Projects

Sixty’s team has produced projects involving archives, editorial work, curation, exhibitions, panels, residencies, writers meet-ups, critique groups, festivals, and more. View a selection of our projects below and visit our Partnerships page if you’re interested in collaborating with us.

Archival Projects

The Chicago Archives + Artists Project

Launched in 2017, the Chicago Archives + Artists Project pairs artists with archives across Chicago to spark new experiments in creative interpretation, to showcase the rich histories and materials being preserved in participating archives, and to share archival practices with local artists and their communities. The project explores archives across the city via online features, new artist commissions, and a series of public programs, which have included two iterations of the Chicago Archives + Artists Festival and an exhibition that showcased the new work created for this project. A book that reflects on the project and serves as a site for new archive-inspired work will be published in 2023.

Diamond in the Back

In 2021, Sixty began a two-year partnership with The Blackivists on their community archiving initiative Diamond in the Back: Excavating Chicago’s Black Cultural and Material Heritage, a project that seeks to excavate and amplify unknown gems of cultural and material heritage of the Black community. With a non-extractive, post-custodial approach, The Blackivists provided resources to a cohort of local residents and groups that have a demonstrated interest in or are currently archiving, documenting, and preserving aspects of the Black experience in the Chicagoland area. The Blackivists is a collective of trained Black archivists who prioritize Black cultural heritage preservation and memory work. The project is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Image: Marc Fischer going through the Chicago Artists Files at the Harold Washington Library. Photo by Ryan Edmund Thiel.

Get Archived

Get Archived is a series of events inviting artists in Chicago to use their archival materials to start a file in the Chicago Artist Files at Harold Washington Library. The Get Archived events were hosted in collaboration with WBEZ in their Neighborhood Bureaus, allowing us to take our archiving efforts with the Chicago Public Library to Englewood, Humboldt Park, as well as other art centers, artist-run spaces, and cultural incubators. Sixty’s relationship with WBEZ began in 2010-2014 when we collaborated with Chicago Public Media and WBEZ‘s Off-Air program to take our work off the internet and beyond the walls of the library and into Chicago’s neighborhoods, cultural centers, and art centers. In 2011, we produced What’s Your Art? a festival that invited twelve of the city’s art centers to recreate the energy of their space in the halls of the Chicago Cultural Center.

Editorial Projects

Loss/Capture

Launched in 2020, Loss/Capture is an editorial project co-led by archivists, librarians, artists, activists, and curators that explores the current state of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and diasporic collections in and beyond Chicago. The project is designed to speak directly to local and national archiving communities while bringing the archival profession’s evolving practices and most pressing concerns to an audience of cultural workers, artists, writers, curators, grantmakers, street scholars, and community archivists. Guest edited by Steven D. Booth and Stacie Williams, Loss/Capture’s first volume focuses on the state of Black cultural archives in and beyond Chicago, and aims to celebrate Black cultural heritage and its prospects for liberation. Loss/Capture’s inaugural guest editors and the Sixty team are continuing to explore how to expand the project, and invite a new round of collaborators to create future volumes, especially ones that dig into the current state of Latinx and Indigenous cultural collections in Chicago and the Midwest.

This image comprises of 4 printed zines. The titles showing are "The Art of DJing," Ireashia Bennett: A Testimonial on Tenderness," and "The Blackivists"

Something To Look Forward To

Launched in 2020, Something to look forward to is a subscription of six thematic printed issues compiling essays, interviews, and articles Sixty has published over the years, selected by our editors. These zines are published in collaboration with For The Birds Trapped in Airports.

Image: A black and white animation that creatively interprets the work that was on display as part of Reckless Rolodex at UIC's Gallery 400. Animation by Kiki Lechuga-Dupont.

Art Design Chicago

An initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art, Art Design Chicago (ADC) is a special series of events and exhibitions that highlight the voices and stories that are part of Chicago’s unique artistic heritage and creative communities. The foundation partners with local artists and arts organizations across the city to expand narratives of American art with an emphasis on Chicago’s diverse and vibrant creative cultures and the stories they tell. Since 2018, Sixty has partnered with the Terra Foundation to produce new essays, interviews, photography, videos, a podcast series, and illustrated stories that offer a distinct lens through which to experience the stories within and at the edges of ADC’s roster of programs and projects. 

A colorful multi-paneled illustration shows a myriad of artists including performers, musicians, and visual artists working in various types of spaces in an urban setting. Illustration by Kiki Lechuga-Dupont.

The Chicago Arts Census

Collaboratively launched in 2020 by ACRE and Annas, the Chicago Arts Census is an artist-run initiative that collects, maps, and visualizes data that illuminates the lived experiences and working conditions of art workers in Chicago. The collected data will be translated into a series of maps, a website, a publication, and public programs that demonstrate the interwoven and dependent relationships that make up Chicago’s art ecosystem. Sixty partnered with the organizers of the Chicago Arts Census to help promote participation and commission writings from artists, writers, organizers, and arts workers that more deeply explore some of the critical issues driving the creation of this project.

Image: Five circles containing photos of five writers are against a rainbow background. White text at the bottom reads: "On the Road with Sixty & UnderMain Magazine Summer 2022". Graphic by Ryan Edmund-Thiel.

UnderMain Magazine

Over the course of 2022, five of Sixty’s writers participated in a new program with the Kentucky-based arts publication, UnderMain. With the goal of creating conversations about arts and culture in the Midwest and the near South, UnderMain’s program On the Road brought five of Sixty’s writers into various areas of Kentucky to explore the visual arts and produce new writings in response.

Image: Maya Dunietz, Installation view of Root of Two, 2022. On view from May 7–September 18, 2022 at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE. Courtesy of the artist and Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. Photography by Assaf Evron.

Bemis Critic-in-Residence Program

Beginning in 2022, Sixty partners with the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts to present a yearly critic-in-residence program. This initiative provides an opportunity for Sixty’s writers to travel to Omaha and engage with artists working there, sparking new dialogue and creative connections while offering space for critics to expand their practice.

Image: The portrait features Barédu sitting on a dark blue couch in front of a dark blue wall. Behind her, there is a gold lamp stand, a snake plant, and a pink flower in the lower right-hand corner. She has on a black top and black pants and is wearing gold necklaces, bracelets, and earrings. Image captured and edited by Joshua Johnson.

Muña

During the Summer of 2022, Chuquimarca hosted Muña, a 3-month art writing program providing a cohort of six writers the opportunity to critically and creatively engage with art writing strategies, readings, exercises, and conversations. The program is structured for writers to develop and refine their practices through guided workshops and peer-review feedback. Its task is to stir, incubate, and pollinate shared consciousness on holistic, equitable, and attentive art writing and language practices. In partnership with Muña, Sixty worked with the cohort to support and publish their writing.

We Series

Presented by Elastic Arts in collaboration with Sixty Inches From Center, the We Series presented live art that blurs the line between performance and reality, with a soft spot for the participatory, ceremonial, ritualistic, immersive, and tutorial. The performances in this series debuted every Tuesday evening in January 2021. In tandem, Sixty published written companion pieces on the same day, authored by poets, playwrights, designers, musicians, bakers, and more. 

Image: A compilation of photos from each photographer presented as part of In the Cut. From left to right, the photos are by Darius Hazen, Catherine Arroyo, Danelise Comas, Paris Dority, and Preleah Campbell.

TRACE

In 2020, Sixty partnered with TRACE (Teens Re-Imagining Art, Community & Environment), a program of the Chicago Parks District  that creates opportunities for Chicago artists and teens to use art to engage, inspire, and persist for positive change. Over the course of the summer, Sixty worked with TRACE’s Senior Program Specialist Marcus E. Davis to publish photos made by the students of lead teaching artists and co-founders of alt_Chicago Jordan Campbell and Jon Veal.

Image: As part of “Perto de La <> Close to There” in Bahia, Alexandria Eregbu and Aislane Nobre led a natural textile tie and dye workshop at Casa Rosada, in Salvador, Brazil, on February 8, 2020. Photo by Marina Resende Santos.

Perto de Lá < > Close to There

Close to There <> Perto de Lá is an artist exchange program between Salvador, Brazi, and Chicago organized by Comfort Station (Chicago), Projeto Ativa (Salvador) and Harmonipan (Mexico City) between 2019 and 2020. In partnership with this program, Sixty published a series of conversations between the participating artists, pairing makers from Brazil and makers from Chicago for a conversational exchange, allowing them to connect about their practices prior to meeting one another for the first time. Each exchange was edited by Marina Santos Resende and translated into Portuguese.

Image: Stills from interviews with [left to right, top to bottom] Felicia Holman (interdisciplinary artist), Tony Fitzpatrick (artist, writer, actor), Jenny Lam (writer, curator, artist), James T. Green (designer, audio producer, artist), RA (poet), Hannah Welever (filmmaker), and Paola Aguirre (urban designer).

Transition to Power

In 2017 On The Real Film presented Transition To Power, a documentary web series created as a response to the 2016 United States Presidential Election. Created in collaboration with Sixty, Transition To Power dives into the aftermath of the election through the eyes of artists and creatives. In each episode, artists discuss their thoughts on how to move forward in this explosive and fragile political climate.

Envisioning Justice

As part of Illinois Humanities’ Envisioning Justice initiative, in 2018 Sixty created a 9-month residency for writers, photographers, activists, artists, and organizers to publish writings and photo documentation of the work happening at the cross-section of art and the criminal justice system. Envisioning Justice is a series of projects, events, programs, and collaborations that look into how Chicagoans and Chicago artists respond to the impact of incarceration in local communities and how the arts and humanities are used to devise strategies for lessening this impact.

Sixty Collective Projects

CANJE

In 2022, Sixty launched CANJE: an exploration in cultural criticism engaging five artists in the Chicago community. As part of this summer-long program, five folks from Sixty came together and formed a cohort to collaboratively establish best practices in cultural criticism while creating a supportive critique environment that puts the artist first so that the experience is mutually beneficial: an exchange between the artist and the cohort.

Featured image: Amina Ross, Sonic Rupture_ songs for(e) the swarm, Iteration 003, 2020 at The Luminary. Installation view of shelves with jars filled with varying amounts of water in front of a viewing space with blankets and pillows for the film Sonic Rupture, which can be seen displaying a close up of a person's face while they appear to be screaming. Image courtesy of Kalaija Mallery.

Sixty Regional

In 2016, Sixty initiated new relationships and tapped into existing connections we had in Bloomington-Normal, Peoria, Springfield, Rockford, and Urbana-Champaign, and published a series of articles by local artists and writers within each location. The following year, and thanks to the support from Illinois Humanities, we expanded these partnerships to include collaborative residencies, cross-state discussions, a symposium, a new artist-run online publication, writer exchanges, and mini-grants to our partners. As a result of these efforts, Sixty officially incorporated our Midwest scope into our mission in 2018 and today we have contributors, editors, and collaborators from wider reaches of the Midwest, including Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

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