Zachary Cahill will discuss Unicorn Death Moon Day Planner. He will be joined in conversation by Dieter Roelstraete. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion.

Presented in partnership with Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry and Neubauer Collegium.

At the Co-op

RSVP HERE (Please note that your RSVP is requested but not required.)

About the Book: Unicorn Death Moon Day Planner is a fantasy-inspired poetry chapbook and day planner. The first book of poems by Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist and author Zachary Cahill features ink drawings depicting the allegoricai relationship between a pentegrammed-eyed unicorn and a cloak-less figure of death bound by moonlight. The dream-like imagery is accompanied by thirteen poems that range from odes to the moon and elegies for the end-times to an encounter with Sigmund Freud and a New Year’s greetings within a day planner format for readers to record thier own thoughts and poems. Unicorn Death Moon Day Planner is a book of poetry that is an invitation for a private conversation between author and reader.

*Intended for adults*

About the Author: Zachary Cahill (he/him) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago. For over a decade he has worked on the USSA, a proposition for a country that uses exhibitionary form as a meditation on nation-state infrastructure and propaganda. More recently, his work has taken a turn towards the genres of fantasy and fairytales. His art has been featured in the 8th Berlin Biennale, Contemporary Art Brussels (CAB), Regina Rex (New York), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), the Smart Museum of Art, among others. He has given readings, lectures, and conducted séances at The Poetry Foundation, the Goethe Institut Kultur Symposium in Wiemar, ICA London, and the Banff Centre. Zachary has been featured in the Art Reviews “Future Greats” issue and was included in the contemporary art survey, The Artist Who Will Change the World, published by Thames and Hudson. His writings have appeared in Afterall, Artforum, Bad-at-Sports, and Critical Inquiry. The Black Flame of Paradise, his first novel, was released by Mousse Publishing in 2018. He is the founding editor-in-chief of Portable Gray, a bi-annual arts and ideas journal put out by the University of Chicago Press for the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, where he is Director of Programs and Fellowships. In 2021, Cahill self-published the graphic novel Unicorn Death Road Trip Buddy Movie.

About the Interlocutor: Dieter Roelstraete is the Curator for the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society at the University of Chicago. He previously served on the curatorial team that organized documenta 14, the international art exhibition that ran in the spring and summer of 2017 in Kassel, Germany, and Athens, Greece. Prior to that, he served as the Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago from 2012 to 2015. During his time there, he organized and co-organized a number of highly regarded shows, including The Way of the Shovel: Art as Archaeology (2015); The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music 1965 to Now (2015); and Kerry James Marshall: Mastry (2016), a retrospective of the acclaimed Chicago-based artist that traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. From 2003 to 2011 Roelstraete was a curator at the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, where he organized group exhibitions as well as monographic shows. Recent projects include exhibitions at the Fondazione Prada in Milan and Venice, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, and the Garage Museum for Contemporary Art in Moscow. Roelstraete, who was trained as a philosopher at the University of Ghent, has published extensively on contemporary art and related philosophical issues.

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Tags: Chicago, Dieter Roelstraete, Hyde Park, Seminary Co Op Bookstore, Unicorn Death Moon Day Planner, Zachary Cahill