Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

How do we defy categorization? Continuing the MCA’s Dialogue Season on Dissent, join a virtual conversation between artist and activist Patrisse Cullors and artist Alice Sheppard that explores the ways individual identities are framed in activism, art, and dissent. Museums are typically built on basic categories that help us frame our experience—historical time periods, media, or geographic areas—yet individual artists and their work often defy easy categorization. Likewise, activism and advocacy are often framed through clear categories, even when these impulses are intersectional.

In this discussion moderated by MCA Associate Curator Tara Aisha Willis, the speakers—both artists whose work interrogates and frustrates these fixed boundaries—share their strategies for holding multiple viewpoints and pushing against the impulse to frame and label what they are doing as one thing or another. Together we will consider the ways we as viewers can hold multiplicity and how as a community forged around the MCA we can embrace the complexity of individual experience in our relationships with each other.

The Dialogue Series is a museum-wide commitment to sustained inquiry about museum practice, access, and inclusion. Each annual series includes eminent speakers presenting innovative work happening across disciplines, panel discussions, and opportunities for open dialogue between local arts professionals and audiences. The 2021 Dialogue Season on Dissent is organized by Curator January Parkos Arnall with Curatorial Assistant Otez Gary, and the Performance and Public Practice team.

This virtual event is free or pay-what-you-can. MCA's suggested price is $15. Your ticket purchase enables the MCA to directly support the work of living artists.

Register below to participate in the interactive discussion, receive pre-show information, virtual viewing tips and tricks, and to stay connected to the MCA community.

Get tickets here