The House You Built: Memory, Touch, and Performance in Repository and Repertoire
The body is an archive: a hard drive, memorial, escape pod, Netflix queue, a bound of Gordian knots surrounding soft rooms.
All posts filed under: Featured
March Art Picks
If you’ve followed us for a while, you know that our Art Picks offer a wide scope of events that are relevant to our audiences because we and the artists, cultural workers, curators, spaces, and projects we support live full lives that know no boundaries. We maintain expansive practices and work toward justice for BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and disability communities in Chicago and the Midwest. Created in collaboration with The Visualist and adapted for social-distancing due to COVID-19, this list offers online exhibitions, streaming events, a list of online collections from Black and LGBTQIA+ archives, and other ways to spend time in the virtual space. Featured image: A collage illustration of turquoise and light grey stripes on a black background. Image created by Ryan Edmund Thiel. This is a growing list, so check back often with new additions. March 1-31, 2021Cozy WarmCircle Contemporary: 2010 W Carroll Ave. Chicago, ILFree March, 2021POP4 Online ExhibitionLincoln Square Pottery Studio- Learning Center: OnlineFree Mon, March 1, 1pmOn RepatriationDePaul Art Museum: OnlineFree Mon, March 1, 4pmRicardo Basbaum: From Would you like to participate …
Review: November at Beeler Gallery, Columbus College of Art & Design
This is a disclaimer for the review since I am driving some of my methodologies in my writing from the White Pube’s Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad’s practice of expanding what it means to be an art critic and the ways we interact with art. If you have not read any critiques by the white pube – I highly suggest to (because the reviews are great) and also the way I will be writing breaks away from the traditional model of the “art critic”. This way of writing centers the emotionality of art, the problematic issues inherent in the art world, and the theoretical hopes and violences that are used against and for the nature of art. * * * Emojis: /5 To write this review, I have to get something off my chest. I’ve had this feeling for a while now as it relates to art, institutions, and community. This feeling isn’t singular either – I think lots of people feel this way. It’s the same feeling that brings you here, dear …
Chronic
I hate medical offices. The one I’m sitting in now is especially bleak and harsh. The tiny exam room makes me feel trapped with its cold floors and blinding fluorescent lights. This loathing is all I’m thinking about as I wait for the pain management doctor. I’ve given no thought to what he might say during this first visit. By now, I’m used to doctors not having answers for me and I have no reason to think this doctor will be any different. I’m assuming shots are the most painful possibility for today. Even if I anticipate the diagnosis I’m about to hear, I can’t know how it will make me feel. Like so many things in life, you don’t know until it’s happening to you. The casual hello the doctor offers upon entering the room provides no clue to the emotional whiplash I’m about to experience. Turns out the shots would have been less painful. The doctor quickly begins a brief report of my symptoms. He speaks in monotone and I notice my back …
The Flying Trapeze: Michelle Reid, Photographer and Dancer
Photographer Robert Frank is credited with saying, “There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment.” Photographer and dancer, Michelle Reid manages to capture the humanity of dance and circus in her exquisite photography. Reid discovered photography in her senior year as a dance major at The Ohio State University. She had “the urge to find a new way to express myself.” Reid took the “Dance for Camera” class at Ohio State which was the first time she held a camera. She ended up buying herself a camera and going around Columbus, OH, taking pictures of people and buildings. When Reid graduated, she came to Chicago with the hopes of finding work as a dancer. Unfortunately, she found it hard to find dance jobs that paid well. She hadn’t thought about photography as a source of income but it was a skill that she could use to support herself. She began to look up photography jobs and found her first job photographing newborns at the hospital. It was commissioned based and …
Dorian Sylvain: Muralist, Teaching Artist, Curator, and Community Planner
As a long term resident of South Side Chicago, Dorian Sylvain‘s artwork is no stranger to myself or others. I first met Dorian in 2015 at Mana Contemporary during the ChiArts visual arts senior thesis show. Five years later, I would reintroduce myself to Dorian and proceed with asking her if she needed an artist assistant. While I am still learning from Dorian, she has taught me much thus far and has even encouraged me to take on different mediums within my artwork. It is an immense pleasure to interview Dorian on her practice, career, and what’s next down the line. Alkebuluan Merriweather: Who is Dorian Sylvain today as opposed to 40 years ago? Dorian Sylvain: Today I am a more confident artist and certainly a more experienced artist. Through the years, I evolved my practice, relationships, and have expanded on the dreams of a young artist growing up on Chicago’s South Side. In my early 20’s I recognized my commitment to working as a teaching artist, receiving my first grant to operate a free arts …
Reproductive Agency—The Political Made Visual
January 22nd marked the 48th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, but the debate around reproductive rights didn’t end there. Denying Title X family planning dollars to providers like Planned Parenthood and concerns over Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment to the Supreme Court are just a few examples of how the fight continues. Engaging with and broadening the discussion of how fertility is politicized, Reproductive: Health, Fertility, Agency at the Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP) provides a comprehensive look at reproductive issues through art. Kudos to MoCP for tackling the issue broadly, focusing on the spectrum of experiences, not just birth control and abortion. The exhibition includes artworks addressing desire and sexuality, the heteronormative childbirth industry, and menopause. That said, the curatorial narrative is strongest in articulating the ways in which patriarchal systems affect reproductive freedoms. The largest gallery space is devoted to Laia Abril’s project On Abortion: And the Repercussions of Lack of Access, 2016. Her archive of images and text is based on years of research about the consequences of restricting access …
My First Chicago Film: Bri Clearly
Chicago has long been a place for indie creators to get together and make something beautiful. The filmmaking community in the city is one filled with ideas galore and the determination to make it happen. Throughout the years, we’ve seen many writers, directors, and producers start and grow their careers here, always recognizing Chicago in the process, even if they move to the coasts to pursue entertainment. Chicago Made Shorts, a new platform hosted on Instagram TV, provides a hub for said filmmakers, simply looking for a place for their work to get seen. Imani Davis, Founder and Creative Director of Chicago Made Shorts, is deeply curious about how people make their way through the film scene in Chicago and get that first short film made. What was the impact of that first project made here? Who was involved? Why Chicago? In this series, Imani dives deep into these questions as well as the stories and beginnings of five different Chicago-based filmmakers. Through these interviews, she’ll make her way through topics such as making your way …
The Undefined: Tonina Saputo
Tonina Saputo is an out-of-the-box musician who doesn’t know how to exactly define herself or her music. Playing the upright bass, she might tell you she’s folk, but she could change her mind. Either way, she knows how to pull a crowd here in St. Louis, Missouri. “This is my third,” “This is my fourth Tonina concert,” or, “I’ve lost count,” are pretty common phrases one might hear entering a Tonina set. I went to my first (socially-distanced) Tonina concert in a sea of seasoned vets in the summer of 2020. I had never heard of her, but like the honest concert go-er I am, I made sure to listen to her music before. I was transfixed with her bold tones and spicy flare—and not because she sings in Spanish, but because her Latin music techniques are obviously brought into her English songs. She definitely brings a unique song and style to the St. Louis music scene, which she describes as “supportive” and “close-knit”. Her albums and singles go back and forth between strong alternative-like …
Doomscrolling with Cats: A Review of Andreas Fischer’s And apologies for bringing this up
Late in her essay on the painter David Salle, Janet Malcolm records his thoughts on Francis Bacon, for whom she sees a comparison in the “dire cast” of their figures on canvas. Salle’s women (“degrading, depersonalized, fetishistic images,” per one review), and Bacon’s men (troubling, car-smashed meat sacks, per my own recent Google search), do share a quality of doom. Yet Salle is quick to deflect an affinity. “Bacon is actually not an artist I’m interested in,” he says, “but lately I’ve been thinking about him a lot in attempting to defend myself against certain criticisms.” He continues: “If you turned these criticisms around and leveled them against Bacon, it would be absurd. And it’s purely because his work is homosexual and mine is heterosexual. The same attitudes transposed are incorrect.” “Why [asks Malcolm] are dire images done by a homosexual more correct than those done by a heterosexual?” “Because in art politics, to be homosexual is, a priori, more correct than to be heterosexual. Because to be an artist is to be an outsider, …
Review: Caesar’s Palace at LVL3
“He just can’t get enough of you and literally drools in your presence,” reads a Cosmopolitan article from 2016 titled “15 Signs You Need a Dog Way More Than a Boyfriend.” In any other context, this descriptor would be troubling, to say the least. But from dogs, those domesticated carnivores whose fetid excrement we lovingly pick up with our own hands, obsessive adoration is expected. In Caesar’s Palace, the two-person show at LVL3 featuring work by Caroline Jacobson and Taylor Marie Prendergast, that deification goes both ways. Jacobson’s “Monument” sculptures turn our canine companions into stone bust idols worthy of worship, adorning them with towering wigs that rival those worn by 18th-century French royalty. In addition to the squishy-faced, tall-haired “Monument” dogs, Jacobson and Prendergast’s pieces depict bunny rabbits, pigs, gargoyles, and hybridized creatures that defy any categorization beyond “uncanny.” The uncanny is a unifying feature in Jacobson and Prendergast’s work, which encompasses found object figures outfitted in wigs (Jacobson), painted bridal portraits with melting skin and sharpened teeth (Prendergast), silicone faces with pig snouts …
We Series: Health
The We Series presents live art that blurs the line between performance and reality, with a soft spot for the participatory, ceremonial, ritualistic, immersive, and tutorial. Published in Collaboration with Elastic Arts. Published in Collaboration with Elastic Arts.
If You Know You Know
Free Fall face flat on sheets Stomach meeting mattress massage, A deep sigh + a settle. This is the downpour I mean When I pray for rain ——————————————— The presence of my healingIs not the absence of my painMy trauma live w me in thespare roomBut we ain’t the same. She in the kitchen, barren fridgeI feed me for us bothShe in my body and I dance her outonce a week. Shake the sticky memories off my skinReplace w honey in my teaMy trauma stay w me an I take carea her tooPlace her in porcelain tub for a spiritualrinseProse, petals, water, epsomOil, candle, crying, cradling Ancestors say let them stones go so I doSay the power you been fighting foralready been in you Sick queers been known isolationfuck a pandemicBeen known skype staticlike urgent caremedics known to mask in publicbefore mass productionknow counting stairs + counting pills +counting calmBed be galaxyBreath be stars Know meals at front doorsunexpected callswe show upmad bitches got enough shit to shift throughdon’t always know what we need Blessed …
February Art Picks
If you’ve followed us for a while, you know that our Art Picks offer a wide scope of events that are relevant to our audiences because we and the artists, cultural workers, curators, spaces, and projects we support live full lives that know no boundaries. We maintain expansive practices and work toward justice for BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and disability communities in Chicago and the Midwest. Created in collaboration with The Visualist and adapted for social-distancing due to COVID-19, this list offers online exhibitions, streaming events, a list of online collections from Black and LGBTQIA+ archives, and other ways to spend time in the virtual space. Featured image: A collage illustration of fuchsia, pink, and orange wave-like shapes. Image created by Ryan Edmund Thiel. This is a growing list, so check back often with new additions. Dreams of a New Day — Songs by Black ComposersCedille Records: Online$0-16 Through February 4, 2021Paper PavilionsFAR Center for Contemporary Arts: 202 S. Rogers St. Bloomington, INFree Every Sunday from February 7 – 28, 2021, 1pmRehearsals: José Santiago Pérez’s UnburdeningsChicago Artists Coalition: OnlineFree …
We Series: Screens
When does a net become a screen? “Television” derives from the Greek root telos meaning “end”, or “goal of completion”; and from the Latin root, videre, “to see”. This same word in German is “Bildschirm”. Bild, as in picture, shirm, as in an umbrella. In Old High German skirm, skerm means “protection”, and the root sker means “to cut”. A literal translation for Bildschirm would be “image screen”, or perhaps an “image cutout”. We can even imagine it to mean an image cutout from reality, thus a simulation to be witnessed. Together these etymologies bridge two realms: “television” embraces perhaps more the psychological side, whereas “Bildschirm” relates more to the physical one. This makes us wonder about the possible relationships between different types of screens, more generally: phones, monitors, televisions, silk screens, window screens, smoke screens, fishing nets, scrim, mosquito nets, hosiery, filters, and projections. When talking about a screen, we feel like there is a vector involved. For a vector, there must be two sides or two poles, parts that are situated directional from …
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Beyond the Page: Quenna Lené Barrett
“Beyond the Page” digs into the process and practice of writers and artists who work at the intersection of literary arts and other fields. For this installment, I interviewed Quenna Lené Barrett — actor, educator, writer, director, activist, scholar, and lifelong Chicagoan. We spoke in late November about her ongoing project, “Re-Writing the Declaration,” and its recent production; how her many forms of work inform each other; and using applied theater as a tool for civic participation and Black liberation. Follow Barrett @quennalene (Twitter, Instagram) and @quenna.lene (Facebook). This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Marya Spont-Lemus: After getting to experience aspects of Re-Writing the Declaration as a project over the last few years, it was extra exciting to see the production of it earlier this month. Now that a few weeks have passed, how are you feeling about it? Quenna Lené Barrett: Still feeling really good! I was directing two shows at once — Re-Writing the Declaration and another one, in this virtual format — and then had other projects come up. …
Black Narcissus: After Nereida Patricia’s cracked sidewalk fountain
“Who’s there?” Narcissus stops trepidatiously and slowly turns around to stare into the thick underbrush. Nothing moves among the stand of ferns and foxglove. The mountain nymph Echo hides behind a pine tree, pushing her back against the dimpled bark. Her heart thumps deafeningly in her ear and her arms tremble noticeably, but she softly repeats Narcissus’s question back to him: Who’s there? Narcissus’s eyes narrow and he listens intently for several minutes before deciding he only heard the ghost of his own voice, and continues his hike through the forest. Echo sighs and slumps away from the tree, peering slowly around the trunk. She waits until Narcissus is several yards ahead before following after him, trailing him like an elongated, late-afternoon shadow, and occasionally darting behind a tree or rock again whenever he suddenly pivots around—unnerved by his acute hunter’s instincts—and calls out again, “Who’s there?” Who’s there? They continue on in this way for several miles until suddenly, overcome by her urge to smell his ripe body odor, admire his doe-like eyelashes, stroke …
We Series: Sleep
// Kurt, Waking Adam and I go about a small ritual where we interrupt our sleep on a few nights during the week. We’ll interrupt our sleep, and write down some experiences, some feelings, and some outcomes. Those records will be made available to the public, offered up here. This rite against sleep points at its relationship to presence. When we sleep, we sacrifice something small of our presence for the chance at sleep. Now, Adam and I will sacrifice our sleep for some exceptional and previously unknown aspects of our waking life. Similar to certain books about drugs. Like, if you want to read about drugs but have a limited desire to try the drugs yourself. I have read those books too, I know. Don’t know why. I’m hunting, I suppose. I’m curious and I hunt for what the drugs do. And then I know what the drugs do, and now I don’t need to do them. Our friend Andrew is going to help. He has read some books and he is into it. …
Resounding: Terry Adkins at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation
Terry Adkins (1953-2014) was a transdisciplinary artist who utilized sculpture, sound, video, performance, and printmaking strategies in combination with material, personal and historical research. Through a deep investment in the use of creative methodologies to investigate personal and historical narrative, Adkins developed an artistic framework that embraced complexity and contradiction in service of an expansive and generative model of identity, one that has continued to influence contemporary art discourse. Terry Adkins: Resounding, on view at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis, features over 60 objects that include career-spanning sculpture, print, and video work as well as items from Adkins’ personal collection of musical instruments, books, and ephemera. The exhibition marks some of the most significant moments in the artist’s career and provides new insight into how Adkins situated sound outside of a normative, hierarchical structure. Adkins developed the term ‘potential disclosure’ to describe the three-staged process that rooted his material practice. This process, consisting of (1) collection (2) gestation and (3) transformation1, was the technique through which Adkins synthesized his material and historical research. …
Breaking the Surface at Heaven Gallery with Erin Hayden and Max Guy
“An image is an image, and sincerity is in the shuffle” —Erin Hayden in conversation with Max Guy Erin Hayden and Max Guy’s exhibition Cups Swords and Eyes may be at Heaven Gallery, but its concerns are altogether earthly. The techniques are playful and quick, the style ranging and unpretentious, the materials scrappy, the ideas “elementary”—to quote the artist—creating a show that is quite sincere. Here there is no desire to transcend into the heavenly realm, but rather an insistence on sitting in all of one’s detritus and obsession. There is real comfort in the simplicity of the show’s ideas and in its commitment to making process visible. Hayden and Guy couldn’t have found a better home than with Heaven Gallery’s warm and casual atmosphere filled with gently pulsing dance music, champagne light, and a gorgeous selection of vintage clothing. The rarified environment of art is blissfully far from mind, and visitors are welcome to meet the art on its own terms. Dominating the main room at Heaven Gallery is a massive salon hang of …
We the Audience: Performance under lockdown at Links Hall
“We the people!” The phrase is shouted towards the beginning of the first performance, strident. It’s unclear whether I’m to be included in this first-person plural. And accordingly, there are multiple bodies onstage, unmasked, within striking distance of a cough or a sneeze. This is the first thing I notice now, not just during Zoom performances, but in pretty much everything I watch. Ordinary corporeal proximity now feels at once dangerous and exciting. Similarly, these words, “we the people,” feel lifted out of the near meaningless ubiquity in which they float in Kierah King’s performance Viewership Intended for Re(Creational) Use Only. The piece is one of three in-progress performances hosted by Links Hall in conjunction with their artist residency program Co-MISSION. Live streamed on YouTube, each performance was created by a participant of the 2020-2021 residency program, including Kierah King, Cherrie Yu, and Taimy Ramos Velázquez. King’s performance opens with several Black femmes milling about onstage, fuming. “Who is this ‘we’?” “Sure doesn’t sound like me.” Their ruminations and objections are occasionally punctuated by a …
We Series: Food
Journeys and weavings that we explore through cooking, eating, and sharing food. Sharing food with ourselves, our loved ones, and the ghosts we carry. What is the comfort zone you need to create in order to take that journey? ////////////////////////////////// The Beginning of the recipe starts at the table bickering with your family. The Beginning of the recipe starts sprawled across a plush couch when a long twisting aromatic thread travels from the kitchen and tugs at your impatient hunger. The Beginning of the recipe starts buried in a memory you left to tumble around in your mind and is now a glistening Fable. As we peer at our Fable, Into the PRIMORDIAL SOUP of our creation Infinite worlds begin to form Some give us comfort [wrapped in the wafts of atmospheric nostalgia] While others are w h i s p e r s of possibilities [adrift in the escapism of dreams] *Coalescing and creating a symphony of FUCKING DELICIOUSNESS* TAP, TAP, TAP. Are we ready? Layer your atmosphere – a low hiss …
January Art Picks
If you’ve followed us for a while, you know that our Art Picks offer a wide scope of events that are relevant to our audiences because we and the artists, cultural workers, curators, spaces, and projects we support live full lives that know no boundaries. We maintain expansive practices and work toward justice for BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and disability communities in Chicago and the Midwest. Created in collaboration with The Visualist and adapted for social-distancing due to COVID-19, this list offers online exhibitions, streaming events, a list of online collections from Black and LGBTQIA+ archives, and other ways to spend time in the virtual space. Featured image: Abstract, organic shapes of blue, green yellow, red, and orange. Image created by Ryan Edmund Thiel. This is a growing list, so check back often for new additions. Through January 31, 2021Audible: The Roedelius CellsExperimental Sound Studio: 5925 N Ravenswood AveFree Mon, January 4, 6pmThe Quarantine ConcertsExperimental Sound Studio: OnlineFree Tues, January 5, 12-12:30pmVirtual Studio Visit: Joanna FurnansMuseum of Contemporary Art Chicago: OnlineFree Tues, January 5, 7pmWe Series: FoodElastic Arts: Online$10 …
Sixty Inches From Center and Dreams of Future Canons
A transcript of the keynote address delivered on August 6, 2020 for the 2020 Annual Meeting of the Council of State Archivists and the Society of American Archivists.
Most Read Articles of 2020
Each year, our most read articles list hints to the ideas, cultural work, and practices that have loomed large in the collective consciousness of our readers and communities. This year’s list is no different, with the most read articles focusing on ways to uplift the cultural and community organizing that continues to happen, especially within and for Black and Indigenous communities and artists. This list suggests things that many of us already know: exactly how intertwined we are—in our demands and the depth of our fight—and how important it is that we record our stories, successes, perspectives, and the relentless injustices we face in all parts of our lives. Brought to you by writers Andrea Carlson (with Teshika Silver), Black Faculty at SAIC, Tempestt Hazel (with Ireashia Bennett and Kiki Lechuga-Dupont), The Blackivists, and Kirin Wachter Grene, along with the Teens Reimagining Art, Community, and Environment (TRACE) and Alt_ artists and interns Catherine Arroyo, Preleah Campbell, Danelise Comas, Paris Dority, and Darius Hazen, here are our 10 most-read articles in no particular order: * * * …
The Southwest Nest: An Interview with CeaseDays
Brighton Park, Back of the Yards, and McKinley Park are neighborhoods on the Southwest Side of Chicago that are bundled together so often that they are given a similar reputation and narrative by the media. It isn’t always a good one. Today these neighborhoods still face violence, poverty, and more recently, gentrification. I would like to challenge the idea that violence is the only thing these neighborhoods have to offer by shining a light on the creative minds that enrich them. In this series, “The Southwest Nest,” I hope to celebrate and recognize these artists and share with you their perspectives of the neighborhoods they either work in or call home. This interview covers the span of a year. For Part 1 of this interview, which took place in October of 2019, I met up with artist CeaseDays (Cesar Diaz) at Simone’s, one of the many places where he performs and DJs. CeaseDays may sound like a familiar name if you went to UIC. As a student he ran the radio show, “Thumpin’ Thursdays.” You …
Mine: Poems by Carrie Kaufman
Body (January 2020)To carry meTo lift and transfer Use your core not your armsI always say.Take the weight of my body As if it was yours‘Cause I cannot hold it, Help carry it please. I was told that it’s helpfulTo visualize that you are pregnant with me.Hold me close to your middle But move us as one How exhausting are these exchanges of weight.I’m holding what’s held in your body as wellWhen we touch,When you help,It’s a transfer. A lesson (November 2020)I need to be more than a lessonYou learned. More than Magical sex A window to see possibility thruA reminder to be thoughtful Visibly deviant Emotionally convenientI am not what you thought:Easy to leave behindToo hard to take care ofI do not haveThe most resilient heart. You mistook me for a fantasy butInhaling in syncWe were as real As the candlelight warming the room Which one of us did you soothe When you said i was strong? What did you get out of holding me? Somatics (September 2020)My body floats in a limboI hover awkwardly above ground in my dreams Never knowing “comfortable” in waking lifeI …
The Flying Trapeze: Strongman Tulga
Circus has been making a comeback across the country for the past few decades. Chicago has seen the rise of circus schools, companies, and shows all across the city. Performers train and present their work to audiences while amateurs can learn new circus skills for health and self-expression. Any given month, you can see at least two homegrown shows, not including shows by smaller companies and the occasional visiting circus. The Flying Trapeze is a column that will bring you the best and brightest of Chicago’s vibrant circus scene. “Tulga, you are a remarkable show of what a human can do.” These were just a few things the judges of Australia’s Got Talent told Strongman Tulga in 2019. He had just spun a telephone pole with two people sitting in swings attached at either end. Before that, he swung a different telephone pole that was on fire on both ends. The pole is 16 feet and weighs 100 pounds, not including the weight of other people. In other acts, he’s juggled 12 lb. bowling balls or tires …
Bisa Butler’s Portraits: Representation in and for 2020
Each December, the New York Times (and likely other media outlets) publish “The Year in Pictures.” For reasons both good and bad, images of Black Americans should predominate in 2020. Some pictures will be tragic, like images of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Jacob Blake, while others will be proud, showing Black Lives Matter protests, Kamala Harris, and Stacey Abrams’ Get Out the Vote efforts. Representations of Black people also predominate at the Art Institute of Chicago in the exhibition Bisa Butler: Portraits. Especially timely today, Butler exclusively presents the Black figure, using personal and historic images as the basis for her portrait quilts. About her focus on Black people and their narratives, she says: “I never want my artwork to show my people in a bad light. We are people who’ve come a long way. We do struggle still. There’s still a lot of social ills that are affecting my people, so I want to address that, but I also don’t want this paternalistic view, like ‘oh poor them.’ I’m not interested in that. …
Review: Julien Creuzet’s cloud cloudy glory doodles at Document
Walking into Julien Creuzet’s exhibition from the onset of winter in Chicago is a transportive experience. The weather in the city has recently shifted into freezing temperatures, knocking the humidity out of the air, leaving us with dry wind, and sharp sun. As a Louisiana native who moved to Chicago in March, I’m unused to the cold, and the radiators have been running nonstop in my house. Despite the bowls of water and Eau de Fleur D’oranger balancing on the radiators, my hands are drier than the concrete stairs leading up to Document gallery, where Creuzet’s show cloudy cloudy glory doodles on the leaves pages, memory slowly the story redness sadness bloody redness on the skin awaits. When first walking into Creuzet’s show, we are taken to a place of bright colors and ocean on all sides. On the wall immediately across from the entrance is a large-scale installation piece made with brightly colored threads and neon plastic; lurid wax wrapped around wire; segments of braided rope and tattered pieces of clothing. Limes are scattered …