HATCH residents Andi Crist, Kiam Marcelo Junio, and Lily Dithrich mine their own relationship to objects and situations through imagined histories, sometimes private but always painstakingly intimate. Giving consideration to history and domestic objects, the artists in the exhibition present work that invites viewers to reassess the imagination of bodies and their private cartographies.

Andi Crist presents a reappropriation of material: through a collection and reassembly of images taken from an Ansel Adams catalog, the artist cuts and pastes a new formation of land imagery. As an imaginative Manifest Destiny, her work proposes glimpses of a conjured land.

Through a large scale installation, Kiam Marcelo Junio envisions us within the “lost colony” of the Philippine Islands. Through camouflaged outlines, Junio brings a new spectral life to the memory of the Islands.

Lily Dithrich’s impossible furniture, charged with her own biography, beckons viewers to imagine their bodies within warped space. These corporeal constructions are imagined material exchanges between viewer and object, indirectly intruding into Dithrich’s personal conversation with herself.

Curated by J. Gibran Villalobos and Wil Ruggiero (JGV/WAR).

The manifestation of personal trajectories is often approached through a relationship with history: objects left behind, geo-political boundaries, and sentimental spaces. These ties, seemingly private, invite viewers to explore the ambiguous space of personal attachments.

As the Chicago Artists Coalition launches a new season of HATCH project exhibitions, Foggy Fantasies/Zones of Privacy highlights the new potential behind imaginative work and a renewed approach to intimate histories.

JGV / WAR is the collaboration between Gibran Villalobos and William Ruggiero. Their practice includes writing, curating, research, and project development with a focus on socially engaged practice, and contemporary Latin American art. Villalobos and Ruggiero both are art historians and administrators whose research and projects position programming and civic engagement at the center of their practice. Through the use of “shadow curating,” they antagonize each other to create projects that have undergone a conceptual and pragmatic galvanization.

Andi Crist was born in Birmingham, Alabama and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Columbia College in 2011. In 2010 she co-founded Autotelic—a community artists studio that gives emerging artists affordable and accessible workspace in a community-centric environment. Working primarily with found or scavenged material, Crist’s objects and paperworks are rooted in appropriation and reconstruction.

Kiam Marcelo Junio (preferred gender pronoun: ‘they”) are a multidisciplinary artist living in Chicago, IL. They work in multiple media, including photography, video, printmaking, installation, burlesque, and performance art. Their research and artwork centers around queer identities, the Filipino American diaspora, post-colonial Asian American tropes and stereotypes, and politics of visibility in the context of social justice. Jerry Blossom is Junio’s alter-ego, a genderqueer Filipino femme-presenting persona who hails from an alternate post-queer, post-colonialist utopia. Junio was born in the Philippines and has lived in the U.S., Japan, and Spain. They have served seven years in the U.S. Navy. They are also a registered Yoga teacher and recently launched QIAM, a fashion micro-brand.

Lily Dithrich is a sculptor and woodworker based in Chicago, IL. She received her BA magna cum laude in Studio Art from Oberlin College. In her early research and practice she began a series of furniture based sculptures that relate functionality and anthropomorphism. During her recent participation at the Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency, Dithrich further expanded her body of work and research into the production of furniture and sculpture.

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Tags: Andi Crist, Chicago Artists' Coalition, JGV/WAR, Kiam Marcelo Junio, Lily Dithrich