Chicago Artists Coalition is pleased to present The Mountains Whispered and the Canyon Sang, a solo show featuring BOLT Resident, Luis Sahagun.

Luis Sahagun's solo exhibition is composed of new works such as masks, large scale, sculptures, and paintings. In addition, the artist collaborated with Chicago based sound artists' Matthew Motep Woodsand, Sylvie Grace, and Simantikos (a Chicago based dance company that exists to address social injustices through movement). The collaboration consists of using Sahagun's mother's breath and heartbeat to create sounds, melodies, and movements with the intent of channeling messages to his ancestors and friends that were murdered in the Chicago Southland due to gun violence and other social injustices.

During the opening reception, there will be two performances titled, I know you are waiting and Next time will be better. Each performance varies slightly but both will be in the dance genre of contemporary structured improv. Sahagun says, "For a long time, my family has believed that I inherited a special gift that allows me to communicate with the dead. Most of my life I rejected and ignored those beliefs. This is my first project in which I tackle full force the concept of spirituality with my art making."

Programming

On Sunday, July 23, 2017 at 3:30 pm, Luis Sahagun and Matt Motep Woods will be in conversation with Faye Gleisser, to share stories about surviving the hood and how their experiences influenced them as artists and art educators. The discussion will take place at CAC in the BOLT project space.Free and open to the public.

Artist Bio

Luis Sahagun was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico in 1982. Sahagun, a 2001 graduate of Chicago Height's Bloom High School, earned his BFA from Southern Illinois University in 2006 and his MFA in painting from Northern Illinois University in 2015. He has participated in multiple solo, juried, invitational, and national exhibitis in the US and Mexico. In addition to being featured in New American Paintings (Issue #111), Luis' work has also been showcased in Chicago's The International Exposition of Contemporary & Modern Art (EXPO Chicago), The Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art (Roswell, NM), the Chicago Cultural Center, and the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. He is currently a BOLT Resident at the Chicago Artists Coalition, an artist guide at the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Chicago, an art educator for the the Art Institute of Chicago and lead artist for the Smart Museum of Art Teen Summer Program.

SPEAKER BIOS

Faye R. Gleisser is an Assistant Professor at Indiana University Bloomington. She specializes in Modern and Contemporary Art and the representation of histories of violence and radical resistance. Her dissertation considers the intersection of performance art, biopolitics, and technologies of surveillance in the 1960s and 1970s in the US and abroad through artists’ deployment of guerrilla tactics. She received her PhD at Northwestern University in the department of Art History.

Matt Motep Woods won “Best of Show” awards for his figurative painting style from Art Pace while in Texas. Then he moved to Chicago to manage a service-learning program initiative with 6th through 8th graders. This quickly led to a range of partnerships that allowed him to cultivate a teaching style that synthesized technology, popular education, and contemporary art with both grassroots organizations and public institutions.

In his personal work, aside from self-producing two albums (Savage Journey and Orfeus Uprising), Matt created and curated one of the flagship events at the start of a second wave of underground black artists and musicians. The Soul Sessions (started in his loft downtown) influenced, nurtured, and celebrated a cluster of Chicago creatives that are now internationally recognized.