Join Intuit for an exhibition tour of vanessa german’s Gray Center Fellowship Exhibition at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts. Deepen your understanding of the exhibition through guided close looking and discussion with curators Zachary Cahill and Stephanie Cristello.
About the Exhibition
The Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry presents the first solo museum exhibition in Chicago of self-taught citizen artist vanessa german (b.1976), featuring a new body of monumental rose quartz and precious gemstone sculptures as part of a multi-disciplinary installation developed during her Gray Center Fellowship supported by the Joyce Foundation. Guided by the principle of paraäcademia, a new term coined to address bodies of knowledge and practices historically excluded from recognized institutions of higher education, the exhibition enacts various spells both intended for and composed by the living breathing people encountered during her residency. Created over the course of several months, the works on view embody the site of Chicago as an energetic locus for production—foregrounding the interpersonal linkages formed through art as a form of social healing, meditations on the political histories and methodologies of magic, and spiritual activations that embrace love as an original and infinite human technology.
The exhibition, presented by the Gray Center and Logan Center Exhibitions, is curated by Zachary Cahill, Stephanie Cristello, and Mike Schuh, with primary support from the Joyce Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Department of Visual Arts; Richard and Mary L. Gray; the Gray Family; Kasmin, New York; the Mellon Foundation; Ng Family Visiting Artist Fund; Revada Foundation; and Friends of the Logan Center.
Learn more about the exhibition here.
Tickets
This program is free and open to the public. Space is limited, registration required. RSVP here.
About vanessa german
vanessa german (b. 1976, Milwaukee, WI) lives and works between Pittsburgh, PA, and Asheville, NC. Her artistic practice is intertwined with and inextricable from her dedicated role in activism and community leadership. In 2011, german founded the Love Front Porch in Pittsburgh, an arts initiative for the women, children and families of the Homewood neighborhood that began after she moved her studio practice onto the front steps of her home. Three years later, in 2014, german expanded the space to encompass ARThouse, which combines a community studio, a large garden, an outdoor theatre, and an artist residency. Upholding artmaking as an act of restorative justice, german confronts the emotional and spiritual weight imposed by the multi-generational oppression of African American communities. As a queer Black woman living in the United States, german has described this as a deeply necessary process of adventuring into the wild freedom that the inhabitation of such identities demands.
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