CHICAGO, Ill – A new art exhibit spotlighting Indigenous creative practices is currently on display at The Block Museum of Art in Chicagoland, land many tribal nations call home. A total of 80 works by 33 artists will be included in the exhibit. This will include art from Andrea Carlson (Grand Portage Ojibwe/European descent), Kelly Church (Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Tribe of Pottawatomi/Ottawa), Nora Moore Lloyd (Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe) and Jason Wesaw (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi), all who have connections to Zhegagoynak, or Chicagoland.
“Woven Being: Art for Zhegagoynak” Exhibition Co-Curator Jordan Poorman Cocker (Kiowa) is enthusiastic about all that the exhibit will offer for visitors. She believes it is one that will give a voice to everyone who calls the region home.
“Art for Zhegagoynak really gets at the heart of the exhibition. That the art that’s been selected is really intended for the land,” Cocker said. “Visitors will encounter blending of past, present and future tense stories about place through the lens of Indigenous art.”
According to a press release from the The Block Museum of Art, themes will include “kinship between materials, relations across regional landways and waterways, and the weaving together of past, present, and future”. The exhibit will stray away from “monolithic storytelling”, or retelling the same story and lumping each artist’s culture together as one. Each perspective on the region will be present in order to understand how each culture is interconnected through their stories.
The exhibition will also be captured and transcribed in a 160 page book, “Woven Being: Exhibition Publication”. The book will explore expansive themes and questions posed by the exhibit. It will be available halfway through the exhibit’s run and available for wide release in Spring 2025.
According to the exhibit’s official press release, it is part of Art Design Chicago, a citywide collaboration initiated by the Terra Foundation. The goal of the foundation is to expand narratives of American art and emphasize Chicago’s diversity and culture.
The exhibit will run from Jan. 25 through July 13. An opening celebration was held Feb. 1. To see the full list of artists featured in “Woven Being”, visit their website.
