Slemmons Gallery
May 20, 2022 6:00 PM

Join us for the opening reception of Cecil McDonald, Jr.'s The Making Mask in Slemmons Gallery at Epiphany Center for the Arts. In our most recent installment of the ongoing series of exhibitions offered in partnership with the Chicago Cluster Project and The Rod Slemmons Camera Archive, McDonald used an antique view camera to make his photos, a process which forced him to shoot blind, and which released him from the comfort of the assurance created by a digital mindset. This proved to be portal to other worlds, just outside our reach, though firmly within reach in our collective imaginations.

Join us in The Guild Room for the opening reception of Ani Afshar: Veiled, Friday, May 8, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Join us for the opening reception of Victoria Fuller: Bring Back the Extinct Northern White Rhino.  In this installation in The Sacristy Gallery, Fuller offers a tribute to a species that is functionally extinct. The last male northern white rhinoceros, named Sudan, died in 2018. There are two females left. This installation features a realistic life-size replica of a rhino, 13’ x 5’.5” x 4,’ made of vinyl material with a hide of printed faux wrinkles and texture. It inflates and deflates repetitively on a 3 minutes cycle. When deflated, we are reminded that it is extinct; when inflated, it references the magnificence of the species when it was alive, as well as the attempt to bring it back through “artificial reproductive techniques” with frozen sperm and eggs implanted in a closely related subspecies. The inflation and deflation are also like inhaling and exhaling lungs, symbolizing the breath of life. Fuller created the project with a grant from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs (DCASE) to bring awareness to the extinction of animals in our lifetime.