Opaque glass object in front of a white and gray background — Work by Dana Major

Sustaining

6018North at EXPO Chicago
Navy Pier, 600 E Grand Ave
April 7 to April 10, 2022
Booth 455

What can you/we do to positively address the future of the environment?

This exhibition aims to expand understanding of climate change and the power of individual action. By discussing some of the more complicated facts surrounding current climate conditions, and offering suggestions and tools for individual and collective actions, this exhibition posits that by working together we can create a more sustainable future. Given our current climate crisis, this exhibition asks what can an individual or an exhibition do? Through a range of interactive artistic experiences Sustaining aims to highlight how individuals can have greater voice and agency to amplify a clarion call to action. By intimately encountering the innovation and wisdom of artists, audiences can develop a range of creative actions and responses necessary to advance the personal and societal decisions and efforts needed to confront our looming climate crisis.

Artist, mathematician, and educator Eugenia Cheng takes on coal and gas subsidies in the United States, using mapping techniques to show how collective action through grassroot initiatives can influence change. Artist Adelheid Mers engages visitors in conversations about their own role in sustainability, as individuals and parts of the collective, asking, “What is at stake for you?” and exploring opportunities for action. Ideas and responses are recorded onto whiteboards that visualize these ongoing conversations. The Typewriter Tarts, utilizing vintage typewriters and collective input, create The Poem We Sustain, an ongoing poetry mosaic. Beginning with and returning to the question, “What will we sustain?” the Tarts write short poems on the spot and place them on the wall. Participants are invited to choose a phrase from poems already on the wall to prompt a new piece. An interconnected collective poem emerges, representing the reciprocal relationships that ecologically sustain us all.

*the poem we sustain* by the Typewriter Tarts

While artists Cheng, Mers, and the Typewriter Tarts look at how individual actions can have a collective effect, artists Dana Major and Rhonda Wheatley invite individuals to turn the tides of this looming personal and public crisis through a journey of intuitive insights to access one’s individual powers and collective wisdom. Within her installation of light, Dana Major offers 10-minute scrying sessions – also called Seeing – employing quartz crystals to help individuals access their own internal light to call forth their strength and resiliency. Artist and energy worker Rhonda Wheatley offers one-on-one Energy Prescriptions asking, “What do you want to manifest? What changes would you like to make in your personal life and the world around you?” Together you’ll use oracle cards, crystals, and intuition to come up with your Energy Prescription, a unique-to-you path for clearing blockages, releasing self-limiting beliefs, and/or setting in motion your manifesting powers to create the change you seek.

Each individual attending the exhibition is invited to make a commitment to sustainability. A corresponding light created by artist Dana Major amplifies this accumulated effect of brightness and collective hope for the future.

Press

Newcity “EXPO 2022: Special Exhibitions Inhabit the Periphery of the Art World,” April 10, 2022 by Parker Yamasaki (pdf)

Dr. Eugenia Cheng is a mathematician, educator, author, public speaker, columnist, concert pianist and artist. She is Scientist In Residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She won tenure in Pure Mathematics at the University of Sheffield, UK and is now Honorary Visiting Fellow at City, University of London. She has previously taught at the Universities of Cambridge, Chicago and Nice and holds a PhD in pure mathematics from the University of Cambridge. For more information, please visit eugeniacheng.com.

The Typewriter Tarts is a Chicago-based on-demand typewriter poetry and participatory theatre collective. The co-founding Tarts are a spectacular trio: Coelti, Kro, and Lisa Marie Farver. Coelti is an interdisciplinary artist and multi-faceted creative facilitator presently giving their attention to improvising poetry, teaching creative bravery, cultivating sensuality in daily action, and the liberatory, transcendent nature of consent and shame education. Kro holds a Masters in the linguistics of poetic performance from NEIU; their first full-length book, Prayer Wheel, is forthcoming in 2022 with IAS Grant support from the Illinois Arts Council. Lisa Marie Farver is a professional writer, improviser, and storyteller who has been creatively conjuring words for over 30 years, including work at Steppenwolf Theatre, Woman Made Gallery and Rebellious Magazine for Women. Collectively, the Typewriter Tarts delight in fostering unique, spontaneous art experiences by improvising typewriter poetry from participant prompts. Beyond busking and performing at events, the Tarts host Type-Ins, encouraging curious people to engage their creative spirit with typewriters. For more information, please visit typewritertarts.com.

Adelheid Mers is an artist, who works through Performative Diagrammatics, a practice that includes elements of installation, facilitation with publics, and video. Her research draws on close work with others, exploring arts ecologies, and knowing differently, or epistemic diversity. Work takes place nationally and internationally, for example in residency, conference and exhibition settings. Educated at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and the University of Chicago, she is Associate Professor, chair of the department of Arts Administration and Policy, and in 2021/22, also interim chair of New Arts Journalism, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Mers currently co-leads the working group Performance & Pedagogy at PSi. For more information, please visit adelheidmers.org.

Rhonda Wheatley is a multidisciplinary artist whose sculptures, paintings, written works, and interactive performance projects are grounded in the speculative and metaphysical and explore healing, consciousness expansion, and transformation. She has had solo exhibitions at Hyde Park Art Center, David Weinberg Gallery, and FLATFILE galleries, and group shows at spaces such as Gallery 400, Glass Curtain Gallery, and The Franklin in Chicago, as well as Walter Maciel Gallery in Los Angeles and G.R. N’Namdi Gallery in Detroit. As part of her art practice, Rhonda also leads self-care workshops and gives tarot card readings. She teaches art and writing, and practices several energy healing modalities. Rhonda earned a BA in English Literature with a minor in African American Studies from Loyola University, Chicago and an MA in Writing from DePaul University. For more information, please visit rhondawheatley.com.

Dana Major investigates how perception creates reality. Major has been a lecturer in the Sculpture Department of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her installation light art environments and illuminated light sculpture explore visual attention and surprise, using LEDs, reflection, light, and lens. The lenses of microscopy and astronomy show patterns and processes that, bound up with the inherent limitations of ways of seeing, come to be called reality. Her 2011 MFA from SAIC follows her BA in Philosophy from DePaul University. For more information, please visit danamajor.com.

6018North is an artist-centered, sustainable, non-profit platform and sustainable venue for innovative art and culture in Chicago. We challenge what art is, whom it’s for, and where and how it’s created. 6018North champions the creation of adventurous work that connects multiple disciplines and audiences while promoting artistic excellence. We support emerging and established local and international artists to create innovative, multidisciplinary work that connects artists and audiences in transformative ways. As a nimble lab for incubating, modeling, and experimenting, we leverage new ways of connecting artists and audiences to advance and sustain artists and Illinois’ creative ecosystem.

This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency through an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. 6018North projects are partially supported by an anonymous donor advised fund at The Chicago Community Foundation, a CityArts Innovation Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events, a Gen Ops Plus Grant from the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, Field Foundation of Illinois, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, IL Humanities, Illinois Arts Council Agency Youth Employment Grants, Joyce Foundation, The MacArthur Funds for Culture, Equity, and the Arts at the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, Terra Foundation for American Art, and individual donations.