LINCOLN PARK — Art work from folks previously or at present incarcerated might be proven throughout an exhibition that opens subsequent week on the DePaul Artwork Museum.
The present, “Remaking the Distinctive: Tea, Torture, and Reparations | Chicago to Guantanamo,” will mark 20 years for the reason that opening of the USA’ notorious jail close to Guantanamo Bay. It is going to function work — together with quilts, ceramics, archival supplies and drawings — of people that have been previously or are at present incarcerated at Guantanamo and different websites, in addition to from abolitionist artists, artwork teams and activists.
The exhibit will run March 10-Aug. 7, exploring Chicago’s connection to extralegal torture and celebrating “acts of inventive resistance” to torture and imprisonment in Guantanamo and Chicago. Featured artists embrace Mansoor Adayfi, Abdualmalik Abud, Dorothy Burge and Anna Martine Whitehead.
The present was born from Amber Ginsburg and Aaron Hughes, visitor curators of an exhibition known as the Tea Venture, which started in 2009. The Tea Venture is a sequence of installations and performances that goals “to elevate up the story of individuals imprisoned in Guantanamo,” stated Hughes, an Iraq battle veteran and visiting artist on the Faculty of the Artwork Institute of Chicago.
The Chicago connection that’s highlighted in “Remaking the Distinctive” was integrated in 2016, when Hughes and Ginsburg started tracing how Chicago has ties to torture in Guantanamo.
The Guardian reported in 2015 that Richard Zuley, a Chicago police detective, traveled to Guantanamo in 2002 to show torture strategies that had been perfected within the Police Division.
And Chicago has its personal lengthy historical past of police abuse: Cmdr. Jon Burge and his “Midnight Crew” of officers tortured and coerced folks into false confessions for years within the ’80s and ’90s.
“The police have been in a position to do no matter they wished to do to us,” Anthony Holmes, a survivor of Chicago police torture, stated in a dialog with the exhibit’s curators in 2021. “It’s in all probability the identical factor in Guantanamo Bay. The one distinction is the place it’s at.”
Credit score: DePaul Artwork MuseumWhereas the exhibition highlights Chicago’s personal function in torture at Guantanamo, it additionally celebrates the work of Chicago-based activists who’ve battled police torture and brutality and fought to go the 2015 Reparations Ordinance for victims of police violence.
Dorothy Burge can have a number of quilts on show, together with two depicting individuals who have been not too long ago launched from jail. She’s beforehand quilted portraits of victims of police violence and white vigilantism, together with Trayvon Martin and George Floyd, and sees her work as a part of an extended African-American custom.
“I exploit quilting as a part of my activism to lift consciousness,” Burge stated. “Quilts have at all times been used within the African American neighborhood to ship messages. In the event you take a look at the Underground Railroad quilts, there have been codes that have been embedded within the quilts that instructed folks the place the protected spots have been for them to cease.”
Credit score: DePaul Artwork MuseumMoreover artwork items, the exhibition has a six-part podcast that was launched in January, and it’ll function performances and workshops.
Whitehead took enter from folks incarcerated at Stateville Correctional Facility to create dance choreography, which she’ll assist carry out for “Remaking the Distinctive.”
The present is “actually about individuals who aren’t there,” however who artists are attempting to “convey into the room” by work, motion and different media, Whitehead stated.
In the end, the curators hope folks will acknowledge “the profound connection between native struggles for justice and reparations and worldwide struggles for justice and reparations.”
Credit score: DePaul Artwork MuseumHearken to “It’s All Good: A Block Membership Chicago Podcast” right here: