Windows to Our World

A Review of Windows to the World at 6018|North by Susan Musich

Walking up residential Kenmore Avenue in a neighborhood on the north side of Chicago, you might do a double take when you pass 6018North and notice that the fence, yard, porch, and windows are adorned with banners, sculptures, and other objects. While the décor may seem unusual for a dilapidated mansion, it is par for the course for the artist-centered organization named after its address. Under normal circumstances, the house’s interior would be filled with art, but the stay-at-home order and city-wide protests prompted 6018North to create Windows to the World, an outdoor exhibition that promotes the organization’s social justice mission.

Considering our current crises and noting that “the pandemic of America is racism,” the team of ALAANA curators asked artists to consider: How do we want to see the world when we get out and who do we want to be individually and collectively?  The works they selected address COVID-19, systemic injustice, or both, and raise questions with complex answers.    

Artworks are made from everyday materials and often adopt commercial formats, so they are at home in the outdoor, urban environment. Efrat Hakimi’s Time, depicting the word in red neon and as if melting, suggests we need time to find solutions but the fire-like glow implies urgency. Audra Jacot uses neon in another window to present a similar contradiction. In Selfless, the words “self,” “less,” and “selfless” flash on and off, making us wonder if we should focus on the self, or being selfless.

Mashaun Hendricks asks questions about systemic racism directly, on vinyl banners that mimic commercial signage: “If there was no more crime and violence in black communities, who would suffer?”  A more subtle take on the same idea are AJ McClenon’s T-shirts draped across the front door commemorating Black people killed by police.  

If you visit 6018North during the day you’ll see what look like giant wind chimes on the front porch. The comforting format of Jiwon Ham’s Not for All is in stark contrast to its materials: one-way glass of the type used in interrogation rooms. At night, text from the 14th amendment, guaranteeing equal protection of the law to all citizens, is projected onto the piece. Police brutality, systemic inequalities, and immigration policies are just a few examples of the amendment’s failures that we live with today.

Summarizing and reflecting the themes of the exhibition is Jane Georges’s Feeler, comprised of plastic respirator tubes draped from the second-floor window. How can we not imagine COVID-19 patients on ventilators or George Floyd and others who literally couldn’t breathe at the hands of police?  On view and changing throughout the summer, Windows to the World uses art to show us our current moment of social distancing and protest.

Susan Musich spent twenty years as an educator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago communicating fresh perspectives to non-specialist audiences. In addition to writing about art, Musich consults for foundations and manages the tour program at EXPO CHICAGO. This interview was created as a part of the 6018North Writer’s Workshop.