Jul 23rd 2025

Maria Gaspar: We Lit the Fire and Trusted the Heat (after Angela Davis)

@ Gallery 400

400 S Peoria St, Chicago, IL 60607

Opening Wednesday, July 23rd, from 6PM - 7PM

Since 2012, Chicago-based artist Maria Gaspar has interrogated the spatial and social dynamics of the Cook County Jail, the largest single-site jail in the US. With its enormous presence in her native Little Village neighborhood, Gaspar has intervened with the jail’s fortified walls to bring its visibility and invisibility into view. She has also offered new channels of communication for the incarcerated and neighboring residents through radio and visual broadcasts. At the heart of her practice, spanning installation, sound, and photography, is how co-creating with communities becomes a means for imagining a liberated present and future in which the US carceral system is undone.

At Gallery 400, Gaspar presents We Lit the Fire and Trusted the Heat (after Angela Davis), a commissioned performance on a sonic sculpture made of glass rods cast from salvaged iron prison bars from the now-demolished Division I building, the oldest section of Cook County Jail. The project began in 2023, and Gaspar has invited several musicians to compose, improvise, and perform scores that extend her inquiry into what liberation sounds like. For this iteration, Chicago-based vibraphonist Thaddeus Tukes performs a new experimental composition in the main Gallery’s space. Projected in the background is Clamour, a 60-hour video documenting Division I’s demolition in 2021. Through sight, sound, and touch, Gaspar and Tukes immerse audiences in prison “abolition as a durational process with different speeds.”

Following the performance, Gaspar and Tukes are joined for a conversation with Denny Mwaura, Assistant Director and Curator of Exhibits. Food and refreshments will be served.

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