Cocktail Reception for Opening Passages at 6018|North
Exhibition Opening
6018|North, Edgewater, Chicago
Join us for the vernissage of the exhibition Opening Passages : Photographers Respond to Chicago and Paris at 6018|North, where you’ll have the opportunity to meet the artists and curators in person. This event promises to be an enriching experience, offering insights into the creative processes behind the captivating works on display.
This exhibition is part of a multisite project produced by Villa Albertine and its City/Cité program. It is also part of Art Design Chicago, a citywide collaboration initiated by the Terra Foundation for American Art that highlights the city’s artistic heritage and creative communities.
At 6018|North, the works of five photographers will be exhibited: Jonathan Michael Castillo and Gilberto Güiza-Rojas focus on the notion of work, Rebecca Topakian and Marion Poussier question the border or margin, and Marzena Abrahamik takes an interest in the Polish community in Chicago. Each of them, in their own way, highlights multiple, fragmented, or superimposed life trajectories. These works find a particular echo in the Edgewater neighborhood, which is characterized by the cohabitation of communities of very diverse origins.
Marzena Abrahamik
Recipient in 2023 of the Chicagoland Seen grant commission funded by the Chicago chapter of the Albertine Foundation.
In Return Abrahamik chronicles stories of migration in reverse, based above all on the experience of Polish immigrants, like her and her family. After decades of building a life in Chicago, some are returning to Poland in retirement to access lower costs of living and a public healthcare system. To channel these complex processes of cultural translation and identity formation, Abrahamik’s images speak through a grammar of symbols tied to Polish life, whose meaning is at once fixed and fluid.
Maria Jan Paweł II, series Return, 2020, ©Marzena Abrahamik
Jonathan Michael Castillo
Recipient in 2023 of the Chicagoland Seen grant commission funded by the Chicago chapter of the Albertine Foundation.
Jonathan Castillo has been capturing immigrant-owned shops across Chicago and its surrounding suburbs. The series Immigrant Owned resists the classifying impulse of a documentary survey, instead offering an eclectic mix of the people and places he encounters in his exploration of the city.
Yuzhen, Yummy Yummy Noodles, Chicago (Chinatown), series Immigrant owned, 2022, ©Jonathan Michael Castillo
Gilberto Güiza-Rojas
2018 laureate of the national photographic commission Regards du Grand Paris (Views of the Grand Paris), led by the Ateliers Médicis in collaboration with the Centre national des arts plastiques (Cnap).
In Gilberto Güiza-Rojas’ series Territoire-Travail (Territory-Work), workers perform an idealized vision of manual labor superimposed against remote urban backdrops, representing what he calls “gestures of insertion.” Through these staged performances, individuals re-enact gestures tied to their former occupations against transformed settings, hinting at the vestiges of their former lives.
Afpa, responsable d’entreprise de transport, série Territoire Travail [Afpa, Transportation Manager, series Territory-work], 2018, ©Gilberto Güiza-Rojas
Marion Poussier
2021 laureate of the national photographic commission Regards du Grand Paris (Views of the Grand Paris), led by the Ateliers Médicis in collaboration with the Centre national des arts plastiques (Cnap).
The various redevelopment programs of the banks of the Saint-Denis Canal in Paris have made this changing territory a difficult space to inhabit. However, in these spaces undergoing a process rationalization process, certain forms of life resist and oppose the uses to come. Bodies assert themselves and gestures persist, like a claim to ownership of the place. The title of the series On est là refers to the notion of “being there” that the artist wishes to capture.
Canal Saint-Denis, En mai brûle ce qu’il te plait, série On est là [Canal Saint-Denis, burn what May, Aubervilliers, series We are here], 2021 ©Marion Poussier
Rebecca Topakian
2021 laureate of the national photographic commission Regards du Grand Paris (views of the Grand Paris), led by the Ateliers Médicis in collaboration with the Centre national des arts plastiques (Cnap).
Halfway between a scientific undertaking and a poetic reverie, Rebecca Topakian’s series (n=6-9) explores the Greater Paris area through exotic birds: the rose-ringed parakeets. Escaped from Orly airport in 1974, they have multiplied to over eight thousand. With ethologists, the artist captures their flight using infrared photography. She draws parallels between the discourse on these exotic birds from sub-Saharan Africa and Asia that have settled in Paris, and the discourse on other migrations, this time of human beings and the pejorative terminologies that surround them.
c’est une famille de plus à nourrir, série (n=6-9) [that’s one more family to feed; series (n=6-9)], 2021©Rebecca Topakian
Since 2021, the Paris-Chicago dialogue has been flourishing under the umbrella of “Clichycago,” with the support of the Ateliers Médicis in Clichy-sous-Bois / Montfermeil (France) and the Chicago branch of Villa Albertine. It is conceived as a platform for community-based cultural exchange and artistic experimentation.
In partnership with
6018|North
Founded in May 2011, 6018|North is an artist-centered, sustainable, nonprofit platform and venue for innovative art and culture. Located at 6018 North Kenmore in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood, 6018 North encourages artists to collaborate and reconfigure its intimate space. This intimacy allows artists and audiences to connect in transformative ways. At home and away in other non-traditional spaces, 6018North’s site-specific exhibitions and events include artists performing, creating installations, and directing communal engagement events.
Terra Foundation for the American Arts
In partnership with organizations and individuals locally and globally, the Terra Foundation fosters intercultural dialogues and encourages transformative practices to expand narratives of American art. Art Design Chicago is an initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art in partnership with artists and organizations across the city that highlight the city’s artistic heritage and creative communities.
Ateliers Médicis
Located in Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil, in the Seine-Saint-Denis department, the Ateliers Médicis endeavors to promote new and diverse artistic voices. Its artistic residencies, open to artists working in any artistic field, support the creation of works conceived in collaboration with French territories and fosters encounters between artists and inhabitants.
Centre national des arts plastiques (Cnap)
The Centre national des arts plastiques (Cnap) is a public institution under the French Ministry of Culture. It manages over 105,000 works from France’s national contemporary art collection, the Fonds national d’art contemporain. It aims to support and promote artistic creation in France, and assists artists and art professionals with their projects.
Institut français
The Institut français is responsible for France’s international cultural program. Supervised by both the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs and by the Ministry of Culture, it promotes French culture abroad through cultural exchange initiatives. Operating in a space where the arts, intellectual exchange, cultural and social innovation, and linguistic partnerships interact and intersect, it is also responsible for promoting the French language and the sharing of works, artists, and ideas all over the world. The Institut français is one of Villa Albertine’s main French partners.
JCDecaux
JCDecaux operates coordinated street furniture franchises in major cities across the U.S., including here in New York. It is continuously working to connect information to stakeholders and identify municipal innovations to enhance the livability and sustainability of streetscapes. A member of the JCDecaux Group, the number one outdoor advertising company in the world, which through its three business segments – street furniture, transport and billboard, has engaged in a virtuous, sustainable business model since its founding in 1964.
Learn more.
Picto New York
Picto was created in Paris in 1950 by Pierre Gassmann, a true pioneer of photography. Since then, Picto has become a leading partner of the world’s most famous photographers as well as the most prestigious brands in the world of fashion, luxury and beauty.
As part of its international expansion, Picto New York was open in 2015. Picto New York services professional photographers’ needs from scanning, retouching, printing and framing images as well as global luxury brands’ needs for image production, prepress and traffic.
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