we like small things v.4 @ Filter Space

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we like small things v.4 @ Filter Space

August 10th, 2021 by fstop

we like small things v.4
September 24th – October 30th, 2021

Festival Reception: September 24th | 6 – 9 PM

“How do we memorialize an event that is still ongoing?” ―Christina Sharpe

“Despite our fatigue, we find ourselves in what feels like a never-ending cycle of decay and crisis as we continue to navigate perhaps the most significantly deadly pandemic since the Spanish Flu of 1918, which lasted three years. As artists and as humans, we are constantly searching for meaning to our finite existence and, in moments of great uncertainty, the search for meaning seems even more important.

All of the artists included in this year’s we like small things exhibition seem to echo the above sentiment posed by author Christina Sharpe, who sees the past as a position which we inhabit at all times.

That is to say, what is past isn’t restricted to the past, that the past follows us into the present and the future, omniscient in the way we perceive deities to be omniscient. How do we make sense of how our lives have shifted in the last eighteen months? How do we parse through the loss of life? How do we, as artists, illustrate what it means for our species to survive mass death, mass hysteria, and potential impending disaster? We reach towards our past, we become archeologists, historians, and researchers as we unearth how those who came before found ways to give their lives — our collective existence — meaning in times of existential restructuring.

I found a common pattern amongst all the artists collected here: a majority used alternative photographic processes invented over a century ago to document their modern memories of this moment, from cyanotype prints, to collages of family heirloom photos and cut outs of images from magazines printed generations ago, to the ubiquitous but almost extinct technology of the instant polaroid print, these artists are in conversation with our past, helping us to see our present and future, clearly.”
—Oriana Koren

Amber J. Anderson
Constance Brinkley
Joan Lobis Brown
Derrick Burbul
Mike Callaghan
Michael Cordisco
Karla Nohely Salcedo Diaz
Michael Joseph
Diana Kelley
Prince Lang
Julie Lee
Nadine Levin
Donna Levreault
Kevin E Lyle
Jennifer Marion
Kathryn Morrison & Tyler Anthony
Elizabeth Pineda
Olivia Phare
Robert Rodriguez-Lawson
Rebecca Sittler
Traer Scott
Annmarie Suglio
Dawn Surratt
Jade Thiraswas
Ryan Van Der Hout
Anne Vetter
David Wong
Fengzhao Xu

Filter Space | 1821 W. Hubbard St., Suite 207

Location: Chicago, Illinois, United States Type: Exhibition

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