BODY POLITICS  Opening Reception Fri.  Jan 7, 5-8pm; Virtual Opening  Sat.  Jan 8, 4-5pm (via Zoom)

JUROR: Ginny Sykes

In January 1973, Roe v Wade dramatically extended women’s options for bodily autonomy. Notwithstanding, women’s bodies remain a battleground – not just around reproductive health, but in myriad other areas, including (but not limited to) decisions around consent, safety, employment and beauty. Roe v Wade faces new threats to its existence – leaving reproductive rights in ever greater peril. Beginning with the policing of women’s bodies, and expanding to examine all forms of body policing and discrimination, ARC will host a juried exhibition in January 2022 to address these themes. Body politics shape the socio-political climate and affect basic human rights, from the #metoo movement and rape culture, to domestic violence, to gender politics, and right down to the politics of hair in the classroom and workplace.

EXHIBITING ARTISTS: 

Nelson Armour, Elizabeth Ashe, Jenny Balisle, Bea, K. Johnson Bowles, Danqi Cai, Jeanne Ciravolo, Lauren DeRosa, Abigail Engstrand, Sarah Fitzgerald, Kate Forer, Ghislaine Fremaux, Elizabeth Hall, Sharon Harper, Lydia Kegler, Delphin Keim, Gina Lee-Robbins, Beth LeFauve, Theresa Lucey, Sally Machlis, Bette McAvoy, Fiona McCargo, Socorro Mucino, Heather Saunders, Suzanna Scott, Randi Shepard, Dafna Steinberg, Li Turner, Darlene Tyree, Kathy Weaver, Gary L. Wolfe, Christine Wuenschel, Tina Ybarra, Alex Younger

ABOUT THE JUROR:

Ginny Sykes is an interdisciplinary artist utilizing performance, video, sculpture, painting, installation, ceramics and more. Her personal and political approach to art incorporates a Jungian and feminist perspective, working with symbol and myth to critique patriarchal codes that have occupied and over-determined artistic content through much of history. Resisting prescriptive and institutional classifications of a universalized female experience, Sykes instead asserts and affirms the complexity of identities women negotiate. She employs a poetic, layered, and visceral aesthetic across the genres of her practice to suggest the transforming and healing potential of art, and to invite new cultural, emotional, and psychological understandings. An example of this is Sykes’s recent project 100 Women: Collaborations Beyond the Veil, which commemorates the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, granting women the right to vote. Through a photographic and performative lens, 100 diverse women posed for Sykes to create a contemporary visual archive of women on the subject of liberty.

Recent selected exhibitions include Art Performing Festival, Naples, Italy and Forte Marghera, Venice, Italy; Dryphoto Arte Contemporanea, Prato, Italy; Water Tower Art Festival, Soifa, Bulgaria; LACE, Los Angeles, CA; Legler and Woodson Regional Libraries, Chicago; Loyola University Art Museum, Chicago, IL; top Schillerpalais, Berlin, Germany; Saltillo Contemporary, Saltillo, Mexico; Pinacoteca Communale de Arte Contemporanea, Gaeta, Italy; and Can Gelabert Casal de Cultura, Mallorca, Spain.

Sykes has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Lill Street Art Center and the Evanston Art Center, and was a teaching artist for twenty five years, including After School Matters and the Illinois Arts Council. She has presented her work at the Jungian Institute International Conference and at the College Art Association Conference. She is a former board and advisory board member with Woman Made Gallery, has been a board member and core artist with the Chicago Public Art Group, and currently serves on the advisory council for the Sam Fox School of Art at Washington University. Sykes has co-created over 40 public artworks, including On the Wings of Water at O’Hare International Airport, and Rora at Erie Terrace on the Chicago River, which received an Honor Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects. She is recipient of several DCASE grants, a Chicago Percent for Art commission, Ragdale residencies, and Artegiro residency in Conzano, Italy.

Sykes holds an MA in Women Studies and Gender Studies from Loyola University, Chicago, IL, where she received a Community and Global Stewards Fellowship, and has a BFA from Washington University, St Louis, Missouri. She studied painting and art history for three years at Studio Cecil Graves in Florence, Italy. She divides her working life between Chicago, Illinois and Naples, Italy.

Opening Reception, Friday, Jan 7, 5:00-8:00pm

• Exhibition dates: JAN 6 – 29, 2022
• Gallery hours: Thurs & Fri – 2-6 pm,  Sat & Sun – 12-4 pm