Student Union Galleries Kick Off Spring Season

SAIC’s Student Union Galleries (SUGs) announced its spring 2017 schedule, which includes five exhibitions across the LeRoy Neiman Center Gallery and Gallery X featuring artists and curators from the SAIC community. Beginning in January, this semester's exhibitions are attuned to the current political climate and exist between questions of identity, place, and history. 

To activate the specific concerns of each show, numerous experimental programs will be held, engaging the community and opening dialogue. In addition to exhibitions and programs, SUGs will host several installation and proposal workshops to not only prepare students for the SUGs proposal process, but also individually assist and work through the specifics of building an exhibition, from the show narrative to installing work for exhibition. SUGs is a co-learning organization where knowledge can be shared and transferred between the student staff and the student exhibitors

This spring, the Student Union Galleries will present the following exhibitions and workshops:

5354: Neither Here, Nor There

January 27–February 15

Opening Reception: Thursday, January 26, 4:00 p.m.

The LeRoy Neiman Center Gallery, 37 S. Wabash Ave.

5354: Neither Here, Nor There explores transnational collective action and its translation of Hong Kong, Chinese and East Asian identities. Taking place amid the urgency of Hong Kong’s electoral anxieties in 2017 and in the aftermath of the Umbrella Movement of 2014, 5354 reclaims the displaced and disembodied experience of a long-distance social practice. Networked around shared motifs of diaspora and disappearance, consumption and exchange, and rituals and objects of the everyday, Ellie Tse (BA 2018), Sonia Cheng (BA 2019, BFA 2019), Sunday Lai Long Sang (MFA 2018), Adrian Lo (BFA 2017), Celine Setiadi (BFA 2017), Ange Wong (MA 2016) and Justin Wong (BFA 2019) reimagine new possibilities of meaning and intervention with a common visual vocabulary of home, familiarity, and localness. This exhibition gives visibility to a critical global moment caught in between the traumatic afterlives of postcoloniality and the uncertain futures of democratic citizenship.

 

Palimpsest: present through past

February 17–March 8

Opening Reception: Friday, February 17, 4:00 p.m.

Gallery X, 280 S. Columbus Dr., room 113

A palimpsest is a page from either a book or manuscript, where the text has been scraped or washed off to allow for the same page to be reused.  In Palimpsest: present through past, Ashley M. Freeby (MFA 2018) explores an American story, an investigation into one of this country’s tragic narratives—lynching.  This exhibition is a truth telling look into Black history and an essential preview into American history and culture as we pave a way to recovery and reconciliation as a community.

 

Bearing: object, body, and space

March 2­–March 23

Opening Reception: Wednesday, March 1, 4:00 p.m.

The LeRoy Neiman Center Gallery, 37 S. Wabash Ave.

Bearing: object, body, and space is a group exhibition exploring ideas of corporeal imposition within the works and research of three artists, Santina Amato (MFA 2017), Lindsay Hutchens (MFA 2017, MA 2018), and Michelle Marie Murphy (MFA 2017).  This exhibition incorporates performative video, site-specific objects, photography, painting, and text to reflect on the issues that surround them as women and how they deal with the imposed and internalized threshold of their own bodies within their practices.

 

Realizing Things

March 31­–April 19

Opening Reception: Friday, March 31, 4:00 p.m.

Gallery X, 280 S. Columbus Dr., room 113

In Realizing Things Amanda Assaley (BFA 2018) and Matthew Ryan (BFA 2017) present and question the way we form identities through study of the material culture connected to pop figure Kylie Jenner. If Kylie Jenner is a role model creating products for us to be like her, then how does her material presence inform us of the desires she manipulates within us? This exhibition examines these object's ability to sculpt presences and moods, and how they work to change what we desire and how long we desire it.

 

Black Box: An Afrofuturist Opus

April 28­–May 17

Opening Reception: Thursday, May 3, 4:00 p.m.

The LeRoy Neiman Center Gallery, 37 S. Wabash Ave.

Performers, composers, directors, and writers of color, have historically been left out of the canon of opera, being overlooked in favor of those who exemplify the predominantly white Eurocentric narratives. In support of the development of an original Afrofuturist opera, Black Box will aid in realizing a more equitable and critical operatic process and form. Originating from black box theatre, this group exhibition positions the structure of the black box gallery as a temporary think tank—a discursive and process based space facilitating a collective imagining of the operatic landscape. Participating artists from the SAIC community and beyond will engage with and exchange strategies present in Afrofuturism and Afrosurrealism including: reconceptualizing the past, present, and future, representations of utopias and dystopias, as well as employing the general themes of liberation, metaphysics, and technology.

 

Spring 2017 Workshops

 

Fall 2017 Exhibition Proposal Deadline

Friday, March 31, 12:00 a.m.

 

Installation Workshops

Tuesday, February 21, 4:15 p.m.

The LeRoy Neiman Center Gallery, 37 S. Wabash Ave.

 

Wednesday, March 15, 4:15 p.m.

Gallery X, 280 S. Columbus Dr., room 113

 

SUGs Proposal Workshop

Monday, February 13, 4:15 p.m.

Sharp Building, 37 S. Wabash Ave., room 322

 

Thursday, March 2, 4:15 p.m.

Sharp Building, 37 S. Wabash Ave., room 322

 

Monday, March 27, 4:15 p.m.

Sharp Building, 37 S. Wabash Ave., room 322