At The Borderlands: Mitos | Memory new work by Silvia Gonzalez and Amy Reidel curated by Ann Meisinger
At The Borderlands: Mitos | Memory
new work by Silvia Gonzalez and Amy Reidel
curated by Ann Meisinger
March 3-24th
Opening reception: Friday, March 3 6-9pm
Performance at 7:30 pm
ACRE Projects Gallery
1345 W 19th St
Chicago, IL 60608
Silvia Gonzalez, Mitos | Memory, 2016
“The very act of writing then, conjuring/coming to ‘see’, what has yet to be recorded in history is to bring into consciousness what only the body knows to be true. The body – that site which houses the intuitive, the unspoken, the viscera of our being – this is the revolutionary promise of “theory in the flesh”
― Gloria E. Anzaldúa
ACRE Projects is pleased to announce At The Borderlands: Mitos | Memory, an exhibition of new work by 2016 residents Silvia Gonzalez and Amy Reidel.
Gonzalez and Reidel utilize their two visually striking practices to contextualize love and loss through narratives built around myth, memory and material explorations. The works in the exhibition address the question of what is left in the wake of personal, cultural and environmental loss and the interdependent nature of both love and loss and of knowledge and creation.
This exhibition is accompanied by two workshops, information below.
Workshop 1: Sunday, March 5th, 2-5 PM
At the Borderlands: When The Personal is Political
ACT Collective Zine Making Workshop
Workshop 2: Sunday, March 19th, 2-5 PM
The Haunting of the In Between Space: Tracing Future Memories
Co-facilitated by: Ximena Ayon, William Camargo, Amanda Cortes, Michael de Anda Muñiz, and Silvia Gonzalez
About the artists:
Silvia Gonzalez is an Artist and Educator living in Chicago creating zines and curating workshops to address structures of power, imagination, play, confinement, and freedom. Collaborative justice based projects include work with local art groups such as the Chicago ACT (Artist Creating Transformation) collective and the 96 Acres Project, led by the Artist Maria Gaspar. Silvia Gonzalez has experience organizing educational workshops that centralize creative work with intergenerational participants interested in critically disrupting current power imbalances. As a multidisciplinary artist, she uses visual and performance work to make connections between justice work, education, histories of trauma, healing processes, Xicanidad, the Nepantla state, and the potentiality within the radical imaginary. She is the organizer of an artist group called POCAS, People of Color Artist Space and connects artists of color from across Chicago to resources and each other.
For the past ten years as a multi-media artist,Amy Reidel has found meaning in imagery of “the storm.” As many throughout art history have done, Reidel uses the storm as a metaphor to signify emotional and physical conditions. She combines weather radar and color MRI’s with seductive materials like glitter, friendship bracelets and colorful paint; symbols of love, celebration and joy. Reidel’s chosen scientific image bases inform each other formally and conceptually, even if it’s only in a mythical capacity. Research has shown many visual similarities between imagery of the storms above and the “storms” (tumors) within. Through interpretative portrayals of changing atmospheric and bodily conditions, viewers can question these codes of danger and potentially see the beauty within them.
Ann Meisinger is a Chicago based curator and writer. She currently works at the assistant curator of public programs at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
ACRE’s space is ADA Accessible. Please contact Kate Bowen (exhibitions@acreresidency.org) if you require additional accessiblity information.