this land is your land

Friday, March 31, 2017 - 6:00pm to Thursday, April 20, 2017 - 5:00pm
Opening Reception: Friday, March 31, from 6 - 9 pm

The Chicago Artists Coalition is pleased to present this land is your land, a HATCH Projects exhibition featuring work by Azadeh Gholizadeh, Frances Lightbound, and Verónica Casado Hernández, and is curated by Ariel Gentalen.

this land is your land is an exhibition featuring three international artists investigating the invisible forces at play in our built environment. The American musician Woody Guthrie composed the famous, eponymous folk song as an alternative national anthem, one that sings the praises of a migrant traveler, whom can freely survey the beauty of the United States. Whereas Guthrie captured a populist postwar America that was open and progressive to him, these artists use their practices to explore the imagery and philosophy that attempt to keep us apart.

With insidious nationalism on the rise, the themes within these three bodies of work are highlighted in an urgent, more pressing tone. Azadeh Gholizadeh examines the man-made borders and stigma between the US and Iran, while Frances Lightbound tackles the visual language of infrastructure and development. Both artists look at how bodily autonomy is slowly stripped from us the more cognizant we become of the regulations within the Western world. Verónica Casado Hernández blends performance and textile-based work to address the feminized idealization of Lady Liberty, born from the Enlightenment and molded into a righteous figure, while posing questions about the ways the virtues of consent of the governed become twisted out of our reach.