The Fulton Street Collective is proud to present SUBSTANTIAL THREADS, a dual art opening with visual artists Katherine Szymanski and Abena Motaboli.

Katharine Szymanski
katszymanski.com
Artist statement:
I create atmospheric spaces that invites emotion and contemplation. My artwork effortlessly casts an overarching femininity that challenges the imagination to explore both what is seen and unseen. Through my creative process, I fuse the energy of nature with the inherent emotions of color. With native textures and nuances, I employ the natural surface of wood to further cultivate the emergence of organic goals. I hope the viewer is pleasantly surprised by my divergence from the predictable into the unexpected.

Bio:
Mixing pigments is something she did well at work, too. After graduating from Columbia College Chicago Kat became the chief colorist at Baker Prints, a screen-printing studio that caters to the music industry. After six years of printing, she left at the beginning of this year to focus on and pursue her art practice.

Abena Motaboli
www.abenaart.com
Artist statement:
My practice is performative, contemplative, and transformative.
I invite the audience to find a space to contemplate in amidst the chaos which surrounds us in the modern world.
I am intrigued with the idea of displacement as an immigrant and trying to find comfort in being, through sound, installation, painting, and meticulous, meditative lines.
Other materials I use are ephemeral: tea, dirt, coffee, cardboard, charcoal, tissue, and the earth. These mediums draw on my innate desire to connect with organic and found material, which are widely used to make things in my culture. They also comment on the contradiction between the environment and what is becoming of it. The dynamic between hope and destruction influenced by colonialism, the post apartheid era, and how toxic human relations can be toward one another is a thought that occupies my mind as I paint.
My practice then becomes meditative, repetitive, frenzied yet tranquil.

Bio:
Abena Motaboli is a Southern African born artist currently living in Chicago. She Lived in Lesotho, a landlocked country in Southern Africa through her formative years and moved with her family to the U.S to pursue her BFA. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts at Columbia College Chicago and at L’institut Catholique de Paris.
Growing up in international schools, communities, and being an immigrant, she is strongly influenced by the diversity of people, the other, the uncanny, and ideas of human resilience seen through human movement across territories.
Often times her works make use of material referencing her culture and the importance of following the abstract lines of nature. As a result, most of her artworks try to offer a space to contemplate, exist in, meditate, or to realize the impermanent nature of everyday situations and life.

Nethen Sevek will be djing for the evening

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Tags: Abena Motaboli, Chicago, fulton street collective, Katherine Szymanski, near west side, Substantial Threads, Substantial Threads Art Opening