In conjunction with body | armor, ACRE hosts a day of free programming and healing gatherings dedicated to the promotion of self-care. All workshops are created and directed by artists whose practices examine the intersections of contemporary art and holistic healthcare, and how these relationships influence the body and mind. While all programs are participatory, artists Marcela Torres and Chelsea A. Flowers lead activities that pertain to self-care of the physical body while Chris Zain and Rhonda Wheatley host workshops that target mental health and cater to the soul.

12:30 – 1:15pm
Rhonda Wheatley
Release & Receive: A Manifesting Workshop

Join artist Rhonda Wheatley for Release & Receive, a workshop that will help you envision the future you want to create and release past experiences and self-doubts that may holding you back. You’ll do writing exercises, participate in a guided meditation, and receive takeaway tools so you may continue the work on your own. Bring a journal or notebook and something to write with.

1:30 – 2:15pm
Marcela Torres
Program TBA

2:30 – 3:15pm
Chris Zain
Exercises in Presence

Exercises in Presence is a series of short improvisational and meditative exercises that will involve sitting, standing, walking, hand holding and an open mind. This workshop is designed to get back into your body and calm the mind.

Participants should expect to be moving for about half of the class and sitting for the other half. Participants should wear clothes that they feel comfortable sitting, running and moving in.

3:30 – 5:30pm
Chelsea A. Flowers
Get a Twerkout

Do you like to workout? Do you like to dance? Do you like combining the two? If so enjoy a one hour twerkout session with Bloomfield Hills renown Twerk enthusiast Chelsea A. Flowers. As a participant you will learn and enhance your twerk skills, as well as learn how to listen to your body’s muscles and maximize the effects of your twerking. We will work on form, technique and learn different positions to enhance the muscles utilized during the twerkout.

All levels if experience are welcome, and prepare for a fun session of learning and physical challenges.

About the artists:

Rhonda Wheatley is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and energy healer whose projects are grounded in the speculative and metaphysical. Through her sculptures, written works, paintings, workshops, and interactive performances she explores healing, consciousness expansion, and transformation. Wheatley had a recent solo exhibition at Hyde Park Art Center, participated in group shows at spaces like UIC’s Gallery 400 and the Donnelley Foundation, and performed at Tusk Gallery and in the 2017 Chicago Home Theater Festival. She’s facilitated workshops at CAC’s LAUNCH Residency, Links Hall’s Eclipsing Festival, Columbia College, and more. In 2017 Wheatley received the CAC Maker Grant’s inaugural Coney Family Award and a 3Arts ‘Make a Wave’ Grant.

Marcela Torres’ practice attempts to repair, transform, and destabilize cultural ideologies that target and oppress “the other.” She enmeshes the physicality of martial arts with bastardized political encounters to create modes of collaborative healing and utilizes these strategies to set up performative situations that uncover the reality of the varied and differentially weighted interpellations in which we reside. Marcela has an MFA in Performance from the School of the Art Institute and a dual BA/BFA in Sculpture and Art History from the University of Utah.

Chris Zain is an interdisciplinary artist with an insatiable curiosity in the boundary of the body in all of its physical and spiritual permutations.Her work circulates through the inability of the body to escape its edges, destined to be a self-contained sack of flesh holding mind, body and soul. She went to art school, she’s exhibited her work here and there, and lived for 28 years on planet earth. Though her practice primarily takes form in sculpture Zain’s preoccupation with the body extends to the struggles of living mindfully day to day.

Based in Detroit, Chelsea A. Flowers holds an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She has shown work at various galleries and alternative spaces in Columbus and Cleveland OH including Marcia Evans Gallery, and Junctionview Studios, with an upcoming exhibit at Muted Horn Gallery. Additionally, she has held performances at Hatch Gallery in Detroit and the Museum of Human Achievement in Austin. She has expanded her skills and research by attending ACRE, Unlisted Projects, and Real Time and Space residencies, culminating in performances at the various establishments. She explores ideas of “otherness” through comedic troupes, physical play, nostalgic memorabilia, and participatory performance.

Organized by Lauren Leving

ACRE Projects welcomes all gender expressions and features gender neutral bathrooms. ACRE’s space is ADA Accessible. Please contact Kate Bowen (exhibitions@acreresidency.org) if you require additional accessibility information.

Official Website

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Tags: ACRE, ACRE Projects, Chelsea A. Flowers, Chicago, Chris Zain, Lauren Leving, Lower West Side, Marcela Torres, Marissa Neuman, Performing Wellness: An Artist-Led Day of Self Care, Pilsen, Rhonda Wheatley, self-care