Andres L. Hernandez Carlos Salazar-Lermont Hai-Wen Lin Jasjyot Singh Hans Jay Heikes Lola Ayisha Ogbara Monika Plioplyte Norman Teague
The layers depicting the human and the natural interactions demonstrate how people perceive, use, and impact the environment, spanning basic survival and economic needs as well as deep psychological, cultural, and systemic connections. Humans and nature share a deep bond, but it is unequal. Humans are entirely dependent on the natural world for their survival; however, the natural world as a whole does not require humans to persist. Nevertheless, human activities now influence the health and vitality of natural ecosystems. The exhibition Human-Nature brings together various movements, sounds, compositions, and explorations of synthetic and organic materials, providing multiple ways to engage with an imaginative world of relationships. The exhibition features diverse creative practices that connect inner perceptions with external environments.
Andres L. Hernandez is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary practitioner whose work draws forward the latent potential of words, spaces, sounds, and movement to elicit liberatory ways of being. He explores the embedded attitudes, histories, policies, and systems of power within and beyond our world(s) as a method of imagining and existing otherwise. https://andreslhernandez.com/
Carlos Salazar-Lermont is a Venezuelan multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans performance art, video, photography, installation, and print media. Central to his work is an exploration of performativity and socially engaged art, with a particular focus on the complexities of Post-colonial identity and cultural heritage in Latin America. https://carlossalazarlermont.com/
Hai-Wen Lin is an artist from Elk Grove, California, currently working somewhere beneath the sky. Their work addresses autobiographical narrative and constructions of the body, often moving through metaphor, etymology, sunlight, wind, and the way time passes perfectly when you are out walking on a beautiful day in your favorite dress. https://www.haiwenlin.com/
Jasjyot Singh Hans is an illustrator unendingly inspired by an explosive neon mix of fashion, music and pop culture. He has a constant regard for things past and a voracity for all that is current. His work chronicles around themes of body image, sexuality and self love. https://www.jasjyotjasjyot.com/
Jay Heikes examines themes of evolution and regeneration, stasis and corrosion, entropy and transformation. Acknowledging that there are no truly new ideas to be had, Heikes turns to what has already been; his practice is in a continual state of borrowing, transposing, appropriating, and reinterpreting old ideas and forms and narratives using a kaleidoscopic array of media, remaining perpetually open to transformation within his work and within himself. https://marianneboeskygallery.com/artists/61-jay-heikes/biography/
Lola Ayisha Ogbara is a Nigerian-American artist and curator from Chicago, Illinois. Ogbara explores haptic (sub)conscious frameworks, utilizing the body form, as well as its absence, to contemplate the complexities of emotion, belonging, looking/seeing, labor, time, and space through sculpture, installations, time-based media, and curatorial endeavors. https://lolaogbara.com/
Monika Plioplyte is a Lithuanian artist who uses narrative collages that combine printed and cut paper, drawings, photographs, and other mixed media to form a pictorial interlanguage grounded in nature, folk symbolism, and the body. She is interested in myth as encoded knowledge, particularly as it relates to our connection to the earth, spiritual beliefs, and the uncanny. https://www.monikaplioplyte.com/
Norman Teague is a Chicago-based designer and educator focused on projects and pedagogy that address the systematic complexity of urbanism and the culture of communities—specializing in custom furniture that delivers a personal touch to a specific user with unique aesthetic detail. Teague's past projects have included consumer products, public sculpture, performances, and specially designed retail spaces. https://www.normanteaguedesignstudios.com/
