1st Floor Gallery

i come from two countries
one is thirsty
the other is on fire
both need water.

-an excerpt of a prayer from Warsan Shire’s ‘What They Did Yesterday Afternoon’

GO TOGETHER is a group exhibition of artists who currently or formerly occupied space at the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago. Each artist reflects one of many facets of the brilliance of the Southside of Chicago. In this exhibition you will experience a collage of talents, mediums, expressions, manifestations, cultures, emotions, figures, abstractions…

The production of this show is a reflection of the mutuality of the sacred space and those who create within it. We happen upon the same need for water at the same time within the same space. Humanity has always gravitated towards sweeter waters to create spaces for themselves to persist and thrive. Like water, we fill the cracks & corners of the church. Like water the church floods those within it with possibility upon possibility upon possibility.

Exhibition Runtime: April 24 - June 30

2nd Floor Gallery

A solo exhibition by visual artist Messejah Washington showcasing works on canvas dedicated to his great grandmother Tommie Sean Forte.

Exhibition Runtime: April 24 - June 30

Basement Gallery

Propagate Cooperative and the arts program at Chicago First Church are pleased to stoneware and selvage with Stonewear and Selvage with Lee Johnson (@sseatss), Birdie Everette Brachbill (@xaeaxii.ii), and Claire Elizabeth Tabbi (@itsyourcalling2).

Garments, normally (and optimally) tensile become rigid, steadfast or brittle. Objects no longer to be entered by the body, exclusively to be worn by the geist of their individual tracts or schools of social assignments. Tiles are made to be easily cleaned. The subterranean room of waste removal apparatus relegated as Men’s Restroom becomes better used as a space for forgotten and discarded / unable to be discarded things, old things valued more in the past with some sort of history or utility, but no longer really needed. The private becomes communal, whether it is seen or not, it is now as it has been. Bathrooms used to be more communal, like most places. Now, a space holding things that ask not to be forgotten, or asking that those things they memorialize too be remembered. Bury what is pure, make it unmoving and strong so it may be that way for eternity. 

Exhibition Runtime: April 24 - May 23

Basement Gallery

Propagate Cooperative and the arts program at Chicago First Church are pleased to present Speculation and The Cloak with Hugo Zelada (@_hugo_zelada), Eli Greene (@_blueingreen), and Florence Aurora Woolley(@rence_whooly).

Three installations of moving image works present three ways of looking towards the sacred and the absurd. Community, land (spirits), religion. Erasure, borders, the paranormal. How do external forces speculate and leverage the personal interactions with what is beyond ourselves, bigger than one another, for that which is not currently present. The cloak shrouds both the benevolent and the sinister as it arrives in the night, or, increasingly, broad daylight. When the tomb opens, and the shroud is all that remains, how might we work backward, piece together light, image, memory, to figure what “really” happened.

Æcumen, containing at once both Ecumen (from the greek Oikoumenikós) meaning the whole inhabited world, and used today to refer to efforts to find unity between religious sects, and Acumen, referring to a quickness of perception or discernment; penetration of mind; the faculty of nice discrimination. Æcumen is a site specific installation and exhibition series in the nooks and crannies of Chicago First Church.

Exhibition Runtime: April 24 - May 23