Exhibition Archive

Archive
Karen Ami

Karen Ami

Karen Ami: WELL-KEPT RUINS

Opening Reception: Friday, September 6, 2024, 5-8pm

Chicago-based artist Karen Ami presents a series of interdisciplinary mosaic works in 'Well-Kept Ruins,' an exhibition addressing brokenness, chaos, and repair in the context of adoption and post-Holocaust generational trauma. These works incorporate inscribed and carved ceramic shards, sculpture, writing, drawing, and collage, an entanglement of her narrative, autoethnographic practice, and art research. This year, several of these selected works were created and exhibited during her PhD dissertation research in Berlin, Germany, the site of maternal and ancestral threads severed by the Holocaust. Ami's works examine feminist identity and familial repair, a re-connection to the remnants and apparitions that remain after loss and disruption. The exhibition's title is inspired by feminist theorist poet Hélène Cixous’s reflective memoir on returning to what remains of the past. The manifestation of these well-kept ruins is about refusing closure, rebuilding imaginary places around the fragments that remain restless yet still before us.

Read More
Fengzee Yang

Fengzee Yang

Fengzee Yang: SOUNDER WIND

Opening Reception: Friday, November 1, 2024, 5-8pm

TSounder Wind is an evocative exhibition that delves into the unspoken depths of emotion, centering on the profound, primordial yearning etched deep within. Through sculptures that embody archetypal forms, Fengzee invites viewers to contemplate the subtle, unnameable desires that persist throughout our existence. These works act as channels between past and present, exploring the intangible realms of memory, time, and loss.

Drawing inspiration from nature’s raw, ancient materials like clay and wood, the sculptures blur the boundary between the familiar and the enigmatic. Each piece—shaped by time and eroded like fossils—serves as a gateway into inner landscapes of longing. The organic textures and hybrid forms reflect an internal search for something unattainable, yet eternally present, embodying an ongoing dialogue between what is visible and what remains concealed.

This exhibition transcends function and context, inviting us to look beyond the tangible and into the quiet, spiritual spaces within. Informed by personal histories of migration and dislocation, Fengzee’s work taps into a collective subconscious where emotions interweave with memory and time. These sculptures evoke a sense of timelessness, acting as mediators between the present moment and vast, uncharted territories of the soul.

Read More