Exhibitions
Through My Lens: Justin Cooper Access
Exhibition Description
Text of exhibition description:
Through My Lens: Justin Cooper chronicles the artist’s wanderings and engagements with various accessible and inaccessible sites in Chicago’s neighborhoods and beaches. A wheelchair user, Cooper employs photography as an evidentiary tool that addresses issues of access during the COVID-19 pandemic. This streetside exhibition brings attention to the ways disability is defined by societal, environmental, social, and physical barriers that restrict leisure and quality life for people with mobility impairments. With the exhibition’s locale, Gallery 400’s windows on Van Buren, Cooper’s images invoke viewers to consider their lived experiences in navigating a world that privileges normalcy and able-bodied-ness. Through My Lens is presented in conjunction with Crip*.
Audio file of verbal description:
Straight Down Franklin, 2020 texts, verbal descriptions, and audio description
Text of verbal description of the artwork:
A view down the middle of Franklin Street, entirely empty of cars. The street is covered by the industrial elevated tracks of the “L” train. Patterns of light dapple on the empty gray street, creating an interplay of light and shadow. A single pedestrian crosses the expansive street.
Audio file of verbal description of the artwork:
Inaccessible, 2021 texts, verbal descriptions, and audio description
Text of verbal description of the artwork:
A scuffed concrete city curb, a yellow plastic accessible ramp, and the distance between the two. Beyond the curb is a sidewalk, with a tree trunk, and the edge of a fence.
Audio file of verbal description of the artwork:
Beach Ramp, 2021 texts, verbal descriptions, and audio description
Text of verbal description of the artwork:
A view of the Chicago skyline from the middle of North Avenue Beach. In the center of the beach is a soft blue plastic ramp, with sand on either side. At the end of the ramp is a building that looks like a boat, with white walls, porthole windows, and bright red steam pipes. An American flag blows in the wind against a pale blue sky.