1431 W. Hubbard St., Ste. 201, Chicago, IL 60642
By advance appointment only. Please email contact@chicagoartistscoalition.org
11.07
Portals
Opening: Friday, Sep 27, 2019 / 5-8pm
Hale Ekinci Shir Ende Mayumi Lake Liang Luscombe
Elliot Reichert
Chicago Artists Coalition is pleased to present Portals, a group exhibition featuring new work by HATCH artists-in-residence Hale Ekinci, Shir Ende, Mayumi Lake, and Liang Luscombe. The exhibition opens on Friday, September 27, 2019 with a reception from 5-8PM.
In this exhibition, each artist draws from an array of practices—among them, photography, video, fiber, sculpture, printmaking, and performance—to produce images and forms that open vistas into other worlds.
Portals is curated by Elliot Reichert.
Hale Ekinci, Shir Ende, Mayumi Lake, Liang Luscombe
Portals
Curated by Elliot Reichert
Sep 27 - Nov 7, 2019
Opening reception:
Friday, Sep 27, 2019, 5-8PM
Image: Liang Luscombe, Sweaty Scales, 2019, HD digital video (video still)
About Curators
Elliot J. Reichert is a Chicago-based curator, critic, and editor. He is Art Editor of Newcity and formerly Assistant Curator at the Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University.
About Artists
Hale Ekinci (b. 1984) is a Turkish-American artist based in Chicago. She received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts & Media at Columbia College Chicago and is currently a Professor and Chair of Art & Design at North Central College. Rooted in her lived experience as an immigrant, she creates embroidered paintings, sculptures, installations, and videos, embellished with vibrant colors, patterns, and cultural artifacts. Combining Middle Eastern and Western textile craft and fine art traditions, her work explores identity, folklore, communication, and gendered labor.
Ekinci was recently the Engaged Artist-in-Residence at the Gayle Karch Cook Center at Indiana University, including a solo exhibition. Previously, she was also an artist-in-residence at Facebook Chicago, ACRE, Jiwar Barcelona, Momentum Berlin, Elsewhere Museum, Chicago Artists Coalition Hatch, and Spudnik Press. Her work has been exhibited at Turkish Textile Biennial, EXPO Chicago, The American College of Greece, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Goldfinch Gallery, Zolla/Liebarman Gallery, Heaven Gallery, Co-Prosperity, Textile Center, One After 909, Woman Made Gallery, Koehnline Museum of Art, University of Illinois Springfield, and Queens College Art Center. Her videos have been screened internationally, in New York City, Berlin, Warsaw, and Jerusalem. She is the recipient of the Fiber & Figure award by the Surface Design Association and the best in show at the South Bend Museum of Art’s 30th Biennial.
Headshot: Kevin Schmalandt
Image: Hale Ekinci, Pinky Promise, 2022, Screenprint, embroidery floss, glass beads, thread, sequins, Doc McStuffind bracelet, interfacing, yarn crochet on found handkerchief, 26”x17”
(updated 2025)
Shir Ende is a Chicago-based artist and educator. She works to reduce the “bigness” of architecture, re-imaging built structures as intimately scaled, malleable forms. In doing so, she aims to minimize architecture’s imposition on the body and soften the authority of modern design. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has shown at Heaven Gallery, Gallery 400, Terrain Biennial, South of the Tracks, Mana contemporary, Woman Made Gallery and was a Sponsored artist at High Concept Labs. She has screened videos at Nightingale, Comfort Station and Roman Susan. She currently teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Mayumi Lake (b. Osaka, Japan) is an interdisciplinary artist, whose work delves into childhood and pubescent dreams, phobia and desires. She employs herself and others as her models, as well as dolls, toys, weapons, vintage clothes, and altered landscapes as her props. Lake has exhibited nationally and internationally at Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery, Asia Society, Art in General, Artists Space, New York; Chicago Artists Coalition, Chicago, Midwest Museum of Contemporary Art, Carmel; Fotograpie Forum International, Frankfurt; Cornelius Pleser Galerie, Munich; Galleria PaciArte, Brescia; FOTOAMERICA, Santiago; Witzenhausen Gallery, Amsterdam; O Gallery, Tokyo. She has published two monographs “Poo-Chi” and “One Picture Book #55:Ex Post Facto” from Nazraeli Press.
Recent solo exhibitions include: She inches glass to break, VCUarts MFA Thesis Exhibition, 2018; Table Talk, Box Copy, Brisbane, 2016; A Tall Painter, Yarra Flats, Melbourne, 2016; Three Sailors, Sutton Project Space, Melbourne, 2014; Non in Casa, 157 Blyth St, Melbourne, 2013; Bauhaus Fisher Price, TCB art inc., Melbourne, 2012. Selected group exhibitions include: Footnotes, The 3rd Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, Yekaterinburg, 2015; No fond return of love, I.C.A.N., Sydney, 2014; Dear Masato, all at once, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne, 2014; brimming dissolution, buoyant expenditure, RM, Auckland, 2014; Synonyms for Sincerity, Alaska Projects, Sydney, 2013; Please be quiet, The British School at Rome, Rome, 2013; Ménage a Trois, XYZ Gallery, Tokyo, 2012. She has also held residencies at SOMA Summer in 2018; the Australia Council Studio, British School at Rome in 2013; and Perth Institute of Contemporary Art Studio Residency in 2011.
