@a.galue

I’ve been thinking a lot about what will come next (after COVID). These are weird times. I think COVID will make us aware of the others in relation to our selves. We wake up, work, sleep, have a couple of beers on the weekend, and share a little with our loved ones every once in a while. 

Even in the middle of all of this, I was able to create meaningful connections with other people. Galleries, artist-run spaces, and museums are empty. It’s you against the other person and the artwork. In that situation, really good conversations thrived between the people in the space, the art, and me. Finally, I’m making friends in Chicago. 

Based on these events I decided to ask the ones I don’t know, how are they? Are they ok? That’s how this project starts...in the need to talk to the other, to recognize them, to befriend them. 

Venezuelan, b. 1994, Chicago Based
BFA at University of Los Andes

Alonso Galué is a multidisciplinary artist whose experimental use of traditional painting and sculpture articulates speeches on labor, existential crisis, and totalitarianism. Pulitzer Prize winner Jerry Saltz commented on Instagram that Galue’s work is “a strong voice of the future.”

@dear.anahi

During these trying times it’s nice to get away for a minute and daydream.

I am currently a senior at Saint Xavier University, pursuing a degree in Studio Art and a minor in Graphic Design. I enjoy experimenting with different mediums however, my passion is Photography. I spend most of my time creating portraits/self- portraits, street photography, and conceptual photography.

Hamsen Peeler |  @hammyjam

10 Aug 20

Chicago weeps instead
and her sky sickens greener-
    5 years in her arms
and a twister finally caught up
from tornado alley.
The trees cling to the leaves
Being whipped away from them.
I succumb
to peril  
•
My employment of 5 years
gently tugged from my hands
in sleep-
The list of goals on my fridge,
scrawled in January, before
the implosion, includes
-find new career path.
It grins in manifestation.
Time to go  

•

Glass fragments coat the Mag Mile,
a glittering snow.
A storm, preventable by
abstaining from murder,
or a sliver of accountability.
Or even just
Giving a shit about those
with weighted collars,
Gasping
Riotous breaths

echoing demands
heard only by those
whose ears were already to the
ground

in unison:
Are You Ready
to Start Listening??

As soon as quarantine hit, I started doing yoga to make sure I was moving my body every day. I set a goal to be able to do a headstand, and after a couple months I could. I drew pieces of that pose, and then what I hope for the future: overthrowing gravity and all the other bullsh*t systems that work together to hold our community down.

_______________

Hamsen Peeler makes to-do lists in Chicago everyday, and usually completes them. They write poetry, make visual art, and meticulously look for ways to improve their surroundings (hence the lists). Sometimes this method is effective, other times not so much (but they’re still hopeful and doing their best).

@akira.portraits | akira-portraits.com

My photos tell the story of People tired and frustrated with the way the world is. My work tells the story of People wanting change in the world despite the risks. People are willing to take risks for their liberation. 

Akira is an Undocumented artist and farmer from Chicago. Work focuses on the decolonization of the Americas through the mobilization of native youths.

 @redflags.everywhere | andreacardinal.com

AND THEN:
WE WERE TEARGASSED
We left our self-imposed quarantine to attend a Community Solidarity Response Network event downtown Toledo, OH on May 30th, 2020. We assembled at the police headquarters and when the permit and programming were up, we marched in the streets around the block. The surge of joy that we were collectively creating was punctured by wooden bullets that met us at the corner. Running away from the bullets at our backs, my family and I were shot with teargas canisters from our right—without warning, while we were on the sidewalk, fleeing.

I carried this Red Flag at the march—its inaugural use—partly as a warning about the fascist terror that up until that point, I had been passively observing. I also use the flag pole as a cane to help with balance, which I struggle with due to physical disabilities and pain.

After being teargassed, we poured water on this fabric to wipe our faces and hands. The chemical smell still lingers.

The question that this show asks about "what happens next?" is exactly what my project, Red Flags Everywhere is about. It is an online, crowd-sourced interactive project based on the writings of Hannah Arendt and the recognition of fascism in America today. I have instructional videos for how to make different kinds of red flags from small, hand-held flags, to house flags, and oversize banners.

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”

“True goal of totalitarian propaganda is not persuasion, but organization of the polity. ... What convinces masses are not facts, and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system of which they are presumably part.”
— Hannah Arendt

Every time that something happens that feels wrong—for all the big and small injustices—I ask that you make a red flag. Any time something happens with our government, with the police, in your community, even with your friends and family, that feels like it's 'off', I ask that you manifest that feeling you have tangibly. Note the inconsistencies of the system.

Collaborator, accomplice, artist, designer, & educator. Andrea Cardinal is Assistant Professor of Design at Bowling Green State University and Co-Director of Talking Dolls Studio in Detroit. MFA in 2D Design at Cranbrook Academy of Art, BFA Graphic Design and BA History of Art from the University of Michigan.

@andreakaspryk | andreakaspryk.com

At a group life drawing session, I was pleasantly surprised to see gender minority community members pose together. I hope to see more such examples of broadening our sense of community and art in a post-pandemic world. 

_______________

Most of my paintings, drawings and prints tell a story, and in the art world these are called narrative paintings. My past interest and pursuit of writing and studying literature informs my desire to tell a story through images. Invariably, though not always, I tell my own personal story as a transgender person through my art.

This scene represents the frustrating struggle that I as a transgender person experienced in trying to adhere to gender cultural conventions of masculine or feminine appearance and behavior. 

For me this caused frustration because the prevailing system of gender expression and appearance is polarized, promoting an either/or model of identity, which I find (and likely most people) find limiting, uncomfortable, and which they do not align with. 

In the painting, the yin-yang ball held by the squatting figure represents a cultural model of gender balance and calm that can prove harmful and elusive; hence, it is being cast down into the maw of the gender polarizing monster, which would otherwise consume, destroying the person who cannot conform to its cultural model of gender. 

@andrew_the_rose_artist

A focus on Beauty during these chaotic times. In the worst of times, it is a time of artists. We must make and give a reason for people to move forward.

Often hope and faith go hand in hand.  “To hope is to have faith in the future.”

_______________

I am an artist who often applies more Traditional methods to his Art. My subject matters are often nature and life itself. I come from a simpler background in the countryside of Maryland. This has given me a sense of respect for the world around us.

@anneasha | anneasha.online

My fear of the post-quarantine world, is that our interactions and self-image will be forever morphed. We’ve gotten so used to masked faces (eyes only), interacting through screens, and avoiding strangers in the past few months. How can we view ourselves in this void?I hope these impulses can be reversed once we return to some kind of normalcy. Online, I’ve seen many posts claiming that ‘things will never go back to normal.’ I don’t fully believe that, as our traditional structures are extremely resistant to change. But, I do have hope that things can go back to a better normal. Normal has always failed so many anyways.

_______________

Anneasha Hogan is a Chicago-based artist. She graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2017 with a BFA in studio arts.

@baysanyuksel | baysanyuksel.com

I’m imagining a better world with understanding, a better communication, respect and compassion. This work shows that we are the ones who would realize that world. There is only one world for us to live in and it is in here; wherever we are.

_______________

Baysan Yüksel completed her master’s degree in Painting at Marmara University in 2010. She has exhibited her works in Turkey and abroad such as New York, Bristol, Amsterdam, Berlin and Barcelona. Yüksel produces works in multidisciplinary areas such as drawing, collage, artist books, video, installation, writing and she illustrates books.

@benformation

This work represents one of the huge problems of our time - plastic pollution in the oceans. It also represents a hopeful solution. Ben has been collecting discarded objects since 2014 and recycling them and/or making art out of them. These items were gathered in 2019 in the beach city of Marina del Rey, near the water’s edge. The piece shows the small colorful plastic items He documents his environmental work on Instagram. Ben has saved thousands and thousands of items from being washed into the oceans. He has a bright vision of the future in which people no longer pollute, the carbon is all captured, and trees cover the planet. He wants a world where humans know what to do to save the earth and they do it. He is taking action by picking up the trash himself, promoting awareness of the problem through his art and his Instagram, and teaching about all things environmental to “the younger generation” as a volunteer teacher at a local summer camp.

_______________

Ben Novak is a 22 year old artist and environmentalist on the Autism Spectrum. He has been gathering discarded items around his city of Los Angeles, and on his travels, since 2014. He creates art from many of the items, and recycles the rest.

@betsyarnfield

The way forward for me changed drastically when I found out I had a heart condition and that morphed into needing an emergency pacemaker. I’m a nurse too, I thought this piece was going to be more the way nursing goes into Covid than how *I* go into the next phase. Like me, it has morphed into where I was and how I get out.

_______________

I'm a photographer, animal lover, horse trainer with a bent sense of humor and a semi functional body. I see the world a little bit sideways.

@_bretttaylor
bretttaylorprints.com

The body, as object, exists in a constant state of becoming. A process of uninterrupted bodybuilding by which a person orders and reorders the self, responding to resistance. Negotiations with the fluctuating spatial conditions, the body is forced to resist the environmental restrictions in an effort to grow beyond them. This stimulus for physical change is only obstructed by the will of the mind. The potential self is never realized exasperated by the failure to achieve maximum capacity. Beings strive to identify the physical boundaries that define them only to identify new ones that confine them. Growth centered around inadequacies seeks failure to strive for infinite improvement. The tension between the interior and exterior being leaves the body in a developmental state, never quite complete.

_______________

Brett Taylor is an artist and art educator from South Florida. He earned his BFA from the University of Florida and is currently pursuing his MFA at The Ohio State University. Taylor’s transdisciplinary practice investigates the continuous construction of the self through lenses of queerness, masculinity, and ability.

Chelcie S Porter is a black female photographer traveling the world with a goal of living well and telling the stories of women and documenting her transitions along the way.

@andrefor40th

Andre Vasquez is a father, husband, community organizer, former rapper, and current Alderman of the 40th Ward in Chicago.

@kennethandreys | kennethandreys.com

When I started this project, it was just to correspond with family and friends in an amusing way that addressed the current global situation. Because I wanted to send a personal message to each recipient, I decided that a postcard would be ideal to use for this project; not to mention I would design it to my own specifications. 

There is something magical about the written word and the intimacy that it conveys; let’s not forget as well the nostalgia because who really corresponds like this anymore? Over time the project has grown from a correspondence for a handful of people, to a printed postcard sent to now over 100 recipients in 12 states and 9 countries. In the end I hope I was able to give everyone a smile, a challenge, and a reminder that even in a global pandemic we will prevail.

_______________

Kenneth Andreys is a visual artist located in Chicago, Illinois. With a BA, Columbia College Chicago and an MFA, Academy of Art University, San Francisco. Kenneth is known for his eclectic approach to Art & Design; which has taken him to his current endeavor simply known as PROJECT 2.

@flash_abc
artisticbombingcrew.com

My hope is that my work inspires others to reach for their full potential. I created art at a young age, then stopprd. I felt I had become a productive member of society yet always felt the need to do more. 

I want my art to look as if a graffiti artist did it, because that’s where I started.

My hope after the virus it for a more pleasant world. The hate that we see now is only temporary. It will be our job as community builders to remember all that was lost, and to remember everyone’s dreams and inspiration before 2020.  

We as artists can do It because of our passion for life. I was born in 1967, the summer of love. I feel passionate to work with others who are willing to do it in the name of peace and harmony.

Born in Humboldt Park and raised in Logan Square. Gabriel “FLASH” Carrasquillo JR. has lived in Logan Square since 1971. In 1982 he joined a one of the first Graffiti Crews in Chicago and Logan Square. He is known not only for documenting his own crew, but other crews around the city. He has a vast collection of 80’s pictures that have been used in publications such as the Fly Paper and Roger Gastons History of American Graffiti. ABC has been documented as one of the first crews to paint on the Blue Line in order to bring art to the masses.

@bastnoir | Jcherna.com

Dark vision of the current state of affairs. A metaphoric transformation.

_______________

I grew up in Chicago, studied at Columbia College Chicago and SAIC. Currently living in New Orleans. I am interested in the feminine perspective in history and mythology.

@juancarlosperez927
juan-carlosperez.com

In my art investigation, I challenge how perspectives today continue to be shaped by a past colonial rule: A blueprint of laws that have created and normalized a culture or narrative built to dominate and create systems of power that have led to today’s social & class divides and issues that have historically disenfranchised communities of color. Perspectives determined to own through aggression and dominance. The same social/racial issues that incoming immigrants and new generations of Mexicanos still face today.

We are in a time and history where, we have found inner-strength rooted in our culture, ethnicity and indigenous-ancestry. What I hope to see happening next is how we utilize the tools and resources passed on to us and how we will manifest, fight and change a structure built to dominate us.

_______________

Juan-Carlos Perez was born in Juarez, Chihuahua Mexico and raised in California. He received a degree in Fine Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been on exhibit throughout the United States and most recently at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago.

@streetartistjr | @buchen.kate

We met on February 7th in Chicago, in an Artist friend’s studio. We spent that week end together, visiting the Art Institute and Shed Aquarium. Kate lives in Florida and is a collage artist and painter. I live in Evanston and collect Art and paint.

Kate sent many collage post cards, to me during this time, along with talking an hour every day on the phone and texting.

Kate returned to Chicago, in Early March, and stayed with me for ten days. As with all Long-distance relationships, we were planning to continuing to fly back and forth. Then on March 17th, the world started to change, Covid 19 started to shut down the World. 

We talked every day on the phone for hours and continued to plan our future together.

We finally planned on meeting again in early June. Kate booked a flight, she was told they were practicing safe distancing, when she got on the plane it was full, she then felt unsafe and got off the plane.  I drove down to Florida in mid- July to pick her up, and she came back to Chicago with me. Covid has made times difficult. Long distance relationships are difficult, and most people keep telling us to find someone where you live, but we continue on.

While the future is always uncertain, we still Love each other, and need Hope.  This collaborative piece is one way for us as a couple to have hope for a future together. I created a studio space for Kate in my home, where in the future, we will hopefully be collaborating on many other pieces of Art. Hopefully when Agitator puts the show up in the Gallery for public viewing, Kate will be there to meet everyone and see all the work in person.

The piece we collaborated on is of Kate, at Evanston Hospital. She is better now, and recovered, I was by her side during this. The piece is a photo I took and over-painted, Kate added the Angels.

Artist Kate Buchen Studied painting at RSID and graduated from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. Her work has been shown in Chicago, recently she has been creating collage postcards which she sells and sends out to friends using vintage magazine photos. Junad Rizki collects Art and paints for fun. He graduated in Architecture and Structural Engineering, from the University of Michigan.

leahbusby.com

My work is deeply personal, and most of it was made during quarantine and while going through a personal crisis. These pieces were made after revisiting notes I took while reading literature, including Susan Sontag’s In America and George Eliot’s Middlemarch. The work is about my hopes, dreams, and fears about the future and myself.

Leah Busby was born in Michigan in 1987. She worked as a civil rights lawyer for 8 years before developing her art practice. Leah will be starting a master’s degree in folklore this fall at Berkeley. She currently lives in Los Angeles.

@lesliehardieart

The incompetence and arrogance displayed in the current administration’s handling of the pandemic (among other things) shows we need more humane, progressive, inclusive leadership.

I thought I would envision a future United States that would elect a woman as both president and vice president. Although I don’t believe women are morally superior to men, I do believe because of the socialization of both sexes, women have to be more careful and circumspect than men do-- women of color even more so than white women. I think those acquired skills of women will be beneficial in our future leaders.

Hopefully, when the next pandemic inevitably occurs, our leaders then will be more responsible and humane than our leadership has been during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

_______________

The process of art itself fascinates me. I am motivated to create something more than surface art, to do work that withstands multiple viewings and interpretations. Painting can be about revelation: revealing the artist’s mind, the hidden world of the subject, the raw, the veiled, the unspoken. In my figurative work, I am interested in my subject’s complexities and vulnerabilities; in what causes people to behave the way they do; in the myriad ways people interact with each other; and in the subtle but unavoidable demands of functioning—both acceptably and unacceptably— in one’s society.

@itsmonicatrinidad | monicatrinidad.com

Both of these illustrations were created as “rapid responses” at the start of the pandemic. We Keep Each Other Safe speaks to the inspiring acts of kindness and brilliance that community members extended towards each other and especially immunocompromised and elderly folks. Free Them All was a call to remember women, elderly folks, and survivors of DV locked up when we talk about prisons and COVID-19.

Monica Trinidad is a queer Latinx artist and organizer in Chicago. She is the co- founder of For the People Artists Collective, Brown and Proud Press, and the People’s Response Team. She is currently an emerging Justseeds Artists Cooperative member.

@uglybitchfilms
insidioustudios.bigcartel.com

This piece relates to the paranoia and anxiety that many people, myself included, felt during the pandemic. I wanted to portray the overwhelming emotions at the beginning of the pandemic, in which almost everyone was plagued with worry and fear about what the virus would do to us in the future. Additionally, I wanted to portray the true lifestyles of people at home. How many people turned to alcohol and substance abuse during quarantine.

The reality around the woman fades and she herself fades into a different dimension (the world we live in now).

_______________

I’m a 22 year old artist. I dabble in a lot of mediums, film and photography are my favorite. I work on music video on the side. I’m also a designer for Insidious Studios!

@lilcactusbabies | nicolemgonzalez.net

Plants and animals, these are things that are precious and beautiful aspects of life that I cherish. Never before have I had such appreciation for the beauty in this world then when I am kept from enjoying even the smallest of simplicities during quarantine.The magnificence of an avocado to the beauty of a bunch of roses from the garden. Monstera, papaya, Orchid Cactus when I’m daydreaming of walks in Hawaii that seem like a lifetime ago. Will normal life ever be again? Deep in thought in conversation with myself in silence. Space lobsters, whales, snails, bridging the physical and non physical worlds. Feelings and thoughts that need to be expressed in visual form. Connection with our humanity in a time when everything is uncertain, missing our loved ones, moments of complete loneliness and isolation. Looking for the beauty in this life where I can find it.

Nicole is a San Francisco Bay Area Native. Her lifelong love of plants and nature is translated into works of art by use of rich color, organic shapes and movement. Her paintings often feature cacti, as a symbol of cultural influence and her heritage. Nicole is currently exploring the notion that there is oneness in nature, life experience, and self discovery. All her artwork is created from within herself, and her heart. To share these experiences with her audience is her goal.

During quarantine we all want to be close to our loved ones. I hope for the well being of my loved one, as we are unable to reach to each other like we did before the pandemic. I fear each time he goes to work, even though he wears a mask. The kind of world I want is where everyone does not have to be afraid for the health of the people we cherish each time they go outside. We must come together and take care of one another as one, big family in order to ensure our future. 

_______________

I am now a sophomore as a Studio Art Major at SXU. I am nineteen years old and have always loved to draw. I want to become an Art Director in the future to continue my passion. Drawing is what makes me feel alive and it always has. It flows throughout my core.

Amanda Dee | @spookyghostwriter | amandadee.work

my resilience tat

will tap-dance over graves
it will
smile, at least, all teeth
a disco ball of bone under which
the others will boogie
down
the sleeve

on my body there will be places,
a floating garden, family album,
blankies wrapped around my arms
where muscles will grow from
taking more weight on
still
old ones continue weighing (memory’s a gravity, you know)
so I’ll get swole somewhere new
in response: to all that’s hurting

the old places will wrinkle with
the smile lines
the danse macabre
will slow
but imagine, just imagine
what it’ll feel like
to be touched
for hours
by
a stranger
breathing the same air in
a much too tiny room

_______________

This poem sprung from the longing to be in a future when we can be intimate with strangers without anxiety, when people and art can be physically close in ways they once were. This poem also speaks to the theme of art as resilience and to the tradition of art as resistance.

_______________

Amanda Dee is a multimedia storyteller fixed on Midwestern identities and relationships to place. She is a writer at Sixty Inches from Center and the former editor-in-chief of Dayton City Paper.

@ozz_works

When you’re isolated at home, you’re presented with an opportunity to better yourself and analyze your well being. I took this opportunity to think about those close to me. I can openly say I love my friends and family. This is something I’ve struggled to say. I photograph the rawness of my life as I’m documenting my encounters with my loved ones. I’ve learned to not be ashamed of where I come from. I may not live in the safest neighbourhood, but it’s a part of me and I’ll never forget my roots. From a contemporary photographer named Vuhlandes, I’ve learned not everything is sunshine and rainbows. My artwork can reflect this.

My name is Osbaldo, but I go by Ozzy. I’m a Film Photographer from Chicago Lawn. Over the past 4 years I’ve learned to photograph, scan, and develop my own film. I photograph the rawness of my reality to show people a world they’re not used to seeing.

@paloma_shaloma_xicago |
paloma@stroboscopia.com

I believe there is a future where we will have a whole new way of communicating and subsequently we will let go of conflicts based on old systems of thought and communication. In my work I am striving to abandon figurative signifiers and searching for new meaning through color and form.

B. 1964, XALAPA, MEXICO
Paloma Trecka is an artist and educator based in Chicago. She studied Montreal and has a BFA from Concordia University.Her collage-based work explores abstraction in both the flat medium of collage and through time-based media.

@ramintakloo

My photos are a depiction of what happens next, literally. I’ve seen dictatorships spring up in countries that were once democracies or were on their ways to become one. I’m not optimistic about the future of America, and my photos aim to capture my anxiety about the future of this nation.

I was born in Iran. My artistic background is in Persian calligraphy, but I also paint and take photos. In my day job I’m a professor at UIC. I had a one day show at Agitator last October.

Jae Green | threelegged.wixsite.com/jae-green

Operators Are Standing By

It was the 70’s. Everything was crazy for a bit in the 60’s with Vietnam and the protests, but everything came together later. Her grandmother was fifty-five and still turned heads. She worshipped Jackie O. and she was never outside without a giant pair of shades perched on her wide, pretty nose.

“Black don’t crack, but it does bend.”

And Granny would pluck a pair of Foster Grant’s from a chipped bowl that she kept by the door. By the time she was 80, Granny’s neck had loosened like a schoolboy’s tie but her eyes were still lineless, tilted almonds, dark and devastatingly direct. She wondered what granny would think if she could see how Lisa protected herself. A fleece lining over the undergarments, that day’s clothing, a workman’s boilersuit zipped to the neck, a muslin cloth pinned under the chin, rubber boots buckled at the knee, gauntlets, tight cap, a mask with a color-changing filter and of course smoked eye coverings so much like Granny’s gradient sunglasses. Only Lisa fretted about her retinas instead of wrinkles. With everything who could tell if she was 17 or the 75 she actually was. After she returned home the entire process would be reversed, the clothing bagged for decontamination and a shower with water made undrinkable in large amounts by the chemical that the government added to kill the virus.

She checked for her stipend. it was impossible to live without them.Everyone got some kind of stipend, supplement or grant. Sometimes three or four of different types, one for being old, or hazzard work or inheritances accessible after years of legal sparring. Lisa got the standard amount for being over 60, but there was a second envelope because twice a week she taught a large group of children how to draw in a classroom on the nearly empty U of C campus. Rich kids with two immune parents. Instead of cobbled together pieces of ppe there was an issued uniform of yellow. Yellow until they were just a slick group of black-eyed canaries perched on their chairs, heads tilted.

She would call through her mask,“What should we draw today, children?” And they would answer back loud and indecipherable and varied.

She never knew what they said and she would just draw what she wanted, as long as it wasn’t from less than five lessons ago. Some of the kids would clap and nod. Some would slump and fold their arms. It didn’t matter if a cat or a dog was on the screen.

And of course sometimes she begged. If the weather was good and the stores full she earned a few cheaters in a week. A ‘cheater’ was what they called the last tangible money issued by the government twenty years after the pandemic. They were larger than a quarter, kinda like the Kennedy coins they had when she was a kid. They called them cheaters because President Trump was the effigy. And because of software (or human) error 90% of the coins had Donald’s face on BOTH sides. Heads I win. Heads you lose. They bent easily and some shopkeepers would toss them back to you like you had tried to pay with a used condom. Government machines would take them though and a government machine was where she was headed. The bus would take hours to get there. But, the hours would give her time to prepare, to make the most of her time and the five warped coins in her pocket.

Three years into the pandemic a quiet South Korean scientist came forward with an invention. Really two inventions that he had married together in his parent’s tiny apartment after he was sent home from med school. Jang Seul Hyeok had listened to his father rattle and designed on his macbook. One part mapped the brain, sequencing neurons, reactions, speech, and memory, into an algorithm of a human subject. Nothing could hide from the thing. Not a first kiss, not a secret zucchini bread recipe.The other half of the machine was ergonomics. It worked by creating a hologram of ticks, smiles, blushes and laughs that could clone any human subject. Jang’s mother was the first transplant. 

When the hologram was presented to the public-critics noted the small scar across two knuckles and the way her nose wrinkled as she told The World, ‘I have not known you, but I have loved you.’ When things had gone from bad, to worse, to apocalyptic,
a scramble began to store as many people as possible. Robert DeNiro had volounteered from his hospital bed and his hologram was still very popular. Post-Covid kids fans of “Taxi Driver” got a kick from yelling “Yeah, I’m talking to you!”

DeNiro, The Dali Lama, Michelle Obama. Kim Kardashian was mute but users watched her take selfies of herself with a bulky 2020 phone. Eventually, more ordinary people entered the database. Teachers, doctors, a girl who sang a lovely version of “Umbrella”. Kevin had been one of the everyday folk and his immune clients had stared at each other over their masks in relief. Air high-fives and palms pressed together in namaste as they sat a careful six feet apart. That was decades ago. And while she had aged, (the neck, the neck is always the first to go) Kevin stayed the same. Tall, distinguished, steelhaired and slightly amused as she talked. The hologram therapist even drank hologram tea. Two bags. In fact as time passed and her weak eyes weakened more, the illusion became smoother, more seamless. Perhaps the machine was learning? Occasionally, there was a slight pause after a puzzling question or comment while the computer searched its storehouse for the proper response. The audible *click* that followed reminded her that Kevin and the world as it was was gone.

At the West Center there were twenty viewing stations. She preferred the last studio on the left. All the rooms, at all the locations were virtually the same-a cube about the size of an old fashioned peepshow booth. She supposed it was the same thing. Sitting alone, making yourself feel better, with people you didn’t know. Or who didn’t know you anymore.

She slipped her cheaters in the coinbox and panicked when machine spit one back, she worried that it would eat four and refuse to recognize the twisted, crooked thing as a dollar. A little bang to the side of the container settled its content and it accepted the final aluminium disk.

A buzz. A hum. A light-blue at the center and radiating out into a spectrum of lines and shadows. Finally Kevin was in front of her in full color and texture. She could see the nubs of fabric on what would have been called a Costco sweater, when Costco existed.

“Kevin!”

*click*

There was that pause as the code that stood for the life and soul of Kevin Morton synthesized. He seemed to recognize her.

“Lisa! How are you?! Are you ok? I was doing my best to treat you...to treat you all. You were one of my people. I’m so sorry. I got sick though and everything went to crap. I don’t remember that part well. I remember you and your art. I liked seeing your paintings. The public was getting excited about what you were doing. Are you still
making art Lisa? It would make me happy if you drew something!”

“I didn’t bring my supplies. And well, I came here to make a confession.” The hologram’s eyebrows drew together like knitting needles.

“Don’t get mad. I texted my ex-boyfriend....”

*CLICK!*

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Jae Green is a poet, second generation artist, mother and cancer survivor originally from the South side of Chicago.

@richard_medina_ 

Happy Squid is a collage-based piece installed behind a street-facing window of my parents’ home. The giant squid (Architeuthis dux) is one of the largest living organisms but has remained elusive to scientists until relatively recently. The first image of a giant squid in its natural habitat was taken in 2004, and there is still scant video evidence of the giant squid’s existence. The giant squid is thought to be solitary, living its entire life alone. I thought this was a nice parallel to our current global state of quarantine.

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Richard Medina is an artist, curator, and filmmaker based in Chicago, IL. He has exhibited at Gallery 400, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Project 1612, The Condo Association, and Roman Susan, among others. In 2016 Richard was awarded the Jeffrey Ahn, Jr. Fellowship. He serves on the board of directors for the nonprofit organization Terrain Exhibitions, and was the Director of the Terrain Biennial 2019. He is currently seeking his BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2021).

Snežana Žabić

What Did You Write on 3/24/20 in Chicago?

I wrote oatmeal in the morning, rolled oats, raspberries, and raw hemp seed. I wrote a cup of loose-leaf black tea imported from Russia while my oatmeal bowl cooled, Royal Tea Czar Nicolas II, the box said, the same emperor who ordered pogroms (the box omitted that part). His empire fell one March day, but people never learn. I wrote my red bowl, my rose-colored cereal, my maple syrup that glimmered over it all. 

Exactly twenty-one years ago I spent that March day in Belgrade waiting for the missiles, and the missiles arrived, and I went to my building’s basement full of neighbors and books, but no washers and dryers. An old Cadillac covered in dust. 

Today I wrote a hot shower at 10 pm after I wrote the thermostat down
to sixty-five. I wrote a hearty pasta dinner, a sauce I built on a foundation of celery, carrots, scallions, garlic, and red wine. I wrote two loads of laundry, four quarters per load in my building’s basement, four quarters per load in the dryer. Had to revise the dryer cycle, my stuff still damp the first time, four quarters more. I wrote a hot shower in the afternoon, that’s when my hair went from oily to clean under my fingers massaging my scalp. I wrote my body dry with my red towel, I wrote my skin supple with perfumed lotion.

That’s what I wrote today when in the progress of the pandemic I lived like a king--not because I deserved it--as petite bourgeoisie do before each collapse.

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How is our present shaped by our past? More importantly: can we make any educated guesses about the future based on what we know about the present? Those are the questions we’re forever mulling over. And mulling over the unknowable is a way of coping, of staving off  fear about the unknowable.

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Snežana Žabić is the author of the short story collection In a Lifetime (KOS, Serbia, 1996), the memoir Broken Records (punctum books, USA, 2016), and the poetry collection The Breath Capital (New Meridian Arts, USA, 2016). She co-authored, with Ivana Percl, the poetry collection Po(jest)zija/Po(eat)ry (SKC NS, Serbia, 2013).

@salvador.campos.art |
salvadorcamposartbrute.com

What I fear is that we as a society will never look upon each other without distrust, anxiety and fear again.

I am a self-taught artist. For the past 20 years I have worked with found objects and painted on a variety of surfaces to create paintings, assemblages, figures, masks and sculptures.

@sia.serafina
siaserafina.work

At the core of these works is the idea that even though so many of us are feeling fractured, broken, and exhausted by this pandemic, it is possible to rebuild after collective trauma. What results is not the perfectly placed human (or figure) that we were before, but an amalgamation of the broken parts of ourselves that we build back up.

My work explores the realities and the struggles of being an empowered womxn both inside and outside of my work in the sex industry. I mainly work with charcoal, using repetition, prints, and collage to make organic shapes out of the drawings. At the core of my work is the centralized idea that bodies of femmes (especially sex workers) are consistently damaged and torn down throughout our lives, and we are faced with the task of putting them back together. While the rebuild after trauma may not end up being what we originally were, while it may not be what society deems “correct” or “proper,” the way that we rebuild still is able to evoke some sense of belonging and unity.

@sonalikolhatkar | SonaliKolhatkar.com

The future is brown skinned and female. This strange and frightening new world we live in is held together by the essential work of largely nonwhite women working for low wages, or health workers, many of whom are immigrants. My paintings depict the fierce resistance that our very existence denotes, and the demand for dignity, respect, recognition, and power as we move forward.

Sonali Kolhatkar is an award-winning broadcast and print journalist, visual artist, and amateur musician, seamstress, and baker. She has exhibited her works widely in numerous solo and group shows including the Los Angeles based shows, RAW Artists and Chocolate and Art. Her primary medium is acrylic on canvas.

Poem created on 8/23/2020, using 1970s Hermes 3000 Typewriter. 

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David W. Pedersen is a Midwestern author, poet, screenwriter, labor activist, and lm director. His first book is titled, “Love is Meat”.David W. Pedersen is a Midwestern author, poet, screenwriter, labor activist, and lm director. His first book is titled, “Love is Meat”.

@six__x__six

I don’t know what the future may bring, but this piece is, in my summation, a decent encapsulation of our current year.

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Choesoui exists for now.

@bobrok1998
bobrok.bandcamp.com

This piece is combining two characters from the Mexican Card game Loteria. And then to me means a new take on Mexican art and culture.

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Nick Garcia is a writer and artist living in Chicago Illinois. He performs music and comedy under the name Bob Rok. He has performed at various musical and comedy venues around the city of Chicago. He is currently working on a comic book called “El Gallo Borracho.”

Bob Rok and DJ DOUG | Storefront Glass

Storefront glass / bursts onto the city streets / A country shouting loudly and it wonders if you’re listening / Cautious and Exhausted / As it mumbles its soliloquy / Buildings burn like cigarettes  / Your leader gassed the ministry / No problem with elections / It’s the options that you giving me / It’s why these rockstars turn cop cars to chimneys / Bobby wide awake / While you sleeping with the enemy / Power to the people / Till we’re equal over everything / Cause nothings ever banned like a hand with a wedding ring / Choke a man to death and televise the evidence / Oedipus on reddit / Like they should’ve practiced etiquette / The proof is in the pudding and the puddings full of medicine / You hopping off the fence / I’m a menace to the menacing / Fuck Joe Biden / What the fucks the point of settling / Build an institution and the senate would be trembling / I’m sick to death of centrists and everything they’re peddling / You people aren’t the answer / It’s the question that’s unsettling / What is freedom worth if it never leads to better things? / I’d rather kill your kings than keep voting for your presidents / I’d rather clip its wings than add wings upon my residence / Where brutality is legal the laws become irrelevant / You want to start an era in a period of sentences? / Beg for validation that you traded for your relevance / Mimicking your masters cause their slavery was elegant / It’s why you getting jacked  / In a room full of elephants / My thoughts are very sobering / You coming down from sedatives / Knock before you enter and do disturb the Mexican / I swear to God you motherfucks are going to be the death of him

I remember thinking words were building blocks for pyramids/ Bumping Hieroglyphics hoping some would take it serious / Hoping against hope I don’t feel this way forever / A bunch of manic episodes / That sleep will string together 

The plot thickens we are trapped in a page / In a hole in the wall like a rat in a cage / History and violence are rehearsed like a play / We’re played like card and carted away / Can we think can we act / Can we collectively change? / Is how we treat others / What we expect in exchange / It makes them nervous / When the people find a purpose / Gotta watch what you eat / Gotta practice what you preach / Gotta learn gotta teach / No Justice, No peace / You take away a life / People take away the street/ It’s not about the mask or what’s hidden underneath / It’s not about your party having parties at the beach / I try to be the sheperd with a flock of fucking sheep / But who am I to lead? I’m exhausted as my feet / Throwing caution to wind / feeling winded when I speak / I’m sickness I’m the symptom / Quoting Milhouse in my sleep / Oh Puppy Goo Goo fetch me a dream / Running from a creature / From the comfort of a jeep / Screaming in a camera like I’m Meryl fucking Streep / Raindrops crash still water in a glass / I escape, I am Great, I’m awake in a flash

Look at that, I wanted what I have / I turned the written word into grifted gift of gab / I am not a writer I’m a thinker with a plan / I blink the big picture that the simple understand / But vanity persists posting pics on the Gram / I’m a spic, sailing down the river Styxx in a raft / I am hip, I’m the shit, I am rich, I am sad / Watch a country profit flip  every kid it can grab / I get pissed, I persist, swing and miss, God Dam / I complicate the simple and I simplify the man / Then I put it over music and release it to the fans

Postalfart | Lyrics and Vocals by Sid Yiddish Music by Clean Boys

The other day I threw a letter
In the mailbox but the postal clerk
Rubberstamped it
Return to snagelfart sender

Was it a postalfart
offender sender bender?
Felt my brain
Push (shredded) straight through a parcelfart back ender

Couldn’t get my stamps, couldn’t get my cards
No use to trivialize what you can’t have
Come to realize when I told my mom the post office era is past her
It’s now the grocery clerk whose become the new 
postalfart master

(Refrain-repeat once)
Fart-tramp-tramp-tramp
To get a fart-stamp-stamp-stamp
Down at Netto
The new postalfart ghetto

Next stop
Pony express
Next move, I don’t know
It’s such a mess

Internet assassinated
The mail carrier
The Internet is now the new
Postalfart slayer

Nobody takes a pen and a piece of paper
Or the time ever to write a letter without being (becoming) a trendsetter
Internet has choked the breath of what used to be
And now’s become, in reality, a dead postalfart letter

This generation
Has spread too much disinformation
Who gives a fuck, you’re shit outta luck
When it’s just another partyfart transformation
Just (gimme one) piece of junk mail
Instead of a piece of spam
I may go postalfart
with my own (fucking) fartplan

Refrain (repeat once)
Fart-tramp-tramp-tramp
To get a fart-stamp-stamp-stamp
Down at Netto
The new postalfart ghetto

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PostalFart written & recorded August 23, 2018. Final Mix June 27, 2020. Lyrics and vocals by Sid Yiddish music by Clean Boys. PostalFart tells the story of Danish mail service slowing down to a crawl including nonexistent postal services & longing for the days of old. 3:46 (Please note there are many references to the word fart, which in Danish is defined as speed).

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Sid Yiddish is a multidisciplinary artist and staple within the Chicago poetry, performance art and underground improvisation music scenes. Combining loves of poetry, improvisation, sound and performance, Yiddish has formed several experimental collaborative collectives that blend raw words with spontaneous theatrics. Presently he teaches laughing yoga, haiku and Zumba.

Jennifer Hochgesang | Lovelybrokenness.com

October 3rd, 2020

Please Don’t Go 

We were just doing normal and silly things 
Picking up formula and four different kinds of juices
But I had to go, wanted to rush quickly down the aisle
For that conditioner I liked so much, that one,
That made my hair silky smooth I thought
You wanted to talk, you asked me to stay
Stood quietly in the aisle next to the soft Malbecs
We loved and still could not drink
I could tell you needed me
Your normally lean deer body thrusting out of your jeans
Like you had somehow stuffed a twelve pack of Coors
That we drank in high school down your pants
But the fluorescent lights were bothering me, angry and biting,
Hitting my headache like a slap in the face
I ignored the fact that your dark brown hair was still unwashed,
Up in a dirty bun from last Sunday which was four days ago
When I showed you how Ellie could stand and had started to walk
Taking a step forward and then another
And when we yelled out in excitement
She toppled straight to the ground and sideswiped the cereal box
Which burst its contents onto the floor like confetti and we laughed 
Even when Ellie looked backed at us with tears in her green-grass eyes
There was amber sunlight in the room
And it felt like we had a warm blanket over all of us
And you radiated with Sadie in your arms, still breastfeeding her
We talked all afternoon, for hours and hours like we always could 
It felt like one of those long summer afternoons from childhood with your best friend
Where you have all the time in the world.

Sometimes I close my eyes and I am there
I smell formula and cinnamon
Hear the breath of Sadie when she let me hold her
Falling asleep against my chest still grasping my finger tight
Her chest breathing deeply, inflating and deflating like a hot air balloon
I can hear it right now, the sound of her breath and I try to sync it to mine
A soft sucking in as she dreams of eating
Of you and her tiny pink tongue thrusts in and out
All of her muscles are calm
I only stop when I see you turn your blue eyes to me sadly
Imploringly, didn’t you want this, didn’t you want me?
And I look down fearfully to see Sadie crumble like talcum powder
Blow away into the night, back to you
And I can’t breathe right anymore
I don’t know how
I’m off tune, my chest rising and falling
But taking in nothing but pain.

In the store I saw that your eyes were glazed like mine had been,
When Ellie was not yet standing and sleep evaded me
I remember all the questions I had
How worried I was going to do something wrong
And how there was never anymore time for me at all
I remember exactly how much the lack of sleep hurt
How you needed it, like breathing
I saw it in your face that day
And I’m sure your light blue eyes stung
In the harsh glare of the store lights
Please, those eyes had said, please
I need you to stay for just a little bit longer
But I was busy and just didn’t have time
I remember saying I had so many things to do
As I flew down the aisle
I can’t remember any of those things now
But I can see the spit-up on your right shoulder
And the round wooden teething necklace around your neck
Nestled in the breasts that were suddenly way too
Large for your tiny body
And the slight flicker in your hand
That I mimic now with a nervous shake.

Please do not go
Please do not go
Please do not go

I hear that in the wind these days
I hear you
And I can’t ever go back to that store
When we got to the Church, I didn’t want to go in
And waited outside for twenty minutes
With Ellie fussing at me and playing on the curb
People walked by and would tell me where it was
As if I didn’t know
And I forced “thank you‘s’ out of my throat sounding like I was throwing rocks.

When I finally went in and saw the coffins
I fell straight to the floor and Ellie laughed
Two coffins, next to each other but not touching
Like distant friends or neighbors
Sadie’s coffin was way too tiny
It was too small
It was not right
She was all alone
Why wasn’t she in with you?
That’s what you would have wanted
But you hadn’t written anything down
You hadn’t prepared anything
You were so young
And hadn’t thought of coffins or gravestones or wills
Even when a pandemic came
And Sadie began to cough.

They sat us down, me and my daughter, in the front row,
At the Church, with so few people
It isn’t right, I wanted to scream
Where are all the people?  
Where are the crowds?
Why isn’t someone stopping this?
With all the new social distancing rules
Everyone was sitting far apart
From one another like the last remaining pieces on a chess game
The rest just sent flowers
The church was covered in them
White lilies and orchids, yellow roses, red sunflowers and so many more
We ended up donating them to many places
You would’ve been quite pleased about that
But because people were so scared and so few came
When I looked around, it felt more like we were in a large family argument
Or a town meeting
So the scream I had been holding back around Ellie was about to come out
And I needed more than whatever this was, this plain white room
With light brown wood seats and one man standing
With a black mask covering half his face
So he felt more like a cult leader than someone
Who was supposed to be venerating my best friend
I needed a crowd of women ululating to the Gods
A prefiche of women tearing their hair out, 
I needed there to be a great wail that changed the tides
And caused the sun to set in a different direction
There couldn’t just be this
Twelve people, two coffins and a man who didn’t even know you
I finally had to sit on my hands
Otherwise I thought I might put Sadie in with you
And I didn’t even know if that was the right thing to do anymore.

And I’m sorry, I’m so sorry
I left, I took Ellie and left
I could not watch them put you
And Sadie into the ground
I would worry you were cold
I would worry the baby was hungry
I would worry you hated your coffin
I would worry they got it all wrong
I just couldn’t see you like that for the last time.

I can still see you standing by the soft Malbecs
And your eyes wanting me to come to you, needing me
But my feet move swiftly in the other direction, toward the exit
Toward the sun that was setting
And the regret swishes in my mouth—
Before I let it out, I realize I won’t
I will be forever in that moment
Wanting to change my decision as if that would change
What happened.

Please don’t go 
Please don’t go 
Please don’t go.

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Jennifer Hochgesang is a mother, chronic pain advocate and writer. She lives in Lake Forest, Illinois with her daughter, dog and sometimes two cats.