About the exhibition

The Practices in Proximity: Learning and Unlearning from Pedagogical Experiences exhibition brings CAPE teaching artists and invited creative practitioners into a dialogue about their pedagogical experiences. The sites, scenes, and social engagement of learning—whether formal, informal, institutional, or autonomous—impact how the artists negotiate collective spaces and their personal creativity. Manifesting in various ways, artistic concern toward teaching and learning is a nuanced experience defined by proximity to others in improvisation and uncertainty. 

Participating artists: Alberto Aguilar, Kayla Anderson, Molly Cranch, Design Studio for Social Intervention, Eseosa Ekiawowo Edebiri, Flor Flores, Katie Giritlian, Kimi Hanauer, Andres Hernandez, Niema Qureshi + Betsy Zacsek, Kirsten Leenaars, Jennifer Mannebach, Jessica Mueller, Timothy David Rey, Emilie Robinson, Greg Ruffing + Brandon Alvendia, Laura Sáenz, Public Collectors, and Gwendolyn Terry.

Curated by media artist, writer and educator Josh Rios.

Exhibition on view from September 10, 2024 – January 17, 2025. Gallery hours 10 AM-4 PM Tuesday-Thursday or by appointment.

Meet the artists and join the exhibition’s exploration of the layered influences of pedagogical environments. Opening reception Friday, September 27, 5-8 PM, RSVP here. 

Read the exhibition’s press release here.

Stay tuned for monthly public programs!

Selected artworks

About the curator

Josh Rios is a founding member of Sonic Insurgency Research Group and a faculty member at the School of the Art Insti­tute of Chicago where he teaches courses in social theory and research-based practice. As a media artist, writer, and educator his projects deal with the histories, presents, and futurities of Latinx and Chicanx subjects. Recent projects have been featured at the Institute of Contemporary Art (Portland, ME), Locust Projects (Miami, FL), Charlotte Street Foundation (Kansas City, MO) and the Vincent Price Art Museum (Los Angeles, CA) Recent publications include “Photographs from the Fields: The Digital Activism of the United Farm Workers” in Reworking Labor (2023), “Sonic Legal Spaces: An Essay of Overdubs” for Columbia University’s Academic Commons (2023). Other projects include a series of conversations and autonomous study groups about sound, power, and public space sponsored by March: A Journal of Art and Strategy. Upcoming exhibitions include, The place where the creek goes underground at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, made in collaboration with Deanna Ledezma and Anthony Romero. @realitycheckrios

About the artists

Alberto Aguilar 

Alberto Aguilar is a Chicago-based artist that uses life stuff as a pliable material to create a meaningful connection with the viewer. This could include language, everyday objects or actual situations he finds himself in. Through their reconfiguration, subversion and juxtaposition a new meaning emerges. He doesn’t distinguish his art practice from other various life roles which provides freedom allowing him to be more careful and present in situations. @albert0aguilar

Kayla Anderson

Kayla Anderson participates in the art world as an artist, writer, a sometimes-curator, and a roaming educator. Their visual work has been shown at itinerant spaces in the US, Canada, Vietnam, Singapore, Germany, and Australia, and often investigates the ways that human culture and subjectivity are shaped by (and shape) science and technology. 

Their writing has been published by Art & Education, Temporary Art Review, Leonardo Journal, Kustlicht Journal, Aperture Magazine, and various artist-run platforms. They approach art criticism as a testing ground for developing new relations, ethics, and worldviews, with a particular interest in post-colonial post-humanisms. 

Growing up in Texas, where capitalism and disenfranchisement are more relentless than the sun, they value art as an arena for non-strategic modes of thinking, feeling, and communing with others. @kaylanderson12

Molly Cranch

“My name is Molly Cranch and I am a children’s book author-illustrator, artist and educator. I am a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis (BFA), The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (K-12 Art Education), and am currently working towards my MA in Illustration from Falmouth University.

My art and illustration is characterized by gestural marks, soft colors and a sense of light and atmosphere. Blurring the line between abstraction and realism, I have developed a painterly yet playful style. Subject matter might include closeups of animals, birds or small creatures or figures in motion. My nature-inspired paintings have been exhibited in galleries and museums all across the United States, and I have also taught painting and drawing to youth in public and private schools for over 20 years. I have a special interest in arts integration, STEM-based learning, and connecting with social-emotional learning.
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Both my teaching and my professional art practice have profoundly influenced my creative direction as a picture book author-illustrator. I am excited for the release of my first picture book (a STEM-focused book) titled Hide-and-Seek by Clavis Publications in 2024.” @mollycranch

Design Studio for Social Intervention 

The Design Studio for Social Intervention partners with communities, artists, and social justice practitioners to imagine, demonstrate, and collectively rebuild places to be more just and vibrant. We function as a creativity lab for social justice work in the public sphere. The Studio is a space where activists, artists, academics and the larger public come together to imagine new approaches to social change and new angles to address complex social issues. We also design social interventions that engage populations in imagining and designing new solutions to social problems. @ds4si

Eseosa Ekiawowo Edebiri

“I am an interdisciplinary artist from the Bay Area, currently based in Chicago, where I received my BFA from The School of the Art Institute.

My work focuses on the more challenging conversations we may have out in the world while taking a softer approach to the topic, while not adding to the ever-growing desensitization of the trauma of it all. Whether discussions on intergenerational trauma, autonomy, or conversations on health and wellness, the way we approach the topic is essential. That is why I  take this tactile approach, focusing the materiality on what is often plush to touch. The color palette reflects this softness with its bright, child-like innocence, in an attempt to soothe my inner child and perhaps yours as well. While I have been playing with the balance between soft and hard, some recent work has been more lighthearted. I am interested in playing with space, time, and a sense of what could be where or when are you going or are you coming? Often playing on the uncanny and the nostalgic. Picture a re-creation of a physical therapy room or a childhood bedroom. They’re similar, yet never the original.” @eseosaedebiri

Flor Flores

Flor Flores is a transdisciplinary artist and poet based in Chicago, whose creative works explore the concept of queer belongings. Their art often incorporates themes such as flowers as a symbol of self (Flor), Kiki – a queer monarch butterfly who enjoys going to the discotheque, and “”X”” – an epic poem about the letter X, delving into its significance in Latinx identity and its various uses as a gesture of erasure, inclusion, voidance, and a placeholder for a language that is yet to come. 

Flor has recently exhibited at Everybody & Good Naked Gallery and has been featured in reviews and publications such as Artmaze, Sixty Inches From Center, New American Paintings, and Newcity Art. They are currently represented by Good Naked Gallery. Flor has also performed at venues including the Poetry Foundation and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. In addition to their artistic practice, Flor is an editor at Kiki Club Editions and has recently published “”Kiki: A Sky of Changing Lights.” @flor__flores__

Katie Giritlian

Katie Giritlian (she/her) has been a book maker and photo historian since she made her first scrapbooks at age 8. Katie works with artists, community organizers, educators, cultural centers, and young learners to design settings—publications, workbooks, and workshops—to shift imaging practices towards loving observation while exiting from legacies of extractive capture. Her imagination is indebted to SWANA (South West Asian + North African) cooperative photo studio practices established in homelands as well as in the scattering of diaspora. Katie is the organizer of “paper cameras press,” a publishing platform for developing experimental curricula to study photography practices. Katie received her B.A. in Art History from Barnard College, and her M.A. in Visual and Critical Studies from School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is heavily taught by her community of friends. @katieg93 @paper.cameras.press

Kimi Hanauer

Kimi Hanauer is an artist, media-based organizer, facilitator, and writer. Kimi is a founding collective member of interdisciplinary publishing initiative, Press Press (est. 2014), and the founding steward of nomadic political education school, Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry (est. 2021). In their practice, Kimi co-develops pragmatic-poetic initiatives as scaffolds for collective autonomies. Their interdisciplinary projects take various responsive forms, including installations, performances, videos, texts, programs and printed matter. As an Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute’s Graduate and Undergraduate Communication Design Departments, Kimi teaches courses in expanded publishing and collective cultural practices. Informed by anarchist and abolitionist frameworks, their work as a facilitator and educator aims to deepen our collective capacities for self-governance, belonging, solidarity and carre. @kimi_hanauer @practice_liberation

Andres L. Hernandez

Andres L. Hernandez is a Chicago-based artist, designer, and educator who re-imagines the environments we inhabit, and explores the potential of spaces to support creative production, public dialogue, and social action. Hernandez is a member of the performance collective Dark Adaptive with artists Torkwase Dyson and Zachary Fabri. With Dark Adaptive, he codeveloped movement and sound works presented at the Drawing Center, the Museum of Modern Art’s Pop Rally series, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts; Colby College, the Sharjah Biennial 14, and most recently for Pace Gallery’s inaugural Pace Live initiative presented in collaboration with the Performa 19 Biennial.

Niema Qureshi + Betsy Zacsek

Niema Qureshi is an interdisciplinary artist and Assistant Professor, Adjunct at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her research focuses on engaging underrepresented youth in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math). @niema_art

Betsy Zacsek has been a Teaching Artist since 2011.  She is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago who has created and curated art in galleries, moving trucks, public spaces, parks, and schools. @thebetsyz

Kirsten Leenaars

Kirsten Leenaars is an interdisciplinary video artist based in Chicago. Various forms of performance, theater, and documentary strategies make up the threads that run through her work. Her work oscillates between fiction and documentation, reinterprets personal stories and reimagines everyday realities through shared authorship, staging, and improvisation. Leenaars’ work has been shown internationally at venues including The Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City; The Haggerty Museum of Art, Milwaukee; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Printed Matter, Inc., New York; the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; and Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin. She currently is a Professor in the Department of Contemporary Practices at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. @kirsten_leenaars

Jennifer Mannebach

Jennifer Mannebach is a Chicago based artist, curator, and Gallery Director. Her work addresses boundaries, remnants and where things collect. She has exhibited at the Hyde Park Art Center, Flatfile Gallery, Jack Olson Gallery and others, nationally and internationally. She has been a visiting artist at The American Academy in Rome, and more recently, an artist in residence at Playa Summer Lake in Oregon. Mannebach received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she subsequently taught for 6 years. She is an adjunct professor at Concordia University Chicago and North Central College, an Artist/Researcher with CAPE, and the Director for the O’Connor Gallery at Dominican University. Awards include the Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, CAAP grants, IAC grants, and the Governor’s International Arts Exchange Grant. Recent exhibits include two-person shows-Fissures, at Boundary in Chicago, and Thresholds at OS Projects in Racine, WI. @mannebach_art

Jessica Mueller

Since 2004 Jessica Mueller has been a teaching artist with Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE), working in Chicago Public Schools. Jessica holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and is a member of the Chicago ACT Collective and MotherArt: Revisited. She exhibits locally and nationally, and her work is part of the permanent collections at the School of the Art Institute’s Flaxman Library, Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, Columbia College’s Center for Book and Paper Arts, and the Library of Congress. Jessica is a recipient of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) 2019 Heart of Gold Award and is a 3Arts 2021 Make A Wave grantee and Sante Fe, New Mexico based the dots between fellow. Recently, she was an artist in residence at WORKROOM and PO Box Collective in Chicago, Nido II; Living in the Play, Monte Castello di Vibio, Italy and Poor Farm Little Wolf, WI. @jessicamuellerart

Timothy David Rey

Timothy David Rey is a playwright and performer. He is a semi-finalist in the Eugene O’Neill National Playwright Conference in 2023. The Monologue Play is a 2022 and 2023 recipient of the Survive and Thrive Grant from the Changing Worlds/Arts Work Fund. His work has been presented in Chicago for decades, most notably at the Poetry Foundation, Steppenwolf Theater Lookout Series, and Curious Theater Branch’s Rhino Fest. @timothydavidrey

Emilie Robinson

Emilie Robinson is a Chicago based Artist with a focus in photography & videography. She was born and raised in the south suburbs of Chicago and earned her BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2022. Although she is usually busy with her part time teaching and wedding photographer jobs, she makes plenty of time to snap photos and take self portraits during her free time. Being in front of the camera and composing an image is how complicated feelings are processed for her. This form of expression has manifested into a passion of self portrait photography that she will never be able to give up. @absent_artistt

Greg Ruffing + Brandon Alvendia with contributions by over 30 artists and non-artists

Greg Ruffing is an artist, writer, and curator based in Chicago. He was previously a co-organizer of artist-run projects such as Public Access (Humboldt Park) and The Perch (Pilsen). Additional curatorial projects have been featured at the Terrain Biennial, Co-Prosperity Sphere, Chicago Artists Coalition, Donnelly Foundation, SPACES (Cleveland), Zaller Gallery (Cleveland), and elsewhere. He is currently a PhD student in the Art History program at Northwestern University. @sketchesfordusk

Brandon Alvendia, an artist, curator, and educator, actively promotes artist-run initiatives across North America, fostering community-driven exhibitions, events, and publications. As Co-Founder of artLedge, BEN RUSSELL, The Storefront, and Silver Galleon Press, he served as Independent Curators International’s Curatorial Research Fellow in 2021, focusing on projects in the Mississippi River Basin. He also spearheaded the revival of the MDW project, expanding its reach across the central Midwest to support a growing ecosystem of hyperlocal art scenes from the region, working together to build lasting coalitions of purposeful, artist-led action. In addition to his curatorial work, Brandon has extensive teaching experience at institutions including the School of The Art Institute, UIC, and Columbia College, all located in Chicago. Brandon holds degrees from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Additionally, he has participated in programs such as the Copycat Academy in Toronto and the ICI Curatorial Intensive in New Orleans.@alvendia1

Laura Sáenz

Laura is a mother, teaching artist, cultural researcher, and facilitator from Mexico City with a background in Dance/Choreography and Visual Communications. She lives and works in Chicago creating arts integrated curriculum in Chicago Public Schools with CAPE (Chicago Arts Partnership in Education), designing cultural community research for her independent research company Bilingual Bolero, creating movement for film/video, and is a national oral history facilitator for StoryCorps. @fullspectrumfeatures

Laura es madre, artista docente, investigadora cultural y facilitadora proviniendo de la Ciudad de México con experiencia en Danza/Coreografía y Comunicación Visual. Vive y trabaja en Chicago creando curriculum integrado con las artes para las Escuelas Públicas de Chicago con CAPE (Chicago Arts Partnership in Education). Diseña estudios de mercado para comunidades Latinoamericanas en EEUU para su compañía de investigación independiente Bilingual Bolero, crea movimiento para películas y videos, y es facilitadora bilingüe nacional para la organización de historia oral StoryCorps.

Public Collectors

Marc Fischer is the administrator of Public Collectors, an initiative he formed in 2007. Public Collectors aims to encourage greater access and scholarship for marginal cultural materials, particularly those that museums ignore. Public Collectors’ work includes the Library Excavations publication series and web project, the Tumblr blog and publication series Hardcore Architecture about underground music in America, and Malachi Ritscher—a project about the late Chicago documentarian and activist, produced for the 2014 Whitney Biennial.  In addition to Public Collectors, Fischer is also a member of the group Temporary Services (founded in 1998) and a partner in its publishing imprint Half Letter Press (ongoing since 2008). Temporary Services and Half Letter Press have produced over 125 publications and Fischer has created nearly 85 publications under the Public Collectors imprint. He is based in Chicago and was worked for CAPE as a teaching artist for over a decade. @libraryexcavations

Gwendolyn Terry

Gwendolyn Terry is a Chicago-based visual artist who received her BFA from the University of Colorado. Her work ranges from large-scale installations to sculptural objects to digital graphic storytelling. Gwendolyn’s commissioned works and large-scale installations have appeared in solo shows, universities, and national exhibitions, as well as operatic, theatrical, and dance productions. She has also worked to develop and mentor students and emerging artists through collaboration and integration. Over the past decade, she has been a teaching artist with CAPE, partnering with  Chicago Public Schools to help integrate the arts into the core curriculum.