Chicago Artists Coalition proudly presents Vanishing Point, a two-person exhibition by 2023-24 HATCH Residents Nicole Leung and Ruby Que, curated by Kat Bawden.

I am wondering if Nicole Leung and Ruby Que have placed us in a cave or a tunnel. Are we
confined to this darkness, or are we passing from one state of existence to another, guided by
flickering light?

Sudden loss and traumatic grief bisects one’s life time into a “before” irrevocably split from the
present. In Vanishing Point, Ruby and Nicole invite us to the moment of bisection: the slow,
surreal, floating time when your life has suddenly changed dramatically and you do not yet know how you will continue to live.

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Ruby’s projected video vignettes are the noticings of someone who is reemerging from a
nightmare. An inner-ear condition called Labyrinthitis – a condition as poetic as it is severe – left Ruby with months of debilitating vertigo, unable to do anything but watch the light shift in their room. In physical therapy, Ruby had to re-learn how to walk, how to experience balance. As they began to heal and move through the world again, the act of seeing became imbued with the deepest tenderness. These videos were all shot on their cell phone, and are one minute in length – the length of time of Ruby’s physical therapy exercises. These videos are markers of both loss and survival, a life lived minute-by-minute.

In Nicole’s ongoing participatory performance, we are putting together a puzzle. We are given the pieces, but they do not match the image on the box. What happens when the rules of our life have changed, when our internal and external orientations no longer guide as they used to? Nicole’s performance shows us togetherness in absence. Even without Nicole’s physical presence, their performance continues through you. Across space and time their hands and your hands move to try and set the puzzle together without a guide. Each person’s efforts build on the resonances left by the person before them.

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On one podium, encased in glass, is an empty and unopened fortune cookie wrapper. This real
object was encountered by Ruby in the throes of Labyrinthitis, when they were unsure whether
they would heal. And there it was – an empty fortune, not even offering a fake hope to cling to.

In Vanishing Point, Ruby and Nicole hold on to hope like a tiny lit match, burning and fragile,
wrapping their hands gently around it. You can see it flicker between their fingers, like the glow
from inside a cave. Hope held quietly, its presence unannounced, protected like a secret. There is hope, without a hopeful narrative.

As we move through this exhibition, we touch Nicole’s puzzle pieces, interacting with hands we’ll never see. Ruby’s flickering light touches our body and the bodies of people we’ll never see. There is the constant dance of presence and absence. Submergence into pain, and
reemergence into light. Are we in a cave or a tunnel? Are we confined, or are we passing from
one state of existence to another?

- Kat Bawden

Nicole Leung approaches their practice with a fascination for adaptation, particularly in how we (consciously or unconsciously) choose to internalize, process, and interact with our surroundings. Through their process of collecting, accumulating, and arranging neglected objects, Leung takes an interest in the habits we adopt and the delusions we construct to feel safe amidst irrepressible fear and uncertainty.

Ruby Que is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus on site-specific intervention and expanded cinema performance. In their work they open portals and create hauntings. Many projects grapple with absence: the missing person, the deserted land, the obsolete media, the traumatic memory. Drawing on their lived experience as a queer, itinerant immigrant, they meditate on yearning and find home in transit. They have exhibited and performed at Kavi Gupta, Roman Susan, Comfort Station (Chicago, IL), Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art (Ithaca, NY), Coco Hunday (Tampa, FL), SOLOS (Karlsruhe, Germany) and elsewhere. They have been awarded residencies at Vermont Studio Center, ACRE, and Ellis-Beauregard Foundation. Their work has been featured in The Chicago Reader, Performance Review Journal, and Sixty Inches from Center; Newcity Magazine named them a 2023 Breakout Artist. Que holds an MFA in Film, Video, New Media and Animation from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in Comparative Literature from Cornell University.

Kat Bawden is an artist, educator, and curator in Chicago whose work explores and mediates relationships between the body, memory, and the self. Kat holds an MFA in Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and runs Murmuration, an exhibition space, publisher, and residency.

The opening reception will be on September 6 from 5-8pm.

Image: Composite image of Puzzle Piece (2024) by Nicole Leung and Closer (2024) by Ruby Que