DCASE Artist-in-Residence
DCASE Homepage > Chicago Cultural Center > Artist-in-Residence
Current and Upcoming Artist-in-Residence
Re/Imagining Read/Write Library
Chicago Cultural Center, Learning Lab, 1st Floor South
October – December 2024
Second and Fourth Fridays & Saturdays, 12-2pm
Read/Write Library, platformed by Sixty Inches from Center's Artists + Archives Fest, presents a pop-up library and program series inviting the public to help us reimagine what a community archive should be. They make the historical record “rewritable” by encouraging everyone with a connection to Chicago to add their own publications, sharing their creativity, expertise and research.
Past Artist-in-Residence
Learning Lab Residency
Elizabeth "Bel" Reyes
Chicago Cultural Center, Learning Lab, 1st Floor South
June — September 2024
Second and Fourth Fridays & Saturdays of each Month, 12-2pm
Reyes is an award-winning teacher at Yollocalli Arts Reach in Pilsen, where she leads the Graffiti Mural Project class in which students create “a graffiti mural that will positively reflect and impact the community.”
Pugs Atomz
March – May 2024
Second and Fourth Fridays & Saturdays, 12-2pm
Painter, muralist, designer, musician, Pugs Atomz is a true Hip Hop renaissance man. He is the co-founder of the Englewood Arts Collective, a group that is passionate about amplifying and supporting artists and creative engagements that uplift their community.
Mobile Makers Chicago with CAB Youth Council
September – December 2023
Second and Fourth Fridays & Saturdays, 12-2pm
This nonprofit organization makes design education accessible to all. Their bright orange renovated mail truck can be spotted around the city encouraging conversation about positive change in the built environment. Join us for design and skill-building workshops.
Aquil "AQ" Charlton
June 1 – August 31, 2023
Second and Fourth Fridays & Saturdays, 12-2pm
Summer Artist In Residence, Aquil "AQ" Charlton, is a musician, teaching artist, and leader of public studio and instrument making workshops. Aquil is an active member of Mobile Music Box and the Mobilize Creative Collaborative. During this residency AQ will be making additions to his Mobile Music Box workshop vehicle on site. Join us for some great DIY instrument making workshops and jam sessions with other collaborating artists. AQ will also have a mobile studio set-up to generate a library of sounds that will be woven into music and played through the sound dome in the Learning Lab.
A Long Walk Home, Scheherazade Tillet, Leah Gipson, and Robert Narciso
March – May 2023
A Long Walk Home's Scheherazade Tillet, Leah Gipson, and Robert Narciso will be in the artists in residence in The Learning Lab. As part of the “Meet an Artist” series, the artists will invite visitors to participate in the creation of The Black Girlhood Altar to honor and create awareness for missing and murdered Black girls and young women.
Meet an Artist with Project Onward featuring Fernando Ramirez and John Behnke
December 9, 2022 - January 13, 2023
Maggie Bridger, Cultivating Chicago’s Disability Dance Community
October 23 - November 26, 2022
Maggie Bridger is a sick and disabled dance artist and scholar whose work centers around disabled bodyminds in dance, with a focus on reimagining pain through the creative process. In residence at the Learning Lab, Maggie is partnering with High Concept Labs and local disabled dance artists to develop a pilot program to support and platform Chicago's disabled dancemakers."
Indira Johnson, Ten Thousand Ripples
September 9 – October 15, 2022
Indira Johnson is an artist and peace activist who uses art as a catalyst to foster dialog about peace and non-violence. Her residency marks the 10th anniversary of the Ten Thousand Ripples Project (TTR) in which 100 fiberglass and resin Emerging Buddha sculptures were installed at sites in ten Chicago-area neighborhoods. TTR is a partnership between artist Indira Johnson and Changing Worlds. “A powerful and profound need exists within each of us to know that peace is possible in spite of the violence that surrounds us,” Johnson says.
On Friday, September 30, 6-10pm in conjunction with the Ragamala festival, Johnson invites all visitors to join in the creation of Community Blessings Rangoli drawing in the Learning Lab, using flowers, herbs, dirt, and other natural materials. The Rangoli Drawing will continue October 14 and 15, 11am-3pm with a closing ceremony at 2:30pm involving Maggie Bridger and dancers from Unfolding Disability Futures. All are invited to participate.
Influenced by a South Asian folk-art tradition. the Community Blessings Rangoli drawing is created from natural materials that embody wishes for the well-being of our community and demonstrate our collective hopes for a peaceful world.
William Estrada
June - August 2022
As an artist, teacher, and cultural worker, William activates his Mobile Art Cart to engage visitors in the art of printmaking. His current research is focused on developing community and culturally relevant projects that question power structures of race, economy, and cultural access to collectively imagine just futures.
Damon Lamar Reed / Still Searching
March - May 2022
Painter, muralist and hip hop artist, Damon shares work from his “Still Searching” series of paintings depicting missing black women and girls from Chicagoland. His work is the subject of an upcoming documentary by Latoya Flowers supported by Hulu, Kartemquin and Still I Rise Films. Due to their lack of local, national, and global media coverage, Damon utilizes his artistry as social justice bringing awareness to their cases and hope to their families that they will be found.
Performance Art Residency
Tend
Chicago Cultural Center, Sidney R. Yates Gallery, 4th Floor North
June 15—July 19, 2024
For the first of two summer performance residencies, the Chicago Cultural Center welcomes Khecari and their project Tend. Throughout the exhibition’s run the artists will be activating the gallery with performances from 10am–5pm twice weekly.
Suspended Culture, Performance Art Residency
Chicago Cultural Center, Sidney R. Yates Gallery, 4th Floor North
April 28–July 8, 2023
Open Studio: Fridays & Saturdays, 1-3pm | Performance Festival: July 7 & 8
Suspended Culture's residency goal is to research Black sacred space, Black home-making, and Black domestic practices by: transforming Yates gallery into a space of rest, holding conversations with invited public, hosting a festival/showing in their final week in the space, and creating an audiovisual archive.
Dance Residency
Dance Residency Open Studio Series
Chicago Cultural Center, Dance Studio, 1st Floor North
November 2023—June 2024, Second Tuesday of each month
The Dance Studio Residency provides space, time and funding for Chicago dancemakers to create new work, and each artist or group offers free public engagements – artists talks, workshops, works-in-progress and more – to build diverse intersections and welcome more dialogue between audiences and artists.
Studio Theater Residency
Studio Theater Residency Pilot
Chicago Cultural Center, Studio Theater, 1st Floor North
December 9, 16, 17 & 18, 2023
Free dramatic readings of theater scripts by companies in residence during the New Play Reading Series.
Alexandra Antoine
Legler Library
115 S. Pulaski Rd., Chicago, IL 60624
Two-Year Residency, 2022-2023
The Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE), in collaboration with the Chicago Public Library (CPL), has selected an artist to participate in the inaugural Legler Regional Library Artist-in-Residence Program. During a two-year residency, an artist will be provided studio space at the library to create public art projects and programs that leverage the Artist's unique talents to promote greater connectivity between the library, its services, and the needs and aspirations of the West Garfield Park community.
Bio
Alexandra Antoine is an interdisciplinary visual artist and cultural apprentice based in Chicago, IL. Her work acknowledges the influences of her Haitian culture and interest in portraiture, food, farming and physical labor in traditional artistic practices of the African diaspora. She honors the different forms and functions of her work in the process of her vision coming into fruition. She received her BFA in Fine Arts and Arts Education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally.
Ariella Granados
Central West Center
2102 W. Ogden Ave., Chicago, IL 60612
January – July 2023
The city of Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events and Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities (MODP) have launched the first Artist-in-Residence at the Central West Center located at 2102 W. Ogden Avenue.
Bio
Ariella Granados, Central West Center's first Artist-in-Residence, is a Chicago based artist whose work explores telenovelas, childhood, and internet subculture across media. Drawing from personal memory, her multimedia videos and performances depict trauma embedded through the creation of fictional characters that portray real lived experiences as a bicultural and disabled body.