In the Leather Archives exhibition, Aay Preston-Myint exhibited their work Dirt/Work, which illustrates the archival process of leather culture. The artist writes, “Archives are one of many ways in which we focus our gaze and ascribe taste and class to material culture. Our community is simultaneously removed from and a product of retrograde and orthodox notions of what it means to be fit, to belong, to be beautiful, to be part of history. Dirt/Work is an attempt to start working through this frustrating paradox.”
For this installment, Jennifer Patiño Cervantes corresponded with writer and artist H. Melt about documenting the trans community, their artistic practice, and their experience exploring the Newberry Library’s Chicago Protest Collection to create new pieces for this project. You can find their recently published book of poetry, “On My Way to Liberation,” here.
In this segment, Christina Nafziger sits down with Ivan LOZANO in his studio to discuss his experience working with Media Burn Archive, the work he has been creating influenced by these materials, and the continuous, deep-rooted relationship his practice has with archives.
For this installment, we sat down with Catherine Grandgeorge, the archivist from the Newberry Library’s Chicago Protest Collection. The Chicago Protest Collection builds on the Newberry Library’s strong collection documenting social and political activism in Chicago and the Midwest and seeks to collect “an enduring record of the many individual voices and personal expressions of Chicagoans participating in public demonstrations in the city or elsewhere.” It accepts physical protest ephemera as well as digital donations.
This interview, conducted by Sabrina Greig, will be contributed to D. Denenge Duyst-Akpem’s file at the Chicago Artist Files at Harold Washington Library.
This interview of Roell Schmidt, conducted by Annie Morse, a curator and Senior Lecturer in Museum Education at the Art Institute of Chicago, will be contributed to Links Hall’s file at the Chicago Artist Files at Harold Washington Library.
