Matt Siber, Objects in Mirror…
“Objects in Mirror…” connects my interrogation of the infrastructure of advanced capitalism and consumerism with the American mythos. Using a combination of photographs and objects, the exhibition playfully interweaves retail space, public space, and art space.
Matt Siber (b.1972) is a Chicago-based visual artist working in photography, digital imaging, video, installation and sculpture. With an MFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago, he has had solo exhibitions in Madrid, Berlin and Chicago among other venues. His first monograph, Idol Structures, was published by the DePaul Art Museum, Chicago in 2015. His artwork is part of many private and public permanent collections including The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, and The Bidwell Foundation. His work has been published internationally in publications including ArtForum, Sculpture Magazine, Flash Art, Aperture and EXIT Magazine. He has received grants from the David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg Arts Foundation, the Aaron Siskind Foundation and the Illinois Arts Council. Siber is Assistant Professor, Adjunct in the Photography Department of The School of The Art Institute of Chicago.

Anthony Sims & Roland Knowlden
The Familiar; The Interior
On March 13th, 2020, Louisville Police raided the home of Breonna Taylor, resulting in the death of the 26 year old emergency room technician. The Invasion into the home of Breonna Taylor, not only riddled bullets throughout the interior space she was inhabiting, but invaded her body and the interior space within.

To acknowledge the black interior, is to acknowledge the weight of the experiences that have shaped it, and that have come before. Through the interior, one upholds the lineage of dreams, hopes, and desires that are held within, and that have often been taken too soon.
As we confront the reality of the racial violence, the collective fear for safety invades the homes of all black interior life. The communal effect of this violence is not only those subject to direct violence, but the collective fear of violence held within.
Using more than four thousand images of victims of racial violence, The Familiar; The Interior, creates a visual for the presence of fear within black interior life. The show invites viewers to observe and connect with each image as a visual articulation of that interior. The basis of a home is constructed with the presence of this fear beneath it, acting as its foundation.

Anthony Sims is a Chicago based interdisciplinary Performance Artist/ Theatre Maker whose mission is to embody black and queer experiences through performance. Utilizing the theory of The Black Body by Harvey Young, Sims explores critical memory of The Black Body by creating experiential overlaps that manifest visibility. The Black Body, whether a knee is on its neck, staged as a criminal, hung from a tree or light post, made to serve at plantations, auctioned off like cattle is a body that is given compulsory visibility. Researching that given visibility, Sims uses interdisciplinary methods through collage by constructing new visibility, thus reclaiming The Black Body. His work has been seen at Links Hall, Defibrillator Performance Art Gallery, The Chicago Physical Theatre Festival, The Peace Studio, Third Estate Art, Slate Arts, The Center of Afrofuturist Studies, and several other locations. He was just recently an Artist in Residence at ADDS DONNA, and just completed a 26-night performance series at Co-Prosperity. Sims is also included in The Long Dream, a current exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art- Chicago. On view now: Spectated Specter at Roots and Culture. Future: Residency at Roman Susan. Art In Odd Places- NYC.

Roland Knowlden is an African American Artist and Architectural Designer. As an architect, he is interested in our physical environment, and the cultural and social implications of materials as they map and construct space. As an Artist, Roland aims to articulate a visual language for a more invisible experience of space. His work questions notions of race, origin, belonging, boundaries, and power. Mapping, whether visualized through film or drawing, becomes a tool for Roland to illustrate spatial experience. His work aims to not only reproduce our spatial environment and experience, but to produce new spatial realities.

Sonya Bogdanova, Your House is Mine
continued until June 30
Sonya Bogdanova (b. 1991, Moscow) is a Chicago-based artist and educator working with sculpture, painting, and performance. In her practice, Bogdanova objectifies and defiles representations of the ruling class. She is an MFA Candidate in Studio Arts (2021) at the University of Illinois at Chicago and earned a BFA from the School of the Art Institute in 2012. Selected exhibitions include work at Gallery 400, Co-Prosperity Sphere, Flatland, YorkExplore (York, UK), and Silvia Rivera Law Project (New York). She was an artist-in-residence at Holly & the Neighbors in 2021 and at Jiwar Foundation in Barcelona in 2015.

“My practice involves the sculptural-performative enactment of violence against oppressive systems. There are streams of grief and feelings of powerlessness that flow through the collective body in late capitalism. My work embodies a kind of raw artistic revenge against figures and systems that produce this public suffering.

I often make work to destroy it. Performing ultraviolence on these forms is physically and mentally pleasurable. My embodied performance lies somewhere between action painting and a sloppy version of carnivalesque mixed-martial-arts, and is acted out for an audience. When my target takes the form of a common enemy, I am able to produce a kind of shared catharsis.”

Image: Matt Siber, For display purposes

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Tags: Anthony Sims, Chicago, Humboldt Park, Ignition project space, Matt Siber, Objects in Mirror..., Roland Knowlden, Sonya Bogdanova, The Familiar; The Interior, Your House is Mine