Past Events

Thursday, August 6, 2020, from 4 – 5:30 pm

The pandemic has made clear that there is no “normal” to go back to while also highlighting persistent inequalities in our communities and educational environments. How are we approaching the necessary work of re-imagining the future? This session will focus on how artists and art educators are transforming a range of existing structures by developing new modes of teaching, learning, and creating together.

Thursday, July 9, 2020, from 4 – 5:30 pm

The pandemic has wrought trauma of many kinds on children, adults, elders, and families, and hit some communities harder than others. This session will focus on how artists and art educators have responded to the struggles of those they teach and those to whom they are connected through direct forms of engagement with the crisis. The panel will explore what historical precedents can tell us about advocacy and healing, whether individual or collective.

Thursday, June 18, 2020, from 4 – 5:30 pm 

What are the various ways in which artists/art educators have ‘pivoted’ in response to the crisis? What worked? What didn’t work? What were/are the ongoing challenges? This first conversation will focus on the adaptations and the creative solutions, challenges, and failures teachers experienced and developed.

Monday, April  20, 2020 at 6 pm

Join Us via Zoom: https://uic.zoom.us/j/135946245

Visual artist, filmmaker, and writer RaMell Ross will discuss his work in photography and how it informed his Oscar-nominated film, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, which looks at the lives of Daniel Collins and Quincy Bryant, two young African American men from rural Hale County, Alabama, over the course of five years.

Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 6 pm

Join Us via Zoom: https://uic.zoom.us/j/135946245

Damon Locks discusses his work with Prison and Neighborhood Arts Project, the S.P.A.C.E. program (via Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago) a high school on the south side, and his work with the Black Monument Ensemble and making sounds in real time!

Manifest Justice, 2015, digital print by Damon Locks

Saturday, March 7, 2020 

2:00 pm

Gallery 400 (400 S Peoria St)

Join artist Derrick Woods-Morrow, photographer and collector Patric McCoy, and others for a personal tour through Chicago and its cruising history. The tour is Gallery 400 Turn the Light exhibition artist Derrick Wood-Morrow’s live interpretation of his exhibited film Much Handled Things Are Always Soft.

Saturday, March 7, 2020

11:30 am

Gallery 400//UIC Great Space (400 S Peoria St)

Set in a San Francisco of 2069, the musical looks to San Francisco’s countercultures of the late 60’s, science fiction, and camp to imagine a future landscape impacted by climate change. Hatorade Retrograde envisions a speculative , high-tech, utopian (femi-)future as an empowering answer to contemporary anxieties about the economic and environmental impacts of water and air pollution and rising sea levels.

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

12:00 pm

At the UIC Latino Cultural Center, Lecture Center B2, UIC Quad

Join co-director of The Floating Museum, Faheem Majeed, as he talks with Etzer Cantave and Starla Thompson about the Floating Museum project Founders and Cantave and Thompson’s participation in the project. A 25-foot-high inflatable sculpture, Founders  was created by the Floating Museum to honor the founders of Chicago, Jean Baptiste DuSable and Kitahawa. The sculpture is sited on the UIC campus the day of the conversation from 9:00am to 3:00pm.

 Thursday, February 27, 2020

6:00 pm

Gallery 400 (400 S Peoria St)

Asociación Communitaria de Conocimiento Descentralizada (ACCD) (Community Association of Decentralized Knowledge) aims to revive public memories of human rights struggles and radical cultures in Latinx neighborhoods in Chicago. This workshop will be one in a series of pop-ups focused on women, LGBTI people, and system-targeted youth—groups that are almost always excluded from the very civil rights struggles that they led.

Tuesday, February 25, 2020

6:00 pm

Gallery 400 (400 S Peoria St.)

How do we understand what is toxic? Why do we prioritize the visual in such apprehensions? In August of 2015, a U.S. EPA subcontractor inadvertently breached a dam wall below the historic and now defunct Gold King Mine near Silverton, CO. The consequent release of three million gallons of acid mine water eventually reached the San Juan River that ows through the Navajo Nation. Montoya presents a series of photographs taken one year after the Gold King mine spill to document the enduring violence of toxic exposure and its visual representations. In doing so, she interrogates the racialized ways environmental contamination disproportionally impacts Indigenous communities and our territories.

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

6-9pm

Gallery 400 (400 S Peoria St)

The workshop contemplates ideas of sustaining neighborhood archives when faced with constant change. Over the last year, artist Nia Easley has developed a project that investigates the history of Avondale and asks questions about how a neighborhood is built, by whom, and what happens when community members change.

Tolman Library, 2708 S. Pulaski Rd., December 7, 11am-12:30pm

This hands-on workshop invites participants to experience the papier-mâché artistry prominent in Tultepec, Mexico, where traditional methods of papier-mâché fabrication are used to create sculptural foundations.

Nov 15-17 (Fri: 5-9pm, Sat: 11am-7pm, Sun: 12-6pm), Chicago Athletic Association

Come say hi at the Gallery 400 table! We will be there with some amazing book offerings.

Thursday, November 14, 5-6 pm, Gallery 400

As part of the School of Art and Art History Open House, Gallery 400 hosts a cocktail mixer and a paper flower making workshop inside the exhibition The Last Judgment, the Gallery’s current exhibition that features papel maché sculptures.

I Prayed To The Wrong God For You

Date: Tuesday, November 5, 2019
Time: 6pm
Location: Gallery 400 Lecture Room

Tiona Nekkia McClodden will unpack the notion of ‘chronos vs kairos’ in relation to her work over the past year with a close reading of her latest work I prayed to the wrong god for you, 2019 filmed across the United States, Cuba, and Nigeria. The multi-channel work combines video and sculptural elements in a highly personal ritual dedicated to Shango, a deity or Orisha within the Afro-Cuban religion Santería/Lucumí whose origins can be traced to the Yoruba people of Nigeria.

Some Ideas on Display

Date: Tuesday, October 29, 2019
Time: 6pm
Location: Gallery 400 Lecture Room

Presenting a mixture of curated and artist projects, Lee Plested investigates various exhibition apparatus and interpretive strategies that enable the viewer as an active subject, discussing methods he’s utilized to create these display-based propositions within exhibitions to formalize interdependent encounters with essentially autonomous objects, their histories, and social resonance. Tea will be served.

Collaborative Resistance

Date: Tuesday, October 22, 2019
Time: 6pm
Location: Gallery 400 Lecture Room

William Estrada discusses how teaching has influenced his arts practice and describes current projects that focus on inquiry and mobilization. This Voices lecture includes images and personal excerpts of community workshops that honor black and brown people in their communities by amplifying the creativity already present.

Conversation with Emmanuel Ortega and Adela Goldbard

Date: Friday, October 18, 2019
Time: 4:30pm
Location: Gallery 400 Lecture Room

Subverting Technologies of Repression is a conversation between Emmanuel Ortega and Adela Goldbard, sharing research on topics of Mexican resistances against historical repression. Ortega and Goldbard will give individual presentations on their research followed by a collaborative discussion.

Measuring Time

Date: Thursday, October 3, 2019
Time: 6pm
Location: Gallery 400 Lecture Room

Artist Filmmaker Ephraim Asili explores the question of how we “measure time” as it relates to his recent creative output in film, music, and photography. The lecture will include excerpts from films, a photo slideshow, and live sonic explorations.

Sept 21, 2-4pm

This hands-on workshop invites participants to experience the papier-mâché artistry prominent in Tultepec, Mexico, where traditional methods of papier-mâché fabrication are used to create the sculptural foundations for elaborate pyrotechnic displays.

September 19, 6pm

Join us for a screening of Brimstone & Glory, a documentary directed by Viktor Jakovleski that chronicles the days and months leading up to the National Pyrotechnic Festival in the Mexican town of Tultepec, where three-quarters of the residents work in pyrotechnics.

September 6th 2019, 6pm

Join us for the opening reception of The Last Judgement by Adela Goldbard.

Centered on the community interests of residents in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood, Adela Goldbard’s The Last Judgment features large-scale sculptures built as pyrotechnic scenography for a public pyrotechnic event to be presented in Little Village on October 12, 2019.

Date: Saturday, July 27 | Sábado 27 de Julio
Time: 3-6pm
Location: 2215 S St. Louis Ave, Chicago, IL 60623

Come view the progress of Adela Goldbard’s community-based art project! The Last Judgment highlights the stories and concerns of Little Village residents and will incorporate them into a pyrotechnic play for which master artisans—who have traveled from Tultepec, Mexico—are building large-scale scenography and decor. Join us at the Little Village work site to meet the artisans, learn about their work, collaborate with them on papier maché fabrication, and learn about the public pyrotechnic performance in Little Village on October 12, 2019.

Date: Thursday, July 18, 2019
Time: 6pm – 8pm
Location: Gallery 400

Artists Alberto Aguilar and Alex Bradley Cohen look back on their ten years of collaboration, discussing past work that spans video, sound, drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, and performance. They speak about overcoming doubt and utilizing play to produce a vast and prolific body of work. It is free and open to all.

Date: Saturday, June 8, 2019
Time: 2pm
Location: Gallery 400

Led by artist Hui-min Tsen, At Bounded Space is a guided walk through the transitional areas surrounding Gallery 400. The walk offers participants a universal method for encountering the many visible and invisible boundary lines surrounding us in our everyday lived experiences. The duration of the walk is approximately 45 minutes. It is free and open to all.

Date: Saturday, May 25, 2019
Time: 2pm
Location: Gallery 400

Madeleine Aguilar introduces the practice of autobiographical comics in this interactive bookmaking workshop. Participants are lead through exercises to document and translate their own personal narratives into pictures and words.

Date: Thursday, May 16
Time: 6pm
Location: Gallery 400

Jesse Malmed hosts this one-night-only artistic showcase. Making creative use of the limitations intrinsic to an area rug, performances respond to the concept of allotted space and the idea of a carpet. Each artist has a short burst to present, perform, or transform their interpretation of the evening’s themes.

Date: Wednesday, May 15
Time: 6pm
Location: Gallery 400 Lecture Room

Join us for Creating Legacy: Furthering the Art of Dance Through the Art of Disability, an artist talk featuring 2019 UIC 3Arts fellow Ginger Lane. Real-Time Captioning (CART), ASL, and Audio Description are provided for this event. It is free and open to all.

Date: Saturday, May 11, 2019
Time: 2pm
Location: Gallery 400

This is a personal invitation to have a professional development share-out at the exhibition of Alberto Aguilar. An artist-teacher gathering about your expertise prepared by Jorge Lucero and Chicago Arts Partnership in Education.

Date: Wednesday, May 1, 2019
Time: 6pm
Location: Gallery 400

Throughout this father-daughter artist talk, Alberto Aguilar tells origin stories about certain works in his survey exhibition while Madeleine Aguilar tells stories through original music written as records of certain life experiences. Their storytelling happens in turn over an hour timespan and sometimes correlates. This event is free and open to all.

Date: Friday, April 26, 2019
Time: 6-9pm
Location: Gallery 400

Join us in celebrating the opening of Alberto Aguilar moves on human scale at Gallery 400. Alberto Aguilar’s first large scale survey explores how the Chicago-born and based artist’s various life roles and surroundings have shaped a searching, inquisitive practice that is grounded in, and produces, a radical everyday.

Date: Tuesday, April 23, 2019
Time: 6pm
Location: Gallery 400 Lecture Room

Maria Gaspar discusses her recent project, Radioactive: Stories from Beyond the Wall, which culminated in a public site intervention at the Cook County Jail this past fall. At the intervention, Gaspar illuminated the north end wall of the jail with projected animations developed through workshops she held inside the jail with men who were incarcerated, collectively named the Radioactive Ensemble.

Date: Friday, April 12, 2019
Time: 5-8pm
Location: Gallery 400

Join us in celebrating the closing of the second of two MFA Thesis Exhibitions, A Nameless Familiar. The artists present their work from 5-8pm with a reception to follow.

Date: Wednesday, April 10, 2019
Time: 6pm
Location: Gallery 400 Lecture Room

By looking at the example of the 2017 Whitney Biennial protests and their aftermath, Aruna D’Souza discusses both the value and the limits of fellow feeling when it comes to working towards social justice. Artists, curators, museum educators, and others speak lately of art’s special role in helping to develop the kind of understanding that’s necessary to cross divides of class, race, affiliation, and so on. But what if empathy isn’t enough? What if—even worse—it’s counterproductive?

Date: March 22, 2019
Time: Artist Talks: 5-6pm
Opening: 6-8pm
Location: Gallery 400

Join us in celebrating the opening of the first of two MFA Thesis Exhibitions, Now & There. The artists present their work from 5-8pm with a reception to follow.

Date: Tuesday, March 19, 2019
Time: 6pm
Location: Gallery 400 Lecture Room

In this artist talk, Hương Ngô presents recent work that reflects her research-based practice that connects personal and political histories using a conceptual, interdisciplinary, and collaborative approach. Ngô interrogates the ways that power is bound up with language and creates work reframing the hybrid, the imperfect, and the non-fluent as sites of survival and knowledge.

Date: Thursday, March 7
Time: 6-8pm
Location: Gallery 400

This poetry discussion and creative writing workshop led by Maggie Queeney begins as a conversation with our current exhibition, All have the same breath. After engaging with the exhibition, participants read and discuss poems that explore the artworks’ prevalent themes.

Date: Saturday, March 2
Time: 3:30-5:30 pm
Location: Gallery 400

*The performer will individually greet each audience member upon arrival. Please plan to arrive within the 20-minute window from 3:30 – 3:50pm.

How are we looking today? Is an experimental performative workshop in conversation with All have the same breath and presented in conjunction with All have the same breath: Symposium for Political Ecology as Practice.

This symposium presents the final results of the fieldwork carried out by the project participants of the project Political Ecology as Practice: A Regional Approach to the Anthropocene, presented in conjunction with All have the same breath. This project investigated the reciprocal relationship between the emergent theories of the Anthropocene, climate change, and the global environmental crisis, and how local ecological problems are experienced in various regions of the world. Presented in conjunction with Bochay Drum’s performative workshop.

Date: Tuesday, February 26
Time: 6-8pm
Location: Gallery 400 Lecture Room

As a participating venue in the 2019 IN>TIME Festival, Gallery 400 hosts an in-progress presentation by the artist Jefferson Pinder on his project This is Not a Drill. Pinder trains a team of performers to venture into the deep south during Summer of 2019. Taking inspiration from Goat Island’s How dear to me the hour when daylight dies, he aggressively prepares black bodies for stylized militancy in the face of history and white nationalism.

Date: Saturday, February 23, 2019
Time: 2-4pm
Location: Gallery 400 Lecture Room

In an industrialized agricultural landscape dominated by big business, the ideals of organic, sustainable farming are harder to achieve than most urban environmentalists realize. Charlie Corwin humanizes this struggle with a reading of stories from the perspective of farmers in the Vermilion River watershed of Illinois. Artist Stella Brown leads a gallery discussion of her work Vermilion River Watershed Geologic Column followed by an all-ages workshop.

Date: Saturday, February 16
Time: 1-3pm
Location: Gallery 400

In this workshop, Valdez discusses the tools, techniques, and translation of ideas in relief and found object printmaking. Each participant creates an edition of “like” prints that will be equally redistributed among each other to create a Trade Portfolio. Valdez is an artist participating in the exhibition All things share the same breath

Date: Tuesday, February 5
Time: 6-8pm
Location: Gallery 400 Lecture Room

In conjunction with the current Gallery 400 exhibition, All have the same breath, Fluid Entanglements is a film screening curated by Robyn Mericle. The films in this lineup explore water and the natural landscape as lived, material realities inextricably intertwined with—not separate from, or merely subject to—human history, politics, and culture.

Date: Friday, January 18
Time: 5-8pm
Location: Gallery 400

Join us in celebrating the opening of All have the same breath at Gallery 400. This interdisciplinary exhibition will be on view at Gallery 400 from January 18-March 9, 2018.

Date: Saturday, December 8
Time: 1-3pm
Location: Gallery 400

In this workshop led by VGA teaching artist Eden Ünlüata-Foley, participants will learn how to use Twine, a simple tool for making text-based games. No programming experience is required.

Date: Wednesday, December 5
Time: 1-3pm
Location: Gallery 400

Get a sneak peek of the forthcoming feature Insert Coin: Inside Midway’s ‘90s Revolution, a documentary diving deep into the history of Midway Games. Josh Tsui will be in attendance to present and discuss the work.

Date: Wednesday, November 28
Time: 6pm
Location: Gallery 400

For one night only, Chicago-based game makers and new media artists Cat Bluemke, Ali Krouse, and Whitney Pow present video games that creatively rework, remix, and respond to specific pieces exhibited in Chicago New Media 1973-1992.

Date: Saturday, November 17
Time: 1-3pm
Location: Gallery 400

Led by VGA teaching artist Eden Ünlüata-Foley, this workshop gives participants the opportunity to create their own pixel art game sprites. No programming experience is required.

Date: Wednesday, November 7
Time: 6-7:30pm
Location: University of Illinois at Chicago’s Engineering Research Facility (ERF), 842 W. Taylor Street, Room 2036

Join UIC’s Electronic Visualization Lab (UIC’s EVL) co-director Dan Sandin for a special demonstration of Particle Dreams in Spherical Harmonics in the CAVE2: the next-generation virtual reality and visualization hybrid environment for immersive simulation and information analysis.

Date: Thursday, November 1
Time: 2-4pm
Location: Gallery 400 Lecture Room

Join us for conversations on the history and influence of Chicago new media. Hosted by VGA Gallery and Gallery 400 to mark the opening of Chicago New Media 1973-1992, the symposium presents dialogues between participants in Chicago’s new media history and prominent media art history scholars.

Date: Thursday, November 1
Time: 5-8pm
Location: Gallery 400

Join us to celebrate the opening of Chicago New Media 1973-1992 at Gallery 400.  Chicago New Media 1973–1992 chronicles Chicago’s contributions to new media art by artists who worked at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Electronic Visualization Laboratory (UIC’s EVL), the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), and Midway Games and Bally.