co-organizer of Beauty Breaks, an intergenerational beauty and wellness workshop series for black people along the spectrum of femininity.
Featured Artists Included:
Betelhem Makonnen: A native of Ethiopia (b. 1972), currently living and working in Austin, Texas. Her formal education consists of an MFA (2019) from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as a New Artists Society Merit Scholar and a B.A (1995) in History and Literature of Africa and the African Diaspora from University of Texas in Austin. Working with a variety of mediums that include video, photography, and installations, she researches questions on perception, presence, purpose and place within a trans-temporal and trans-locative topology that operates on the relational dynamics of an African diasporic consciousness. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally. In addition to her practice she is an active member of the Austin-based contemporary arts collaborative Black Mountain Project.
Jacobo Zambrano-Rangel: (b. 1991, Venezuela) holds a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design (2015) and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2020). He graduated from the Academic Program at SOMA in Mexico City (2018). His collaborative projects have been exhibited at SOMA and Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Arte, Mexico City; Logan Center for The Arts, Threewalls, and Chicago Cultural Center (forthcoming), Chicago; QUEENS, Los Angeles; Duplex, Spare Room, and Access Gallery (forthcoming), Vancouver B.C.; 3rd Kamias Triennial, Manila, Philippines. Zambrano-Rangel is the recipient of the Arts, Science & Culture Collaborative Project Grant from the University of Chicago and The New Artist Society Full Merit scholarship from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. He received the James Nelson Raymond Fellowship in 2020.
Jacobo Zambrano-Rangel’s practice is grounded in the relationship between history and power and its modes of representation and translation. Through multi-layered narrative structures that adopt photographic, time-based media and sculpture as vehicles for storytelling, he re-stages situations and spaces where knowledge is exchanged and transmitted. From this ground, his installations become sites of inquiry about the roles and effects of knowledge institutions in the construction of colonialism, personal and collective memory, and national identity. He often employs methodologies associated with anthropology and ethnography to interrogate the past and its relation to the present moment.
Justin Chance: is an artist, writer and co-founder of the Collaborative Center for Storm, Space & Seismic Research based in New York.
Nereida Patricia: (b. 1996, New York) is a multidisciplinary artist and writer based in Chicago, IL. Nereida’s practice spans sculpture, text, and performance, and explores themes of history, trans poetics, and identity. Her work draws from postcolonial and feminist theory, Peruvian symbolism, as well as autobiographical fragments, to build new mythologies around the transformation of the human body. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute Chicago and has also studied at The New School. Her work has been exhibited and spoken at venues including Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; Prairie Gallery, Chicago; Annka Kultys Gallery, London; the Museum of the Moving Image, Queens; The Knockdown Center, Queens; and POWERPLNT, Brooklyn, among others.
Sydnie Jimenez: was born in Orlando, FL but spent most of her childhood in north Georgia from which she draws much inspiration. She recently graduated from SAIC (2020) with a BFA focusing in ceramic sculpture. Much of her work centers around the representation of black/ brown youth and self-expression as a form of protest and self care to protect against a Eurocentric society founded on white supremacy and colonization.