They have arrived — interdimensional beings with faces painted in hot rod head rush blush, decked in racing pants in box elder bug orange, sipping Aperol spritz in the garden with queer monarch butterflies. They move freely between realms, the corporeal and ethereal, the sacred and the profane — boundaries dissolve for THEM.

THEM is a three person show marking the occasion of the 15th anniversary of Roots & Culture featuring artists that have shown with the gallery in the past five years — Flor, Manal Kara, and Caleb Yono, who exemplify a live wire approach to making without fixed terms of media, context, and identity.

At 7 PM on opening night, February 11th, there will be poetry readings by Flor and Manal Kara (germs permitting.)

And on the closing day, March 5th, we’ll host performances by Flor and Caleb Yono, more info TBA.

~biographies~

Hi my name is Flor, I am a “Conceptual” artist working through Painting, Performance & Poetry. My works are proposals for queer belongings & new modes of expressing and relating to one another. some themes and subjects in my works are flowers as a standing for myself (Flor), florencio a conceptual personae for whom I facilitate works for and collaborate with(?), kiki a queer monarch butterfly channel via florencio ( florencio crafting a whimsical multi temporal queer belonging story, a narrative la Flor wished they had growing up), a poem about the letter x, and weaving multi temporalities and spatialities through performance. I got a “BFA” from UIC (Chicago, IL) in 2012 & a very minor in Poetry from School of Poetics in Marseille France ;). I have had recent “Solo” exhibitions at Chicago Artists Coalition, ADDS DONNA, BAR4000, Heaven Gallery, & performances at Gallery 400 and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. I have been featured in reviews and publications such as, Artmaze, Sixty Inches From Center, New American Paintings, Chicago Artist Writers, and Monsters & Dust. In 2021 I was recently selected as a “Breakout Artists 2021: Chicago’s Next Generation of Image Makers” by Newcity Art.

Manal Kara is a Moroccan-American self-taught interdisciplinary artist and poet. Its work has been exhibited extensively in Chicago and New York as well as in Istanbul, Vienna, and Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include XYLEM & PHLÖEM, No Place, Columbus, OH; THE VIEWING-ROOM vs. THE ADORING-GAZE, Interstate Projects, Brooklyn, NY; and Song of the Other Worm, Prairie, Chicago, IL. It has participated in residencies at ACRE, Ox-Bow, September Spring at the Kesey Farm, and Project Freewill. Upcoming solo exhibitions include Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles, CA, and Hair + Nails, Minneapolis, MN. Its collection of poems and essays is forthcoming from Dirt Child.

Caleb Yono(1981) works with representations of figures caught in moments of transformation and transmutation. Caleb’s works on paper, performances, photographs, videos, and objects; hope to understand and process the dissonance and harmony of the feminine, femme, and hysteric. They have a MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in painting and drawing (2015). Their work has been featured in numerous galleries and institutions including Roots and Culture , Andrew Rafecz, the Chicago Cultural Center, and Monya Rowe. Caleb has worked extensively with s+s project in CDMX performing and exhibiting at the Centro Cultural del México Contemporáneo and art space. they were the 2016 Acre residency performance scholar. Caleb Lives and works in Chicago.