2130 W. Fulton St., Chicago, IL 60612
Wednesday-Thursday: 11AM-5PM
Friday-Saturday: by advance appointment
11.11
Deep Cuts
Friday, October 1 2021 | 5-8PM
Helen Lee Nat Pyper
Joan Roach
Open hours: Wednesday – Friday, 11AM - 5PM | Saturday 12-4PM
Chicago Artists Coalition is pleased to present Deep Cuts, a duo exhibition featuring new works by current HATCH 2021-2022 artists-in-residence Helen Lee and Nat Pyper, and curated by Joan Roach. The exhibition will have an opening day on Friday October 1, 2021 from 5-8pm. Walk-ins are welcomed.
Lee and Pyper’s studio practices cut into the B-sides of their respective cultural and personal catalogues. In their exhibition the artists disassemble, cut , stab, transform, re-print, duplicate, and put back together aural echoes of joy and suffering. Their practices are united through action, each clipping wings or zines, as a means of re-imagining, recontextualizing, and sometimes making love to the “archive.”
As Lee unearths and commemorates vulnerable moments from her lived experience, she dives further into memoriam, where she shares a collection of stories of Asian and Black lives lost due to hate. In a similar gesture against violence, Pyper pricks at the veil of queer punk anarcho-zine history. Their transgressive, clipped apart, stretched, and reprinted cut-ups bare it all, and often out of sight images see the light of day.
The two artists handle the complex conversations around sex and death with a sense of reverence. They push through reticence to offer up their catharsis in its stead.
Programming for Deep Cuts
Wednesday, November 10, 6-7:30pm
Chicago Artists Coalition | 2130 W. Fulton St, Chicago, IL 60612
Photo provided by Helen Lee
- a specimen study; from land to heart
Performance | Helen Lee | 6pm
Supported by the music of our inner landscapes, Wild Anima, Helen sifts through memories and histories as something to be observed, examined, learned and perhaps, eventually understood and/or released. In celebration and remembrance of our inner child and Black and Asians lives.
- Cutups and Callouts
Performance | Nat Pyper and Helen Lee
Nat and Helen take a page from queer anarcho-punk zine history in a raucous collaborative reading aided by felt wearables in the exhibition.
- Artist and Curator Talk
Talk | Nat Pyper, Helen Lee, and Joan Roach
After the performance will be a conversation between the curator, Joan Roach and the artists referencing the creative process and inspiration behind the exhibition.
About Curators
Originally from Metro-Detroit, Joan Roach is an emerging arts writer and curator who focuses on sculptural, textual, and performance-based work concerned with how we conceptualize, create, and restrict social space. Writing from a phenomenological perspective, they highlight work that encourages arts audiences to give critical attention to their relationship with the material world. At present, they are the publication editor for LVL3, an artist-run exhibition space and publication, and a contributor to New City Magazine.
Secondary Image: Exhibition On Being Tender featuring work by artists Madison Kline and Michele Mobley.
About Artists
Helen Lee (she/they) was born and raised in Chicago to immigrant parents from South Korea. She received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and BA from University of Hawaii at Manoa. She has had the privilege of presenting works in the US, South Korea, Japan, Germany, Iceland, Finland and Canada. Her performances have been published in “Emergency INDEX" by Ugly Duckling Press and films have been presented by Chicago Park District’s Chicago OnScreen. Their hope is that the work they create can help to amplify the voices of Asian American women, making their narratives more visible while building authentic, meaningful connections and build solidarity amongst the BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ communities. They were recently named Newcity Breakout Artist and are currently a HATCH Artist Residence with Chicago Artists Coalition and a Links Hall Co-MISSION Artist.
Image: Helen Lee, Everyday we live, we move closer to death, Window Exhibition at Roots & Culture. Photo by Carl Wiedemann.
Nat Pyper is an alphabet artist. In their work and writing, they use language as a sieve and they push the body through it. They also maintain ongoing research on queer anarcho-punk zines of the late 80s and early 90s. Their practice extends from this unruly history and its embodied politics of refusal. Their work has been shown at Chuquimarca Projects and Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, Printed Matter in New York City, and Vox Populi in Philadelphia. Their writing has been published by Are.na, Draw Down Books, GenderFail, Inga Books, Library Stack, Martian Press, and the Walker Art Center. In 2018, they were a Teaching Fellow for the Yale Prison Education Initiative. They received their MFA from the Yale School of Art.
Image: Nat Pyper, #11 from I Take the Sign With Me (2018). Archival inkjet print. 16 x 11 inches.
Never miss a thing
Subscribe to our newsletter and get regular updates on news, events, grants, and the latest opportunities for artists
Support Chicago Artists
Make a gift to CAC today and join our growing community of supporters