Anwulika Anigbo (b. Nigeria 1987) is a humanist domestic artist living in Chicago. Her work investigates questions of self-determination, presence, knowledge production, and memory. Through imagery and processes, she traces the historical and somatic roots of everyday life as it is practiced within blackness across the diaspora. Anwulika works at the intersections of everyday life, rooting her practice in creation as a continuous process of personal and domestic liberation guided primarily by black intellectual thought and ancestral memory. She is a self-taught artist working primarily with film photography. 

Anwulika's creative practice is woven into each area of her life including her work as a homeschooling parent and with the Invisible Institute. Anwulika is currently an artist in residence at the Chicago Artist Coalition 2021-2022 and a former member of L’Louise Foundations Career Growth Lab 2020-2021. Anwulika has exhibited her work at the Chicago Artists Coalition (Chicago) and CICA Museum (Korea).

Image: Anwulika Anigbo untitled (2020). Black and White Film, unspecified. 

Bryana Bibbs is a Chicago-based textile artist, painter, and art educator who earned her BFA with an emphasis in Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work comes from her personal life, struggles with daily occurrences, the ultimate strive for comfort, and trying to figure out life one step at a time. She is the founder of the “We Were Never Alone Project – A Weaving Workshop for Victims and Survivors of Domestic Violence” and is currently an artist at the Bridgeport Art Center in Chicago, Illinois. Bryana’s work has been on view at the Evanston Art Center, ARC Gallery, and the Bridgeport Art Center.

Image: Bryana Bibbs 9.21.20. (2020). Handwoven, hand-carded, hand-spun wool, angelina fiber, and recycled sari silk. 18 x 11.5 inches.

Gabriel Chalfin-Piney is a multidisciplinary artist and organizer, with a background in performance and exhibition-making for artists and nonprofits. Gabriel’s art practice pulls from olfactory, gustatory and tactile explorations, oral history interviewing, practices of play, care, and abolition, family-style eating, tattooing, object-making and collecting, puppetry, mold, and meditation, prompting audience members to participate as co-creators. 

Gabriel holds an MA in Arts Administration and Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in Art History from SUNY New Paltz. They have shown work at the Dorsky Museum, Panoply Lab, High Concept Labs, and Grace Exhibition Space. 

Image: Gabriel Chalfin-Piney, Amanda Bailey, Tamas Vilaghy, Daily Bread, (2019). Boiled beets, red onion, arugula and goat cheese, disposable nitrile gloves and changing pad, 11 minutes (Photo: Ji Yang). 

Jennifer Chen-su Huang is an artist and writer whose process-driven works interweave elements of craft tradition, language, history, and memoir. In 2017-2018, she completed a Fulbright Fellowship in Taiwan, where she was a Research Fellow with the Ethnology Department at National Chengchi University, as well as a Visiting Artist at Tainan National University of the Arts. She graduated with her MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received her BA from the University of California, Berkeley. In 2018, she presented her research at the Textile Society of America's biennial symposium and was selected for the New Professional Award. Huang has exhibited internationally at Haiton Art Center in Taipei and across the United States at Untitled Prints and Editions in Los Angeles, Kearny St. Workshop in San Francisco, and Gallery 400 in Chicago, among others.

Image: Jennifer Chen-su Huang a hermit’s guide to home economics (2020). Goji berries from Mother's garden encased in silk organza, embedded in hand-dyed, and woven cotton cloth, stretched over wooden bars. 10 x 12 inches.

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.

Osée Obaonrin is an interdisciplinary artist and poet originally from the Republic of Benin, who currently resides in Chicago, IL. Obaonrin received a BFA with a concentration in Fiber & Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work focuses primarily on documentation. Documenting self. The feelings of grief and acts of mourning as a means of reflection and also as a means of actually performing the processes of grief and mourning. She attempts to reconcile with the losses that have opened her to grief, the pain that has come along with it and perhaps find hope as a means of resistance. 

Image: Osée Obaonrin come as you are (2017). Mixed media on paper, 30 x 22 inches. 

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.

Farah Salem (Kuwaiti, b.1991) is a Chicago-based artist and art therapist/counselor. Her multidisciplinary practice is rooted within photography and expands into video, performance, fiber and installation. Farah finds subtle affinities between natural landscapes, the performing body, fiber-material structures, metaphors from her cultural upbringing, an understanding of the human psyche, geologic time, movement, music/dance traditions and rituals in The Arabian Peninsula. In her process, she is merging present experiences of human and geologic happenings, while looking at themes of access, agency, power, and the invisibly visible. 

She holds an MA in Art Therapy and Counseling from School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Farah’s work has been featured at Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), American University Museum Katzen Art Center (Washington DC), United Photo Industries (New York), Mana Contemporary (Chicago), Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE), and Contemporary Art Platform (Kuwait).

Image: Farah Salem, Power to See (2019). Fiber/Video Installation, 10 Minute Video.

Roderick Sawyer is a Southside-based creative that explores the importance of language and storytelling through his art practices. On one hand, Sawyer’s work involves creating video documentaries, photography publications, and editorial articles that analyze Graffiti as a complex system of communication, self-expression, and resistance. On the other hand, Sawyer focuses on creating photo collages and zines that represent his exploration of language acquisition, dialect, and identity through the study of spoken languages like Spanish. Sawyer’s work functions as a tangible and archival experience.

Image: Roderick Sawyer Estoy Perdido, Pero Está Bien (2019). Photobooks created in Puebla, Mexico, from the "A Continuar" series. 5.5 x 8.5 inches.

Jade Williams (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist and designer whose practice reflects the ways that she engages in the radical traditions of alteration, adornment, collecting, and congregating. Each of these meditative actions possess a transformative quality, making them powerful vehicles for space making; and, when performed routinely, healing rituals. Using hair, gold hoops, acrylic nails, original surface patterns, and ornate fabrics, her works are heavily influenced by the 1970’s/80s, metaphysics and her matrilineal line. Jade received her BFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign and is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her works have been exhibited at spaces including the Krannert Art Museum, the Evanston Art Center, the Leather Archives and Museum, Slate Arts and Performance Center, and Woman Made Gallery. Jade is a 2020 recipient of the One State Artist Project Grant, a 2021 recipient of the National Black Arts Festival Artist Project Fund, and a 2021 HATCH Artist Resident with the Chicago Artists Coalition. She currently lives and works in the Greater Chicago Area.

Image: Jade Williams, When I Think of Home (2022). Cyanotype Collage Prints on Cotton Paper. 130 in x 112 in (for the full wall), 24 in x 36 in per print.

Nayeon Yang is an interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago. She moved to the US from S. Korea in 2006. Experiencing the implied status of a 'foreigner' now in both countries, she explores the politics of 'foreign(ness)' and 'presence' as well as capital and labor in a global society through her projects.

Yang has exhibited at different venues including Chicago Artists Coalition, Roots and Culture, Co-Prosperity Sphere, Defibrillator Performance Art Gallery (Chicago), 849 Gallery at the Kentucky College of Art and Design (Louisville), Roy G. Biv Gallery (Columbus), PAB Open (Bergen), Latitude 53 (Edmonton), Rund Gallery (Seoul), Suchang Youth Mansion (Daegu), and Mythtake Museum (Cheongpyeong). She received an MFA in Sculpture from the Ohio State University and a BFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is an alumna of residencies such as HATCH Residency at Chicago Artists Coalition, Wedge Projects, High Concept Labs, Birdsell Project, ACRE, Wassaic Project, and others.

Image: Tomorrow’s News (2022). Two-channel video with four see-through mirror panels. The history of the transfer of the rayon industry in East Asia (projection 1) and in Europe and North America (projection 2). Dimensions variable.

(Installation view at Chicago Artists Coalition)

A Night Visible to the Naked Eye Project website: Avisiblenight.com

Art as (not) Labor website: Artaslabor.com