"I want something more than my husband and my house” is an exhibition featuring work by BOLT Residents Jovencio de la Paz and Oli Rodriguez, with collaborator Nicole Ciesla.

Moving between a variety of media—including objects, photographs, fibrous materials, performance, and video—Jovencio de la Paz and Oli Rodriguez present an exhibition dealing with flipped material languages, inverted volumes, and tense surfaces. Beginning with an interest in exploring the boundaries and points of contact between images and objects, photography and fiber, these new works negotiate a shared effort to encompass queerness and challenge homonormativity.

Model and obstructor Nicole Ciesla has delivered particular instructions to de la Paz and Rodriguez to investigate duplicities of pervasive maskage and material seepage between skin and second­skin. These instructions become performances for the camera, images, discrete sculptural objects and residues of activity that examine limits, restraint, and subversive stamina.

Jovencio de la Paz is an artist, writer and faculty member in the Fiber and Material Studies Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Dealing with performance, physicality, collaboration and socially engaged practices, de la Paz is interested in a multi­faceted mode of production involving experiential and corporeal knowledge as avenues to investigate time, site­specificity and accreted activity. He has shown both nationally and internationally, most recently at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, Oregon (2013) and the Sculpture Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Jovencio de la Paz is also a co­founder of the international collaborative group Craft Mystery Cult, founded in 2010.

Oliverio ‘Oli’ Rodriguez is faculty in the Photography Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His teaching and artistic practice incorporate Photography, Video, and Performance, while investigating notions of queerness, passing, gender, and race. He has shown recently at The Kinsey Institute (2013), Roots and Culture Contemporary Art Center (2014) and curated The Great Refusal, a city­wide series of exhibitions and events dealing with queer identities in Chicago. Rodriguez also teaches at Urban Gateways, a non profit dedicated to providing art education in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) that do not necessarily have resources for such. He has worked within CPS and other art non­profits for the past fifteen years.