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WORKS BY: Exhibition Reception

Exhibition Opening

WORKS BY: Exhibition Reception

This event celebrates an exhibition featuring works by four Chicago-based artists who share an interest in the many meanings of “labor.”

How much work does it take to make art seem effortless? Works By attempts to answer this question by bringing together four Chicago-based artists who share an interest in the many meanings of “labor.” The centerpiece of the exhibition is a floor drawing by Tony Lewis, performatively produced on site starting May 1. A sculpture by Devin T. Mays features pallets collected during his wanderings around Chicago’s South Side. Erased: (Unrelated), a 2012 photograph by Bethany Collins, captures a cloud of chalk dust released into a black void—the remnants of the word “unrelated” repeatedly written on a blackboard and then erased. A large photo by Ellen Rothenberg depicts a work boot; another captures a giant lump of crumpled paper that was once a Barbara Kruger mural. The fruits of these artists’ labors will be on view from May 1 (International Workers’ Day) through July 14 (Bastille Day)—two dates that commemorate landmark events in the history of the working class.

Neubauer Collegium

This event celebrates an exhibition featuring works by four Chicago-based artists who share an interest in the many meanings of “labor.”

Register

Preview: Projections of Panafrica

Film Screening

Preview: Projections of Panafrica

This event includes a screening of Sarah Maldoror's short film Monangambééé (1968) and a listening session with DJ Rae Chardonnay.

This event, organized as part of the Pan-Africa research project at the Neubauer Collegium, inaugurates a citywide constellation of exhibitions and events that explore Pan-Africanism in association with the Art Institute of Chicago exhibition Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica. Opening in December 2024, this major exhibition is the first to survey modern and contemporary cultural activity through an expressly Pan-Africanist lens. Pan-Africanism generally evokes political action: calls for equality, self-determination, and solidarity among Black peoples worldwide. Art and culture have often been given a secondary role. Yet since its articulation in the early 20th century, Pan-Africanism has always involved rich practices of aesthetic experimentation and cultural representation. These practices continue to shape Pan-African political projects in the present.The event will begin with a screening of Monangambééé (1968), the début film by Sarah Maldoror (1929–2020), introduced by members of the Project a Black Planet curatorial team. A listening session with DJ Rae Chardonnay will explore local connections to the film, which includes music by the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and show how Pan-Africanist cultural production has emerged from Chicago and continues to circulate in this city. A discussion and reception will follow.

About the Film

Monangambééé (1968, Sarah Maldoror, 18 mins.)
Filmed in Algeria, conceived by a French filmmaker with roots in Guadeloupe and training from the Soviet Union, and centered on Portuguese torture tactics in Angola, Monangambééé epitomizes the imagination of a Black Planet forged by scrambling colonialist geographies. The title (“White Death!”) was a warning from the days of enslavement repurposed by Angolan activists as a rallying cry. This is the first film by Maldoror, a Parisian theater director turned cinema auteur, who took her art name from the proto-Surrealist classic The Songs of Maldoror, and used free-jazz experiments by the Art Ensemble of Chicago as the soundtrack to this short-form paean to revolutionary action. As Maldoror sharply proclaimed, “I feel at home wherever I am. I am from everywhere and from nowhere.”

Presented by the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society in partnership with the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Humanities Festival, and Arts + Public Life.

Green Line Performing Arts Center

This event includes a screening of Sarah Maldoror's short film Monangambééé (1968) and a listening session with DJ Rae Chardonnay.

Register