Chicago Artists Coalition is pleased to partner with the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events for Lake FX Chicago CreativeCon 2017, the region’s largest FREE conference for artists and creative entrepreneurs.

This discussion will focus on artists’ approaches to mindfulness as it pertains to critical art practices. Building a dialogue around the artists’ creative processes and their work as educators and community organizers, this session will introduce tools for addressing complex ideas and building community that foreground joy and awareness as strategies for civic engagement.

THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

LOCATION
Chicago Cultural Center, 4th Floor Conference Room
78 E Washington St, Chicago, IL

PANELISTS BIO

RJ Eldridge is a writer, multidisciplinary artist and teacher. His writings have appeared or are forthcoming in Vinyl, Kweli, Obsidian, the Offing, Puerto Del Sol and others. He is a contributor to the forthcoming Whiskey of our Discontent: Gwendolyn Brooks as Conscience and Change Agent (2017 Haymarket Books) edited by Quraysh Ali Lansana and Georgia A. Popoff. His photography, visual and performance work has been exhibited at the Logan Center, Chicago Art Department, Hyde Park Arts Center, Arts Incubator, Galeria Bianconi and others. His current body of work in text and images concerns yearning and the black mind. whoisrjel.com

Alexandria Eregbu is a conceptual artist. Her practice often takes shape in the form of educator, curator, and programmer. Alexandria’s concerns frequently address visibility, family, locality, and mobility. Her work tends to insert itself at the axis of personal experience and myth—usually reliant upon the collection of artifacts, material culture, and an attentiveness to current and historical events.
Alexandria has been featured in a range of exhibitions including Weinberg/Newton Gallery, the Arts Incubator in Washington Park, Hyde Park Art Center, Woman Made Gallery, Nightingale Cinema, Roots + Culture, and The Franklin Outdoor in Chicago, IL; The Luminary in St. Louis; Milwaukee Art Museum in Milwaukee, WI; Distillery Gallery in Boston, MA; and Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, NY. She was a recipient of the Propeller Fund Grant (2013) and an Individual Artist Grant from Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (2015). She has received fellowships as Resident Curator with HATCH Projects (2013-14); Public Studio Artist in Residence at the Chicago Cultural Center (2015); Resident Artist at the Stony Island Arts Bank and the Center for Afrofuturist Studies (2016). Most recently, Alexandria was highlighted in Time Out Chicago (2016) and listed in Newcity’s “Breakout Artists: Chicago’s Next Generation of Image Makers” (2015). She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. alexandriaeregbu.com

Yvette Mayorga is an interdisciplinary artist and educator. She uses confection, industrial materials, and the American board game Candy Land as a conceptual framework to juxtapose the borderlands of the U.S. and Mexico. The spaces in the “Candy Lands” of her work relate to immigrant utopian visions of the American Dream. The smell, decoration, and personal photographs in work serve to critique the glut of violence at the border.
Mayorga has presented her work at The Vincent Price Art Museum, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, EXPO, The National Museum of Mexican Art, Grand Valley State University, and forthcoming at Gallery 400, The Arts Incubator, and Roots and Culture. Mayorga received her MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She was featured in The Guardian, The Inter University Program for Latino Research, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Art News, and REMEZCLA. yvettemayorga.com

Zakkiyyah Najeebah is a Chicago based photographic artist, teaching artist, and documentarian. Zakkiyyah works primarily in photography to address and question the politics and aesthetic values of representation, womanism, family histories, and collective narratives. At the center, Zakkiyyah’s practice is committed to building a visual archive that articulates current social concerns, as well as referencing the past. The visual components and intersectional cultural advancements that are entirely unique to the black experience is a primary concern in her work. zakkiyyahnajeebah.com

ABOUT Lake FX CreativeCon

The Lake FX CreativeCon (April 21-22, 2017) is the region’s largest FREE conference for emerging artists and creatives and is designed to connect, inform and inspire “makers” in the music, dance, design, theater, and arts fields. In addition to keynote speakers, the event will feature professional development workshops, an interactive resource fair, networking opportunities, auditions in front of leading A&R label executives for selected musicians and much more. lakefxchicago.org

Official Website

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Tags: Alexandria Eregbu, Chicago, Chicago Cultural Center, Lake FX, Loop, RJ Eldridge, Working Through It: Mindfulness in Critical Art Practice, Yvette Mayorga, Zakkiyyah Najeebah