Join CPS Lives at our opening reception for the Class of 2024 artist’s exhibition on Tuesday, June 4th at 5:00pm (CST)!

Class of 2024 will be on display starting Tuesday, June 4- Tuesday, June 25.
Class of 2024
Design Museum of Chicago
Expo 72
72 E Randolph St Floor 1, Chicago, IL 60601

Meet the Artists:

Kat Bawden x Chicago Agricultural Sciences High School

Kat Bawden (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist and educator who explores relationships between memory, time, the self, and the body, particularly in the aftermath of traumatic experience. Kat works in photographs, video and light installations, weaving, handmade books, and community storytelling projects. Across disciplines, she creates immersive visual worlds that excavate, mark, and move with the imperfections of memory and the inevitability of time’s passing. In 2023, Kat earned an MFA in Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was awarded the 2022/2023 James Weinstein Memorial Fellowship.

She is also an activist who worked as a community organizer and educator for nearly a decade before becoming an artist. She lives and works in Chicago, the city where she was born.

Eseosa Edebiri x Ruiz Elementary School

Eseosa Edebiri is an interdisciplinary artist from the Bay Area, CA currently based in Chicago, where she received her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work focuses on the more challenging conversations we may have out in the world while taking a softer approach to the topic, in an attempt to not add to the ever-growing desensitization of the trauma of it all. Whether discussions on intergenerational trauma, autonomy, or conversations on health and wellness, the way we approach the topic is essential. That is why she takes a tactile approach, focusing the materiality on what is often plush to touch. Her color palette reflects this softness with its bright, child-like innocence, hopefully inviting you to soothe your inner child.

While she has been playing with the balance between soft and hard, some recent work has been more lighthearted. She is interested in playing with space, time, and a sense of what could be, where or when are you going or are you coming? Often playing on the uncanny and the nostalgic, she balances her time between her practice and teaching artistic skills to all ages.

Juan Hernandez x Benito Juarez High School with After School Matters

Juan Hernandez is an incarcerated artist born and raised in Chicago. His artwork has been exhibited at Angelica Kauffman Gallery, dragonFLY Gallery, Art in Odd Places, and others. He has been featured in Latino Rebels and he is a 2022 grant recipient of The Puffin Foundation. His work can be found online at instagram.com/jch_convictedart.

Haerim Lee x Namaste Charter School

Haerim Lee’s art stimulates dialogue with communities through painting, public murals, ceramics, artist books, and photography. Her practice is rooted in ethnographical research. Her practice critiques institutionalized demarcations of power. Originally from S. Korea, a monoethnic country, she is interested in multi-racial dynamics, particularly in the South Side of Chicago where she currently living in the neighborhood with diverse ethnicities from different backgrounds and cultural heritage. Unlike homogenous culture, living in the particular environment helps her to learn other people’s stories and create a learning space together.

Lee graduated from the MFA Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in the Painting and Drawing as well as MA Program at the Visual and Critical Studies, and was an instructor in Arts and Street Culture at SAIC.

Miguel Limon x Walter Payton College Prep High School

Miguel Limon is a Chicago-based visual artist, educator, and cultural worker with a focus on image-making, decolonial educational practice, and youth work in Chicago’s underserved communities. Miguel holds a BS in Education and Museum Studies from DePaul University in Chicago and is pursuing a MA in Museum Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. As a cultural organizer and artist, Miguel has offered services at the University of Chicago Office of Civic Engagement, Arts + Public Life: An Initiative of UChicago Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Arts Chicago, the Chicago History Museum, the Museum of Science and Industry, DePaul University, and others.

As a researcher, Miguel explores dimensions of learning in non-formal cultural institutions like museums and libraries. They have also conducted research in critical mentorship in higher education for underrepresented communities.

Nyia Sissac x Frederick Douglass Academy High School

Nyia Sissac, is a portrait photographer based in Chicago,IL. She graduated from Columbia College Chicago, with a BA in photography. Her practice uses portraiture as a tool to document and tell a new unique definition of Blackness, creating a palette of colors and textures to make a conceptual story. She creates as a way to teach my fellow community that photography can be a tool that helps you heal. It helps you release emotions, secrets, places that you have been and maybe haven’t experienced yet.

Learn more about The Design Museum of Chicago — https://www.designchicago.org/

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Tags: Chicago, CPS Lives, CPS Lives: CLASS OF 2024:, Design Museum of Chicago, Eseosa Edebiri, Haerim Lee, Juan Hernandez, Kat Bawden, Miguel Limon, near west side, Nyia Sissac