Opening Oct 14: Can You See Me?

A Letter to the City: "jail is not my home", 3-channel video installation, 2022

Can you see me?

Opening: October 14, 5-7pm

Weinberg/Newton Gallery

688 North Milwaukee Ave, Chicago

Exhibition run: Oct 14 - Dec 17

Leenaars presents her second collaborative documentary project with Circles & Ciphers – a hip-hop based restorative justice organization in Rogers Park, Chicago: A Letter to City: "jail is not my home" as a part of this exhibition in the form of a 3-channel video installation.

Their project started with an open call for letters from individuals who are currently incarcerated in Cook County Jail. They received 46 letters, and each letter writer was compensated for their creative efforts. Leenaars and Circles & Ciphers then collaborated closely with 15 selected letter writers to create this documentary video piece. Weaving their deeply personal stories through performative actions and image making, the video asks the viewer to reflect on the ways the prison-industrial complex affects individuals, families, communities, and a city. Footage includes excerpts from the letters displayed on walls, buildings, and street surfaces throughout different neighborhoods in Chicago identified by the letter writers as their home communities; interviews with community members responding to the letters’ text; recorded audio of the letter writers reading their own letters over the phone while calling from Cook County Jail; a performance by Circles & Ciphers youth of freestyle ‘serenades’ in front of the jail; and an airplane flying over Cook County Jail with a banner featuring the phrase excerpted from one of the letters: jail is not my home. All these moments are documented and edited together as a letter to the city, amplifying and echoing the deeply personal stories and experiences of young people that are often marginalized in this society.

A Letter to the City: "jail is not my home", video still, 2022

In addition to the documentary, Leenaars and Circles & Ciphers produced and will be presenting the publication, Till My Feet Hit the Warm Concrete: Letters from Young People Incarcerated, which includes all 46 letters they received. The letters contain poems, hip-hop verses, personal stories, and philosophical reflections on the notion of freedom within the context of America. Designed by Sonia Yoon. Their project was generously supported by the DCASE Artist Response grant (2021) and as part of the Dutch Culture USA program by the Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Can you see me? is a collaborative exhibition exploring the impact incarceration has on young people. Presented by Weinberg/Newton Gallery, SkyART and Arts + Public Life, this multi-site exhibition features artwork by currently and formerly incarcerated young people, contemporary artists and arts-justice organizations exploring themes of ascendance, innocence and freedom. Extensive public programming will bring together diverse audiences and practitioners to create important dialogue and accessibility for new communities. Artists include, amongst others: Arte Pro, ConTextos, Jim Duignan, Kirsten Leenaars and Circles & Ciphers, Ebony G. Patterson, Cheryl Pope, SkyART Just-Us The exhibition originated from SkyART’s Just-Us program, which provides weekly open studio-style art therapy sessions for incarcerated youth. Across all three sites, the exhibition features large-scale paintings made over the course of several months at the Illinois Youth Center-Chicago (IYC-Chicago), a male medium-security Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice (IDJJ) youth facility located on the west side of Chicago. The paintings, which provided the initial inspiration and foundation for Can you see me?, were created by incarcerated youth in collaboration with SkyART staff. The opening reception on Friday, Oct 14, 5-7pm at Weinberg/Newton Gallery.

This opening will be followed by openings at Arts + Public Life on October 21 and SkyART on. October 28, 2022. There are also a series of public events, including panels and film screenings, which you can find the details for on the Weinberg Newton site

AIC Blog: An Exercise in Empathy and Trust: Collaborating with Lions

Ten photographers were paired with ten local hosts—political leaders, activists, and arts supporters in the city.

This was the basis for the exhibition Floating Museum: A Lion in Every House. After a series of conversations, each host was asked to choose one of three photographs from the Art Institute’s collection. A copy of that work was sent to the host to display in the place they called home. Each photographer then made a portrait of the host with their chosen work, and finally those works were displayed at the Art Institute in an installation created by Floating Museum.

We asked host Joann Podkul-Murphy and photographer Kirsten Leenaars to shed some personal light on their shared experience.

Joann Podkul-Murphy: A few years ago as I was cutting through the lawn in Calumet Park on my way to volunteer at the history museum when I saw two men—Faheem Majeed and Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford—putting up a structure for an art project. They told me about the Floating Museum and its function to bring art and culture to areas of the city not easily accessible to cultural sites. Awestruck, I invited them to drop into our Southeast Chicago Historical Museum in the fieldhouse. Of course, they made friends not only with museum staff but with Kevin Murphy, my husband, who posted several videos of the project on YouTube, and our art friends Roman and Maria Villarreal and Jim Klekowski.

My involvement in this project was quite by chance. Of the excellent photos chosen for me to host after my interview, this triptych by Milton Rogovin was closest to home and more broadly represented our working-class community.

Copy of triptych by Michael Rogovin on the couch in Joann Podkul-Murphy’s home. Photo by Kirsten Leenaars

Mr. Rogovin focused on working-class people and returned periodically to continue to capture their progression over time. The photo hung at the front entrance of our house, just inside the outside door, representing the kind of house one is entering. I was comfortable with it to begin with and that grew stronger over time. And it was quite comfortable with our other art and photo works in our house, done mostly by family, friends and former students.

Triptych by Milton Rogovin

Kirsten Leenaars: When I came over to Joann’s place on the Southeast side and got to know her and to learn more about who she is, it was very clear to me that she is all about community, all about bringing people together. As I looked at more of Milton’s work, I saw that he was telling stories about communities and that he cared a lot. He often photographed interior spaces of the working-class families, so it made sense to do it inside at first. I thought that was really nice that Joann placed the photograph where everybody would immediately see it.

Joann Podkul-Murphy in her living room, the triptych on the door. Photo by Kirsten Leenaars

Joann: People living in rental apartments are not likely to hang art up on hooks nailed to the wall. Fortunately art can come in other ways. Henry, my older brother (who enlisted in the army and was at Pearl Harbor but survived the attack in 1941) took wood-shop classes in high school and made bookcases for us. Art and literature came with the books he and my other older siblings provided. One book introduced me to Frank Lloyd Wright. It was always fun to say “I had lunch with Frank Lloyd Wright” or cite some author whose book I had on the kitchen table.

Kirsten: I don’t come from an art background, but my dad was always a family photographer, documenting us. He had a dark room in the attic. So I was always drawn to that as a way to relate to the world or learn about other people or places. And the more I studied it, the more I started to think about that relationship between the person behind the camera and the person in front and who decides how a story is framed. I really wanted to document Joann’s idea of making this photograph accessible to a lot of people. And I wanted to honor Rogovin’s work by creating a triptych too. But most importantly, it had to be specific to Joann and the story she wants to tell.

Portrait of Joann’s arms and hands. Photo by Kirsten Leenaars

Kirsten: In Rogovin’s pictures of working-class people, hands are often very prominent. You can kind of tell that he thought about the way people hold their hands. And I thought a lot about the idea of hands caring for your community, for the stories about your community. I noticed that Joann has really beautiful hands. Even though her house was very photogenic, I realized that she was very uncomfortable with the idea of this being a portrait of her in her home, with herself being the central person in this image. “Well, what about a group portrait?” I said. I suggested including all the people she’d been talking about and cared so very much about. She felt really excited about that idea. “That makes more sense,” she said. “that’s more who I am.” That’s why we decided to do it outside.

Joann: Kirsten was pure joy. Not only did she focus on items in the house but she was also willing to visit the field house to take photos of park and museum staff and local artists—all friends who helped with the earlier Floating Museum project, including one with health issues.

THE TRIPTYCH

Center panel. Front row, left to right: Roman Villarreal, Carolyn Mulac, Maria Villarreal (with coyote). Back row, left to right: James Klekowski, Paul Linta, Carlos Salinas, Robert Quinones, Rod Sellers. Photo by Kirsten Leenaars for Floating Museum: A Lion in Every House

Kirsten: Those are Joann’s hands in the left panel, gently taking that the triptych off the door to bring into the public space. I really like the way she holds the picture in the right panel, showing it to the people she’s worked with at the museum.

Joann: Look closely and you will see a stuffed coyote in the hands of Maria Villarreal up front in the photo. Faheem said a coyote was always on site waiting them for early each morning they worked on the earlier Floating Museum project in the park.

Kirsten: It was really great that Jeremiah and Faheem put no restrictions in what we could do or could not do. They really trusted whatever decisions we made about what that image should be. I know this sounds kind of cliché, but I hope this work captures a humanity that people connect with, that they will see the work and maybe pause and reflect for a moment about Joann and the other people portrayed. Maybe from that, change can come or at least a different kind of way of relating to each other. The collaborative process, especially with multiple people, is the ultimate exercise in empathy and trust.

Joann Podkul-Murphy in her living room, by the window. Photo by Kirsten Leenaars

Joann: Art is the thought of the heart. Sometimes it is broken by battlefields and other forms of destruction. Other times it brings nature and love inside to people who rarely experience them. Hope for the future is “the lion in every house,” where all are touched by good things from the heart and within reach.

—Joann Podkul-Murphy and Kirsten Leenaars

The Chicago art collective Floating Museum—co-directed by Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford, Faheem Majeed, Andrew Schachman, and avery r. young—uses art to explore relationships among community, architecture, and public institutions. Learn more about Floating Museum: A Lion in Every House.

Article written by Paul N Jones: https://www.artic.edu/articles/1013/an-exercise-in-empathy-and-trust-collaborating-with-lions

Review Newcity Art: A Lion for Every House

Emergent Institutions: The Floating Museum’s “A Lion for Every House” Makes New Connections

SEPTEMBER 9, 2022 AT 7:00 AM BY PIA SINGH

Installation view of the exhibition “Floating Museum: A Lion for Every House” at the Art Institute of Chicago, June 16–October 17, 2022

Museums and cultural institutions have been making deeply concerted efforts to engage communities: crafting exhibitions, public programs and community outreach to engage demographics likely to have been excluded from decision-making processes and board rooms that dictate the infrastructure of the institution. As large, complex, hierarchical organizations, museums are also expected to provide learning opportunities, forcing the question of who does or doesn’t have access to materials, archives and visible gestures that authenticate the relevance of museums to their publics. The inextricable link between accessibility and social class turns out to be the fatal flaw in engaging “minorities” through participatory action. As curatorial efforts remain confined to the interests of the institution, an echo chamber of gestures has maintained the status quo of value systems concomitant to ticket sales.

In refusal of the deteriorating political, intellectual and social conscience oft associated with the civilizing mission of “high art,” the many-sided Floating Museum opened “A Lion for Every House” at the Art Institute of Chicago, inspiring a discussion on the porousness of the institution and the archive as active agent in collective memory. By considering the institution as a collaborative partner, Floating Museum tests territorial borders in a process-centered exhibition presented in the Photography and Media galleries. Ten large-scale photographic portraits mounted on lightboxes sit facing one another in a community circle, indicating trust and mutuality, highlighting the lateral nature of the collective’s process. Extending rearward from the lightbox is a series of opulent, mnemonic, bulbous gestures, carved of domestic light fixtures that emanate warm and cool washes through half-covered translucent moving boxes and plastic sheets. An entanglement of domestic and the alien touch down on welded aluminum and steel legs with wheel-like feet. The viewer is drawn into the comfort of ten living rooms from the vibrational center of the circle, where each host is photographed sitting beside a photograph, gifted from the museum’s collection. “We were interested in the museum, its history, and the mindset of generosity that once existed within the institution. Beyond discourse, there are people thinking together, talking together, leaving frameworks open to look-at together, that connect us in more meaningful, tangible and lasting ways,” says Andrew Schachman, one of Floating Museum’s four directors, “I mean, how much does the materialization of discourse matter if we don’t touch the ground?”

Floating Museum with Kirsten Leenaars, ‘To lion with no worry or wall.’, 2022/Photo courtesy Floating Museum

The Floating Museum has invited local artists and institutions to collaborate since its inception in 2014, making it impossible to decipher roles in each project. All four co-directors bring seasoned knowledge from their respective fields: Faheem Majeed, once the executive director of the South Side Community Art Center, is an artist, curator, educator and community facilitator who brings his unique curatorial and administrative skills. Avery young, a prominent poet, writer and activist, who was recently conferred the 2022 MacArthur and Field Foundation New Leader award for engaging and advocating for the lives of those suffering structural inequity and oppression, brings linguistic exploration and the logic of rehearsal. Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford, a sculptor and professor at the Indiana University Northwest School of the Arts, has been rethinking public art, integrating critical theory and community-forward problem-solving through sculpture. Schachman, a designer, architect and professor of urban design at the University of Chicago, considers the cross-section of art, architecture and public institutions while maintaining an interest in “self-estranging techniques of looking at structures so we can see them.” “We practice tactical anthropology,” says Schachman, as I ask what drives the collective to mine institutional structures in every project. Tackling material and immaterial elements of “the work” through carefully positioned conversations, research, open public workshops and collective creative gesture, Floating Museum initiates what he describes as a process of détournement—revealing the social, cultural and economic complexity of roles that compose a museum.

Installation view of the exhibition “Floating Museum: A Lion for Every House” at the Art Institute of Chicago, June 16–October 17, 2022

Through public, cooperative, transient architectural interventions like “River Assembly,” 2017, and “Cultural Transit Assembly,” 2018-19, Floating Museum works across the city, attempting to articulate the complexity of identity through writing, performance, sculpture and other art forms to bring about an understanding of how communities can inform frameworks for future public policy. Cooperative design meets artistic collaboration, what we encounter is an open-ended approach to a wide range of issues to expand and change the way we think about larger social fabric.

At the Art Institute, curators Liz Siegel, Grace Deveney and Matthew Witkovsky invited Floating Museum to identify pieces from the photography department’s archive of over 22,000 works, initiating a reciprocal curatorial process. “We still learn about new work every time we visit,” says Majeed. The impetus for the detournément was found in a Women’s Board program, when artworks were once available on loan through the 1950s to seventies. “The relationship between the Institute and its audiences once came from the spirit of generosity, and the spirit of funding young artists, like Ed Paschke’s career,” Schachman says. Through a series of guided virtual interviews with community hosts (screened in a rear room that I consider the heart of the exhibition), curators narrowed down works from the collection based on the life stories and concerns of individuals.

Installation view of the exhibition “Floating Museum: A Lion for Every House” at the Art Institute of Chicago, June 16–October 17, 2022

Siegel describes her experience in the process: “Take Joann Podkull Murphy, for example. She’s from the Southeast Side and spoke to us about being a teacher, about history, and about archiving a white, working-class, ethnic community. Her community was also one of the hardest hit by the Vietnam War of almost anywhere in the country because of the number of boys who lost their lives in service.” With this insight, three options were presented to the historian-sociologist from the Southeast Chicago Historical Society: a photograph from the Vietnam War, a Judith Joy Ross image or a Milton Rogovin triptych. Murphy chose the triptych portrait of a steelworker seen at the steel plant, as an Elvis impersonator and as a family man with his partner. Practicing curatorial acumen to make a gift for the individual, structural changes are evidenced through material exchange.

Interacting and reflecting on the dispositions of ten local community stakeholders, both museums paired artworks and guest photographers with artists, educators, arts administrators, patrons, activists and board trustees. Ten Chicago photographers were invited to capture portraits of individual hosts in their homes with their newly gifted pieces. “We were thinking about photographers whose practices could connect and riff with the hosts, but also of careers that were already on a trajectory,” says Majeed. “They would probably end up at the museum either way.” Shepherding unions between Vidura Jang Bahadur, Monica Boutwell, Tonika Lewis Johnson, Kirsten Leenaars, Sulyiman Stokes, Leonard Suryajaya, Nicole Harrison, Jonathan Castillo, Darryl DeAngelo Terrell, Guanyu Xu and the hosts, each artist was given a stipend to create work in their own distinctive style, moving away from the exploitative art world attitude of “doing what you love, so do it for free.” This consciousness of aesthetics and structural transformation, unique to the Floating Museum, allows us to consider material transaction as a signifier of change in a world moving from competition to solidarity, from egoistic pursuit to cooperative system-building.

Each portrait stands on legs with wires and bulbs exposed, rendering visible their functional and constructivist approaches to mining the vulnerabilities of a museum. The lightboxes sit on chassis-like frames composed of parts bolted together, allowing sculptures to be moved and reorganized. “We were thinking of adaptable frameworks,” Hulsebos-Spofford says. Individual atmospheric portraits stand testimony to the depth of newfound relationships between photographers and hosts. In “A lion to sing another into warmth and dream,” Suryajaya distinctly envelops Stephanie Harris’ environs in piquant, kaleidoscopic patterns creating a photomontage from which Harris emerges, bedecked in orange peels. In “To lion in December,” State Representative Curtis J. Tarver II is captured by DeAngelo Terrell. Seen looking out a window, his side profile contrasts the head-on gaze of a portrait by Zanele Muholi.

An integral part of the exhibition is that there are both material and immaterial works on display. While there is the infrastructure of the museum, there is the invisible infrastructure Floating Museum brings through conversation, communication and connectivity that produce artworks. The lightbox sculptures on the central exhibition floor are a collection of individual hopes and aspirations that run deep, rooting the work to the land. Layers of non-physical elements are richly impastoed through poetry in the form of wall labels written by young, on-screen audio-video conversations and a selection of B-roll photographs installed in a separate gallery, indicating market-based bullheadedness the collective and its collaborators began to encounter.

Floating Museum with Leonard Suryajaya, “A lion to sing another into warmth and dream,” 2022/Photo courtesy Floating Museum

As roles relegated to the expertise of directors, curators and artists began to mix, there were complex decisions in selecting photographs to be reproduced before being given to their hosts. There were museum protocols to follow, not dissimilar to protocols Floating Museum have encountered while working with the city or the CTA. The question of limited editions, reproduction permits and the absence of film negatives (the paramount of authenticity in photographic work) created wheels within wheels as curators negotiated with artists and estates for works to be included in the Floating Museum’s vision. “The idea of an edition is a market-imposed structure. Typically ‘There will be no more of this work’ is not something given in writing. It’s an understood, implicit contract,” says Siegel. Associate curator Deveney was also surprised by market-based reactions, “Running into resistance around our ability to reproduce and recirculate things, I couldn’t see why someone wouldn’t want their work to circulate in this context.” As signifiers of what is possible (or impossible) in a culture that is fearful of abstract world-building, the accompanying selection of photographs are tangible results of a process of care carried out by both museums.

Using the exhibition as a space of negotiation, to shift the ways in which we define the public realm, “A Lion for Every House” is not only a place for identifying shared common ground between institutions and communities, but also a spatial exploration of people’s needs and aspirations, expressed in forms that point to alternative social meanings. In a city largely divided by neighborhoods, wards and constituents, the analogy of a shared dining table serves best in conversation with the collective. “We’re lucky to consider the museum as a diner at our table, learning and collaborating with us as we rehearse,” Schachman says. “I want to share food with the amazing people I come into contact with in this city,” says Majeed, “so we go to the best cooks for this meal. A community member is as much an expert on living in a community just as an artist is with a brush, or an architect is with a plan.” The Floating Museum’s exhibition—premised on community engagement, openness, platform building and playfulness—is a metamorphic territory, incrementally shifting attitudinal relations and behaviors in everyone touched by the collective process.

“Floating Museum: A Lion for Every House” is on view at the Art Institute of Chicago, 111 South Michigan, through October 17.

Article Newcity Art: https://art.newcity.com/2022/09/09/emergent-institutions-the-floating-museums-a-lion-for-every-house-makes-new-connections/