In conjunction with Compositions, on view at the Institute of the Arts and Sciences (IAS), Maria Gaspar’s sculptural renderings of the jail’s fragments will be sonically and visually activated through performances over the course of the exhibition. These events will periodically make present the histories of people so often occluded by carceral structures and suggest new modes of transforming the wreckage of the present through art.
Audiences are invited to a talk in which Gaspar will present her artistic practice, as well as a live performance from the acclaimed composer and theorist James Gordon Williams, assistant professor of music at UC Santa Cruz. Williams will perform an improvised musical piece using sculptures made from the fragments of the Cook County Jail. This sprawling space of imprisonment covers 96 acres on Chicago’s West Side and is one of the largest concentrations of incarcerated people in the country. Long a subject of Gaspar’s work, it was the site of a series of community-engaged art projects from 2012–2016.
ADMISSION
- Free and open to the public
PARKING
- Free parking is available at the Institute of Arts and Sciences Galleries.
- Accessible parking on High Rd.