the needle, the haystack, the thread

Opening Reception 6:00 PM
Free & open to the public

Stringing words together while working on this exhibition at the Arts Club of Chicago, ‘the needle, the haystack, the thread’ made a certain sense, made a certain space for Britta Marakatt-Labba and Lala Meredith-Vula and Aboubakar Fofana and the late Maria Lai.

If these artists and the fruits of their labors cannot be easily summarized, thematized, named, tamed, or otherwise put in a proverbial drawer of available artistic or geographic or cultural criteria, their shared story is telling and wants to be told.

It speaks of a free association that keeps the society of things and thoughts and animals and plants and minerals and materials together. Humans take part. Yet they are not necessarily the center. There is no center. There is rather an invitation to connect and consider what is sometimes called traditional work or farm work or craft work anew.

Imagine between these artists, between their works, something like the red thread handed by Ariadne to Theseus to get him in and out of the Labyrinth.

Tending to their integrated ways of working and living [grounded in distinct traditions, advancing techniques shared across continents, and resistant to the soul-draining transformations of their communities wrought by violent histories of division and conquest] becomes our common task, however temporarily.

See it also as the seed of a sur-rural imaginary in an urban context.

Guest curated by Monika Szewczyk, formerly curator at documenta 14. Opening March 15, 2018. Features work by Maria Lai, Aboubakar Fofana, Lala Meredith-Vula, and Britta Marakatt-Labba.