At this point, everybody already knows utopia is no place, but it bears repeating.

A void: a gap, a vacuum, a footnote, a pit, a cup (of nothing) that runneth over, a correction, a vacancy, a sweet (nothing), a joke, the pieces that must be picked up when the party is over, a dive bar in a desert, an ache named after a favourite uncle or country, a chasm, an abyss, a past tense that lives in the present, a cavity, a pulled thread from which another sweater is knitted, (nothing), a big thing, a word that shrivelled in the sun, a bird that knocked the egg over[1].

Unyimeabasi Udoh holds close the absences that remain visible in the communication systems on which we nevertheless rely. Their craft is a full feeling of emptiness shaped from these absences. “My country is a hole, and I take comfort there. I, too, am empty,” reads one plaque from their earlier installation My Country (Object Removed for Study).[2]

Udoh’s new exhibition at Tiger Strikes Asteroid Chicago, Title Case, brings to the fore the artist’s desire to recognize the absurdity and futility that congests life. The exhibited works build on Udoh’s letter garland works and site-specific installations of the past year while expanding the existing range of modes within which they materialize words in their practice.

Artist Bio:

Unyimeabasi Udoh works across various media, including print, installation, sculpture, and embroidery. Their practice centers on legibility, meaning, and how systems of communication and knowledge are built and maintained. Udoh holds an MFA in Visual Communication Design from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in Architecture from Columbia University. They have been an artist in residence at the Driehaus Museum, Chicago Artists Coalition, and ACRE. In 2021, they were named one of Newcity’s Breakout Artists, and they are a 2021 recipient of the Coney Family Fund Award.

Image credit: Unyimeabasi Udoh, Untitled (No Thanks, No Comment) (2021). Die-cut paper and twine, dimensions variable (min. 29 in x 72 in).

Exhibition text by Casey Carsel.

[1] The final item of this list references Georges Perec’s reference to a French nursery rhyme in “Species of Spaces / Espèces d’espaces” (1974). See Georges Perec, “Species of Spaces / Espèces d’espaces” in Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, trans. John Sturrock (London: Penguin Books, 1997), p. 8.

[2] Find documentation of My Country (Object Removed for Study) at https://unyi.me/my-country-object-removed-for-study.

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Tags: Chicago, Lower West Side, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Title Case, Unyimeabasi Udoh