Walk: Encounters with Balbo in Chicago
@ Balbo Monument
1410 S Special Olympics Dr, Chicago, IL 60605
Opening Thursday, September 5th, from 4PM - 6PM
On view through Friday, December 20th
Join architectural historian Onur Öztürk and exhibiting artist Dawit L. Petros for a walk from the Balbo Monument past Columbus and Balbo Drives to the Museum of Contemporary Photography. Along the way, Öztürk and Petros will discuss the legacy of General Italo Balbo and Italian aviation at the 1933–34 Chicago World’s Fair, and how celebrating Italian technological advancement in Chicago helped to obscure the country’s violent colonial project in the Horn of Africa.
This event is presented in conjunction with the Museum of Contemporary Photography’s exhibition, Dawit L. Petros: Prospetto a Mare.
Meet at the Balbo Monument near 1410 S. Special Olympics Dr., on the bike path just east of Soldier Field.
About the Exhibition
Nestled in a green space between Soldier Field and Lake Michigan, the often-forgotten Balbo Monument was gifted to the city of Chicago by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini to commemorate controversial air marshal Italo Balbo’s 1933 transatlantic flight from Italy to Chicago during the city’s World’s Fair. Prospetto a Mare is the latest chapter of Eritrea-born artist Dawit L. Petros’s long-term investigation of the impact of Italian colonialism and its subsequent imprint on the visual cultures, populations and built environments of Africa, Europe and North America. With particular attention to Chicago’s buried links to Italian colonialism, Petros probes the propaganda used to promote Italy’s colonial projects in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Libya, and by extension, the newly formed Italian state; the (aerial) technologies used to dominate occupied countries and simultaneously extol the power of the occupiers; and the imperfect ways in which these histories are inscribed in public and private memory through monuments, storytelling, archives, and photography. By incisively deconstructing established narratives of culture, migration, and power, Prospetto a Mare reminds us that the tendrils of the past reach into the present, emphasizing that history remains unfixed and unfinished.
Curated by Karen Irvine, MoCP’s Chief Curator and Deputy Director.
Visual artist and researcher Dawit L. Petros is currently associate professor in the Department of Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Petros completed the Whitney Independent Study Program, an MFA in visual art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, a BFA in photography from Concordia University, and a BA in history from the University of Saskatchewan. A recipient of awards including a Terra Foundation Research Fellowship, the Paul De Hueck and Norman Walford Career Achievement Award for Art Photography and a Fulbright Fellowship, Petros’s multidisciplinary work has been exhibited at Tate Modern, London; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City; and the Bamako Biennale, Mali, among other venues.
Prospetto a Mare is part of Art Design Chicago, an initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art exploring and elevating Chicago’s rich art and design histories and diverse creative communities.
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Tags: Balbo Monument, Chicago, Dawit L. Petros, Dawit L. Petros: Prospetto a Mare, Encounters with Balbo in Chicago, Karen Irvine, Loop, MoCP, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Onur Öztürk, Prospetto a Mare, Walk: Encounters with Balbo in Chicago
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