(Re)Flex Space

Framed within the MFA Show 2017, (Re)Flex Space brings together artists responding to November’s elections, the crackdown of U.S. boarders, and the swell of marginalized populations feeling unheard. Participating artists take turns occupying the space through a series of performances, installations and workshops, allowing each artist to build upon the remnants of the preceding work. Artists engage one another through the accumulation of materials to generate an organic, collaborative reaction to the current political climate. (Re)Flex Space holds diverse gestures—ranging from protest and cathartic release to introspection and sharing knowledge—as equally significant modes of processing the contemporary moment and unpacking the social and political responsibilities of art making today.

 

 

Angela Azmitia

Angela Azmitia’s drawing practice tracks (Re)Flex Space’s changing installations. Her daily ritual—coming to the galleries, sketching the shifting topographies—emphasizes the role of the artist as observer and recorder. By capturing (Re)Flex devoid of human bodies through durational drawing, Azmitia presents the psychological make up of the space through the objects inhabitants leave behind.

Cassandra Davis

On the evening of Friday, April 28, Cassandra Davis organized a performance for the opening of the 2017 MFA Show titled Whose Good Old Days? With bales of hay and bunting flags leeched of color, Davis reimagined the parades she grew up seeing in her rural Illinois town—a tradition with KKK roots—as a celebration of …

Darryl Terrell

On May 1, 12:15 p.m. Darryl Terrell performed readings from his blkbycolored project. Drawing from traumatic personal experiences, Terrell unpacked issues of race and gender. Through a powerful account of domestic violence, school bullying, and a life-altering diagnosis, Terrell’s narrative to constructed a portrait of a queer, black artist represented here by the marriage of …

Nuria Montiel

On the morning of May 3, Montiel began installing a series of stenciled soil works on the gallery floor. Informed by textile patterns from her native Mexico, Montiel’s earthen pieces evoke both ancient glyphs and every day objects through their labyrinthine formations. Montiel collected soil from locations correlating to Chicago’s cardinal points and mixed it …

Marcela Torres

On May 3, at 4:15 p.m. Torres performed a dance in between and on top of Montiel’s soil stencils. Locating her body at the site of her artistic practice, Torres’s untrained dance privileged awkward, abrupt gesticulations that threatened and sometimes destroyed Montiel’s fragile works. Torres invited the audience to make sounds through looped recordings as …

Mev Luna

In the Afternoon of May 4, at 4:15 p.m. Luna engaged movement based performance artist, Anna Martine Whitehead, in conversation for an event titled Which ancestors do we run towards? Through personal accounts of their respective experiences being Latinx and Black while having a “white mother,” the two artists examined race as it relates to …

El Coyote Cojo: Adela Goldbard & Emilio Rojas

Hailing from Mexico City, El Coyote Cojo tackled the myths surrounding the infamous Antonio López de Santa Anna and his prosthetic leg. Blamed for losing half of the countries territory in the Mexican-American War, Antonio López de Santa Anna’s phantom limb became a metaphor for the lost territory. Some historical accounts claim the prosthetic leg …

Conor Stechschulte

On Tuesday, May 2, Stechschulte, an MFA in Print media, lead a workshop on risograph printing. Emphasizing democratic modes of art making and distribution, Stechschulte guided participants on the techniques to design their own posters. A week later, on May 9, Stechschulte installed 50 copies of each piece created during the workshop in a “tear-away” …

DJ Stacy Shakes: Mother of All Moms A.K.A. Molly Colleen O’Connell

For three hours on May 10, DJ Stacy Shakes performed a live broadcast through SAIC’s radio station. The performance was live streamed to (Re)Flex Space where beanbag chairs provided by artist, Mary Ancel, allowed audiences to unwind while listening. Taking queues from warfare across the globe, DJ Stacy Shakes played an “A-pop-alyptic,” bomb-themed set.

Jaqueline Surdell

The day after Trump won the the elections last November, Surdell purchased a survival ax. She unleased her frustration and anger on lumber in flurry of cathartic rage. She stacked the wounded beams into dimensions that echoed her own body as physical manifestation of her pain and disappointment.

Alex Peyton-Levine & Elaine Rubenoff

Embracing feminine tropes such as flowers and the color pink, Peyton-Levine and Rubenoff seek to elevate their subjects from a relegated status of beautiful yet trite and contentless. By adorning (Re)Flex Space with floral print fabrics as well as scraps tissue and flowers preserved in wax, this collaborative pair reclaim their voices as women and …

Máire Witt O’Neill

At 5 p.m. on May 19, O’Neill facilitated a workshop titled Twolight ((((or, Fiction: A Promise) (or, Facts Are Provisional)) Provisional Title) Provisional Title). Leading a group of participants including (Re)Flex‘s participating artists, O’Neill combined lecture, performance and guided meditation to find agency within groundlessness. Through a video work and a lecture-style meditation, participants reckoned with openness &...