The Mask of Prosperity Access

The Mask of Prosperity takes shape around the uses inheritance has across multiple dimensions of our lives. Inheritance is commonly understood as a will, a promise of ownership that ensures the passing down and accumulation of property and capital from one generation to the next. For many, this topic strikes a personal chord, demanding reflection on one’s relationships with ancestors and what we would like to endow our descendants with. This exhibition expands on this strand of thinking and is posed as an inquiry that probes the tensions between which legacies we choose to acquire, hold on to, or reject across culture and personal life.

A central concern in the exhibition is how we come into possession of material and intangible things and what their lasting impressions are. The featured artists present richly varied reflections interrogating how legacies linked to language, property, social movement, and moral principles intensify to possibly build a prosperous life. The unfolding narratives presented ask for a consideration of how legacies we voluntarily and involuntarily acquire transform us and also their vitality to our formation of the self.

The Mask of Prosperity is curated by Denny Mwaura, Assistant Director, with Benson Benson, UIC Chancellor Undergraduate Research Award Curatorial Intern, and Ayrika Hall, Graduate Curatorial Assistant.

Support for The Mask of Prosperity is provided by the Illinois Arts Council Agency and the School of Art & Art History, College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts, University of Illinois Chicago.

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homegrown #5, cameron clayborn

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cameron clayborn

homegrown #5, 2022

Insulation, paper, stucco ceiling paint, wire rope

Courtesy the artist and Simone Subal Gallery, New York.

Verbal Description

A sculpture composed of insulation paper, and wire rope hangs from the ceiling. The form is tall and organic, resembling an amoeba. Nodes and handle-like forms emerge from the sides of the structure, connected by the copper colored rope.

Extended Label

Formed from home construction materials, homegrown #5 evokes for the artist their formative childhood experiences in their grandmother’s house in Malvern, Arkansas. Built by their mother’s grandfather and their father’s father in the 1950s, the home offered clayborn and their sister a retreat from family turmoil. In addition to providing a haven, clayborn’s grandmother also encouraged the artist to explore an expansive Black, queer, and femme identity. clayborn reorients the house’s architecture into an organic and cell-like figure, giving form to the memories and wisdom acquired in it.

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Signet Rings, Sonya Clark

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Sonya Clark

Signet Rings, 2016

Sterling silver, cotton, hair, cast sugar

Courtesy the artist

Verbal Description

There are three silver signet rings in a line. Each of them has a thick band decorated with ornate scrolls and an oval-shaped hole intended for a jewel. Instead of jewels, the three rings are filled with different materials. The ring on the left is filled with a plug of soft, fuzzy, white cotton. The middle ring is densely packed with a ball of dark, curly hair. The right-hand ring is filled with a smooth oval of white sugar with one crack along the middle.

Extended Label

Clark’s rings engage with inheritance’s duality. Inheritance is at once a source of connection to an ancestral past—as evidenced through genetic material such as hair—and a carrier for histories imbued with violence. This work draws on the socio-cultural meanings of cultivated materials to consider imperial legacies and familial heritage. The artist’s use of cotton and sugar references the plantation economies in the Caribbean and Americas that the U.S. and Western European empires relied on to expand their colossal wealth across four hundred years. Embedding these profitable commodities into signet rings, heirlooms conveying status and often passed down within families, Clark examines the legacy of wealth accumulation, raising questions about who labors, economic extraction, and the continuing economic impacts in the afterlife of slavery.

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Hairbow for Sounding the Ancestors, Sonya Clark

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Sonya Clark

Hairbow for Sounding the Ancestors, 2016

Artist’s hair, violin bows, sound

Courtesy the artist

Verbal Description

A long, thin mahogany violin bow lies on a pedestal jutting out from the wall. Instead of the typical translucent horse hair, the bow hair is made out of human hair—specifically a long, thin, black dreadlock. On either side and above the pedestal, two white speakers hang from the wall, playing jazz music.

Extended Label

A large part of Clark’s practice focuses on hair’s cultural significance within Afro-diasporic communities. Using her dreadlock to construct a fully operational violin bow, Clark highlights the relationship between tangible material, collective cultural identity, and personal lineage, and thus, how hair—akin to the spirals of DNA—is a conduit for transmitting ancestral histories.

Accompanying the bow is audio of the hymn widely recognized in the U.S. as the Black National Anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing. Jazz violinist Regina Carter’s performance of the hymn with Clark’s hairbow was remastered and reverberated by the jazz pianist Jason Moran, producing an effect of deep resonance. The recording and bow evoke how African American history, memory, and survival tactics are transmitted and endure across generations via oral traditions and hair practices.

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Clinic Pictures, Carmen Winant

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Carmen Winant

Clinic Pictures, 2023

Inkjet prints on paper

Courtesy the artist and Patron Gallery, Chicago

Verbal Description

There are two collages of 4 inch by 6 in photographs eight rows tall and eight rows wide hanging on the wall. Each collage is framed in a bright green frame. Some of the photographs are black and white while others are color. The color photographs are tinged sepia, making them appear old. Many of the photographs are candid shots of women sitting at work stations and making calls on phones. Several of the photos are repeats of the same women at various stages in their phone calls, while others simply show women sitting at their desks, looking at the camera, or talking in small groups. Other photographs show women participating in seminars, marching in protests, or making speeches. Several photographs have no people in them at all, simply showing empty office space or light hitting a wall.

Extended Label

Created from hundreds of archival images, these works center the care and labor that support abortion access. Drawn from archives around the Midwest, the images make visible the history of feminist networks of abortion care and the behind-the-scenes work that enables access to women’s reproductive rights. Picturing care during the nearly five decades when Roe v. Wade protected abortion, Winant underscores the lateral forms of kinship created between protestors, infants, mothers, clinic visitors, and primarily women physicians and staff workers. Woven in the archival images are also photographs Winant took during her visits to clinics.

She says, “I began to summon the courage to make my own pictures…I felt nervous to make something that would be my work as an extension of myself. It was increasingly important to have contemporary photographs to indicate that this history leads right up to our present moment and, of course, our futures. And that this work and struggle is not ossified but very much alive and ongoing.” The works’ green frames reference green handkerchiefs worn during reproductive rights protests in Argentina and throughout South America.

At this moment, when multiple states have restricted legal abortion access and continue to try to limit it further, the artist considers abortion’s visuality. She asks herself and us, “How does feminism find us? What role, if any, does visuality play in the feminist struggle? Why does looking matter?”

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Untitled, Caroline Kent and Nate Young

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Caroline Kent and Nate Young

Untitled, 2024

Wood, resin, acrylic, Belgian linen

Courtesy Kent Young Studios

Verbal Description

A three-legged, wooden, table-like structure stands on the floor, with a potted plant resting on top of it. Between the surface of the structure and the legs are three pairs of panels. Each pair consists of one gray, fabric panel and one wooden panel. The fabric panels are painted with colorful, abstract shapes while the wooden panels are etched with geometric forms and arrows. The plant sits in a gray pot, and has broad dark green and reddish leaves.

Extended Label

About this work, the artists say: “As artists who are also married and have a family of three children, we consider what it means to make works that can be passed onto our children and that speak to our legacy as artists, makers, and thinkers in the world. Combining aspects of our individual practices into one singular object is a union that speaks to a meeting place between our two respective practices. These kinds of collaborative works will not enter the market but are intended to be given to each of the children who will also receive the works of art and keep them within the families as they are passed from generation to generation. Historically, real estate is often passed down from one family generation to the next; this is our way of passing on items of value to future familial generations through inheritance and legacy. Embedded in the artworks is a family narrative that is also passed down—a narrative of working with our hands, creative thinking, utilizing our imaginations and craft, all things that can be done and are done over a lifetime. This artwork represents the building and upholding of those kinds of
values into the lives of our children.”

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horses, greene, Eli Greene

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Eli Greene

horses, greene, 2024

Lightbox, glass, graphite, Xerox print, vellum

Courtesy the artist

Verbal Description

Three Porta-Trace light boxes are stationed throughout the gallery. Each stands against the wall with its light turned on, shining through sheets of paper with words handwritten in cursive using graphite. The words overlap through the papers at some points and are completely legible at others. One lightbox shows the word ‘horses.’ Another shows the word ‘green[e],’ The final lightbox shows an image of a landscape with a small building in the background and a sign for Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in the middle of the image.

Extended Label

The artist says, “Growing up, my mother had a horse named Daisy. The story goes that Daisy was a racehorse who no longer could race. The horse was given to my grandfather, James Green, who gave her to my mother, Vera Greene. She named her Daisy. When I was nine years old, I fell in love with horses. My uncle, Robert Green, found a horse. My mother bought the horse and gave her to me. I named her Daisy. Daisy lived at my Uncle Banny’s house on the hill in Columbia, Tennessee. The same hill where my mother and her eight siblings grew up. Sixteen years ago, my mother passed away. Three years ago, Daisy passed away. I always called her my mother’s horse. Everybody always called her my horse. Daisy was everybody’s horse.”

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The Speeches Series, Bouchra Khalili

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Bouchra Khalili

The Speeches Series, 2012-13

Digital film

Courtesy Mor Charpentier

Verbal Description

Speeches, Chapter 1: Mother Tongue

Five people recite speeches and texts in various languages. A woman speaks while standing next to a window overlooking an overgrown patio with metal lawn furniture. Another woman speaks in a dimly lit room, alternating with shots out of a shop window onto a busy street. A man speaks while sitting in an empty factory, interspersed with more shots of the factory. A woman speaks at her kitchen table against a wall of windows, interspersed with film of a city on a gray day. A woman stands backlit against the windows of a high-rise apartment.

Speeches, Chapter 2: Words on the Streets

Five people recite speeches in Italian. A woman speaks while standing on a covered, walking bridge with apartment buildings in the background. A man speaks while standing in a garden enclosed by columns. A woman sits on a park bench while speaking about her mother. A man stands in a dank, empty hallway while speaking on how others perceive him by his appearance. A man stands in a shipping container yard while speaking on his experiences as a protestor.

Speeches, Chapter 3: Living Labour

Five people recite speeches in various languages. A man sits by a window in front of a brick wall, shots of his hand spliced between shots of his face. A man sits in front of a white lattice fence as the image gets darker with each cut. A man sits outside the corner of a building, in front of red and white brick as the camera gradually gets closer to his face with each cut. A man sits in a windowsill leading to a red fire escape, speaking between shots of his face and body. A woman sits in front of a blank wall, speaking between shots of her face and neck.

Extended Label

The fragmented histories and present conditions that converge in The Speeches Series trilogy are addressed by immigrants in France, Italy, and the United States, countries to which they migrated in search of better livelihoods. In their homes, workplaces, and public spaces, the non-actor participants narrate from memory their political alignments and encounters with racism, xenophobia, and labor exploitation. In the first chapter, Mother Tongue, five participants residing in Paris recite their translations of texts by political writers, including Aimé Césaire, Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi, Malcolm X, Édouard Glissant, and Mahmoud Darwish. The artist provided the texts, but the participants selected segments that resonated with them and translated them into unwritten languages (languages without standard written form) and dialects, such as Wolof, Malinké, Dari, and Darija (Moroccan Arabic). For the second chapter, Words on the Streets, five immigrants in the Italian city of Genoa, a historically powerful and wealthy port city, deliver speeches detailing their citizenship status, loneliness, and fraught sense of belonging in Italy. Living Labour, the final chapter, takes place in New York City, where five undocumented immigrants chronicle their journeys to the U.S., how they have organized unions in their workplaces for better pay, and how they are excluded from civic participation. The choir Khalili composes with these individual monologues evokes civic poetry and oratory traditions such as Halqa, a form of public storytelling from her native country, Morocco.

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Katherine Simóne Reynolds

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Katherine Simóne Reynolds

Do This In Remembrance…, 2024

Inkjet prints

Courtesy the artist and parents

Katherine Simóne Reynolds

Garter Belt, 2024

Inkjet print

Courtesy the artist and parents

Katherine Simóne Reynolds

“InheriFast Junk Mail”, 2022

Inkjet print

Courtesy the artist and parents

Verbal Description

A crumpled piece of paper hangs on the wall behind privacy glass, so it is only visible when you stand directly in front of it. The paper is an offer from InhereitFast, a probate advance company. In the upper right corner, there’s information on the case number, estate name, and estate location. The offer is addressed to Katherine S. Reynolds for the estate of a relative with the same last name, located in Cobb, Georgia.

The main text reads:

Katherine S. Reynolds,

We are aware that you are an heir of [redacted] Reynolds. It typically takes more than a year to receive an inheritance through probate court.

InheritFast can send your inheritance check in as little as 1 business day…

At the bottom of the paper is the image of a non negotiable check written out to Katherine Reynolds for a redacted amount of dollars and no cents.

The paper is next to two photographs. In the first one, a Black man removes the garter from his bride’s leg. The groom wears a light suit and a boutonnière with pink and white flowers. Only the bride’s hand and foot up to her ankle are visible. She wears a white kitten heel and a glittering stocking with a white floral pattern trailing up her leg. The back of the groom’s head takes up the upper half of the frame. As he removes the garter, his hands and head encircle the bride’s ankle.

The third photograph shows a wooden altar at the front of a church. The altar has two bouquets of white flowers in brass vases and a golden candelabra on top of it. Along the side of the altar, black text reads, “Do this in remembrance of me.”

Extended Label

When Reynolds’ father passed, she received a letter informing her of an expedited process for her inheritance from Inheritfast, a company that preys on estate heirs and largely profits from their wealth. Alongside a copy of the letter, Reynolds presents obscured photographs from her parents’ wedding day. She says: “We rarely receive all the answers, as to live is to be a hero, villain, or lover in someone else’s narrative. We live and die through ambiguity and perception, once here as something and then go for someone. And what is left is considered the value of depicting time as this eroding love that leaves a mark regardless of how things ended. This passing, this loss was only something I was privy to through a distant understanding. This mourning was only something I could feel through memories that weren’t mine. Faded and pixelated memories that capture the union of my parents before I was even thought of: ‘you were just a glimmer in your father’s eye.’ At times, I want to protect these memories from public shame, scrutiny, or inquiry into this need for ‘answers and understanding’ because within loss and grief, there is no resolution; there is only a longing for clarity that will never be met, like a promise that was always meant to be broken. ‘It too shall fade, they too shall fade.'”

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Plait (Heritance), Gabrielle Octavia Rucker

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Gabrielle Octavia Rucker

Plait (Heritance), 2024

Postcard

Courtesy the artist

Verbal Description

A stack of postcards sits on a pedestal. The stack will shrink over the course of the exhibition as visitors take postcards. A poem is printed on one side of the postcard. The other side of the postcard is covered with a series of meaningless squiggles which resemble cursive writing.

Extended Label

Rucker reflects on the complexities of inheriting not only the “unfinished business” of past generations but also the silent, often overlooked burdens, such as languages and histories lost to colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade. A poet of Black American and Mexican descent, Rucker uses asemic writing—a form of wordless script that suggests meaning without specific linguistic structure—to transcend the constraints of English, a language she describes as both “violent” and limiting in its ability to fully express her poetic intent. Rucker’s work prompts viewers to consider the unsaid and the unsayable, bridging a deeper engagement with the intangible elements that shape one’s understanding of identity and history.

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S*an D. Henry-Smith

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S*an D. Henry-Smith

transposition I, 2020, 2024

Archival pigment prints

Courtesy the artist

S*an D. Henry-Smith

orbing, 2020, 2024

Archival pigment prints

Courtesy the artist

S*an D. Henry-Smith

Ivori, held, 2017, 2018

Archival pigment prints

Courtesy the artist

S*an D. Henry-Smith

petit capture, 2023, 2024

Archival pigment prints

Courtesy the artist

S*an D. Henry-Smith

transposition II, 2022, 2024

Archival pigment prints

Courtesy the artist

Verbal Description

Five small photographs hang in a line on the wall. Each photograph is framed with a wide, white mat and a thin, brown frame. From left to right, the photographs show:

A self portrait, wherein the artist sits in front of a mirror, face slightly blurred by light reflecting on the glass. Behind them shows a corner of a room, but the items decorating the space are also obscured; a window showing a blue sky, an orange couch, and a cluttered coffee table.

In the second photograph, a colorful glass chandelier hangs at the entrance of a doorway leading outside. In the bottom left of the frame, light from outside seeps in through the doorway.

The third photograph shows the back of a young Black person laying in a Black woman’s lap. The woman wears a black top that stops at her mid forearm, and the youth, a dark gray hoodie. The woman wears two silver rings, one on her middle and ring finger. The woman’s face is completely out of frame while the edge of the child’s face is just barely visible. The woman’s hand is tenderly placed on the child’s head, as if she were stroking their hair.

The fourth image is split down the middle between the threshold of a hallway and a white wall. A square of light, with a shadowed center, hits the wall, its lightsource not pictured. The floor is tiled with brown and cream square titles.

In the final photograph, a tan spider sits on top of a white piece of paper on a table, trapped under a glass, its legs spread out around itself.

Extended Label

Henry-Smith’s works consider how space, time, journeying, and language shape our identities. These photographs document the artist’s residence in New York, London, and Amsterdam over a six-year period. After leaving their home in Miami, Florida, at the age of 17, Henry-Smith’s relationship with place and home has been in constant flux. Rather than succumbing to discomfort in solitude, Henry-Smith claims nowhere-ness and wandering, historicizing themself within a more extensive Afro-diasporic heritage. They say, “That sense of displacement is inherently one that relates to the Middle Passage. I think about my familial history and how none of my parents can trace their lineages beyond their grandparents for any number of reasons.”

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