Andrea Bowers at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Artist: Andrea Bowers

Venue: Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA), Chicago, US

Date: November 20, 2021 – March 27, 2022

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

This winter, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago presents the first major retrospective of Andrea Bowers, highlighting two decades of the artist’s wide-ranging practice focusing on pressing social and political issues of our time. The Los Angeles-based artist has built an international reputation for her impressive large-scale installations, detailed color pencil drawings, and impactful videos that deal with topics ranging from women’s and workers’ rights to climate change and immigration. Collaborating with individuals and groups directly organizing around urgent issues, Bowers foregrounds the struggle for justice across many movements and generations of activists. As part of Andrea Bowers, the MCA is working with Chicago-based organizations A Long Walk Home and Centro Sin Fronteras to present their work in dedicated galleries in the exhibition and in public programs. Co-produced with the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the exhibition is organized by former MCA Chief Curator Michael Darling with Hammer Museum Chief Curator Connie Butler and is on view in Chicago from November 20, 2021 to March 27, 2022. The exhibition travels to the Hammer Museum and is on view there from June 5 to September 11, 2022.

Bowers is a chronicler of contemporary history, documenting activism as it unfolds and collecting research on the frontlines of protest. By studying the methods, means, and materials of protest, Bowers focuses on the people leading and participating in public discourse. Her practice celebrates individuals’ tenacity and capacity to influence longstanding social, political, and environmental issues.

The retrospective includes powerful works that often feature the voices of activists themselves. Her recent work My Name Means Future features Tokata Iron Eyes, a young Indigenous rights activist whose ancestral lands are threatened by the Dakota Access Pipeline project. Finding beauty, humanity, and ingenuity in these stories of protest, Bowers’s empathetic practice highlights the people fighting for a more just world.

Bowers is inspired by feminist art movements of the 1960s and 1970s and the ways performance, graphic design, and textiles were used to advance women’s rights, and looks at those movements through the lens of current feminist thinking. Works in the exhibition such as Soft Blockade (Feminist Barricade) and Design of Choice (My Body My Choice with Stripes) highlight Bowers’s ongoing research into feminist causes, from the Suffragette movements at the beginning of the twentieth century, to abortion rights in the 1970s, to the calling out of sexual violence against women in the 2010s. Addressing LGBTQ activism and transgender advocacy, the exhibition also features a set of portraits of empowered women titled Trans Liberation: Building a Movement.

Visitors are drawn into the exhibition by bright and colorful neon works in the museum’s fourth floor lobby with slogans drawn from popular statements of protest, for example Educate, Agitate, Organize and Families Belong Together. One neon work features a tree with glowing green leaves and the phrase ‘If we don’t do the impossible, we shall be faced with the unthinkable,’ addressing today’s environmental concerns.

With her roots in Los Angeles—a city shaped by its large immigrant population—Bowers’s work has organically developed a focus on issues of immigration and labor. Bowers’s environmentally-scaled suite of drawings, No Olvidado – Not Forgotten features hundreds of names of individuals who lost their lives crossing the US/Mexico border. Another work, Work Table with Feminist Political Graphics showcases protest posters with slogans such as ‘Dignity. Safety. Justice.’ stacked on a table for visitors to review, resembling the materials used in grassroots organizations for immigration and labor movements.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Andrea Bowers (b. 1965) lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Her recent solo exhibitions include grief and hope, Museum Abteiberg, Germany (2020); Light and Gravity, Weserburg Museum fur modern Kunst, Germany (2019); Hammer Projects: Andrea Bowers, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2017); Womxn Workers of the World Unite!, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (2017); Andrea Bowers: Sanctuary, Bronx Museum, New York (2016); In Situ 1 – Andrea Bowers, Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton, Paris (2014); #sweetjane, Pomona and Pitzer College Museum of Art, Claremont, (2014); The Weight of Relevance, Wiener Secession, Vienna, traveled to The Power Plant, Toronto (2007). Recent group exhibition include: Agora, The High Line, New York (2018); Power to the People. Political Art Now, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (2018); Documenta 14, Fridericianum, Kassel (2017); La Terra Inquieta, Triennale di Milano, Milan (2017); The Revolution Will Not Be Gray, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2016); Drawing Now, Albertina, Vienna (2015). Bowers’s work is held in the collections of The Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Museum Abteiberg, Moenchengladbach, Germany, among others. Bowers earned her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1992.

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE

A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition. Published by Delmonico Books with MCA Chicago and the Hammer Museum, the catalogue presents a wide-ranging survey of Bowers’s work to date and investigates some of the key, longstanding interests that have guided her practice. Critical pieces from writers of various backgrounds and fields, including Deena Metzger, Lucía Sanromán, Lucia Allain, and Julia Bryan-Wilson, position Bowers’s pratice in the context of the movements, histories, and struggles that make up these broader concerns. Accompanying these illuminating texts are full-color illustrations of works, including a selection of Bowers’s well-known neon sculptures and large-scale installations, as well as numerous other drawings, paintings, photographs, and video works. With a foreword by MCA Director Madeleine Grynsztejn and Ann Philbin, the catalogue is edited by the exhibition curators Michael Darling and Connie Butler.

MCA PARTNERS

Piloting a new model for engagement that shares the MCA galleries with community organizations, the museum presents the work of A Long Walk Home and Centro Sin Fronteras in two rooms in Andrea Bowers. The MCA extends the themes of Bowers’s work by showcasing archives and recent projects from the organizations, presented in collaboration with MCA staff and Teen Creative Agency (TCA). Centering partner voices throughout the run of the exhibition, the MCA hosts public programs in conversation with leaders and participants from A Long Walk Home and Centro Sin Fronteras about their ongoing work and mission.

ABOUT A LONG WALK HOME

A Long Walk Home is a Chicago-based national non-profit that cultivates the next generation of leaders committed to gender equity and racial justice. Founded in 2003 by sisters Salamishah and Scheherazade Tillet, A Long Walk Home works with artists, students, activists, therapists, community organizations, and cultural institutions to elevate marginalized voices, facilitate healing, and activate social change. A Long Walk Home empowers young artists and activists to end violence against all girls and women by advocating for racial and gender equity in schools, communities, and the country at large.

ABOUT CENTRO SIN FRONTERAS

Centro Sin Fronteras is a Chicago-based grassroots activist organization at the forefront of challenging policies for the rights of laborers. Founded in 1987 and based in Humboldt Park, Centro Sin Fronteras brings together diverse Latin American communities across Chicago and provides resources to laborers who need assistance with taxes, legal representation, and emergency assistance. Their community organizing work was the focus of Andrea Bowers’ film “Sanctuary.” Today, the organization focuses efforts to unify migrant families and support legislative and community tools to hold families together.

RELATED PROGRAMS

All programs are free or pay-what-you-can with registration.

Talk: Andrea Bowers

Friday, November 19 at 5:45 pm on Facebook Live

For the opening of her exhibition, Andrea Bowers engages in a conversation with exhibition curators Michael Darling and Connie Butler.

Talk: Sanctuary in Chicago and Centro Sin Fronteras

Tuesday, January 11 at 6 pm on Zoom and Facebook Live

In tandem with the exhibition Andrea Bowers, the MCA presents Talk: Sanctuary in Chicago and Centro Sin Fronteras. Established in 1986, Centro Sin Fronteras is a Chicago-based grassroots activist organization that champions the rights of workers and laborers. Led by Pastor Emma Lozano, the organization works with community members to bring attention to workers’ rights. Within the Bowers exhibition, Centro Sin Fronteras is presenting objects selected from their archive and a history of their work. Along with activist Elvira Arellano, their community organizing work was the focus of Bowers’s film “Sanctuary.” For this discussion, Arellano and Lozano join Borderless magazine co-founder Michelle Kanaar and Chicago-based artist Jonathan Michael Castillo for a discussion around sanctuary in Chicago, the organization’s legacy, and their ongoing activism. This talk is presented online in English with Spanish translation.

TCA and A Long Walk Home: Fruits of Our Labor

Saturday, December 18 from 1 to 4 pm in the Commons

Teen Creative Agency (TCA) and A Long Walk Home invite audiences to Fruits of Our Labor, a celebration of perseverance and community with music, games, performances, activities, and tabling from local community organizations. Visitors are invited to visit the TCA and A Long Walk Home reflection spaces within the current Andrea Bowers exhibition that are the result of a year and a half long collaboration. Fruits of Our Labor reflects on joy, childhood, and play, and makes space for youth voices that speak out in the struggle against oppression and erasure.

Talk: Art and Activism with Andrea Bowers, John Quigley, and Marcos Ramirez ERRE

Tuesday, February 1 at 6 pm in Edlis Neeson Theater and on Facebook Live

Join a lively and intimate conversation between Andrea Bowers, whose mid-career survey is currently on view at the MCA, and two of her close friends, John Quigley and Marcos Ramirez ERRE.

Talk: Art and Activism in Latin America

Tuesday, February 15 at 6 pm in the Commons, streamed to Zoom and Facebook Live

Unpacking themes in Andrea Bowers, this program brings together community organizations and panelists across a range of disciplines for a discussion on the convergence of art and activism in Latin America.

Installation view, Centro Sin Fronteras in Andrea Bowers, MCA Chicago \ November 20, 2021 – March 27, 2022 \ Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

Installation view, Andrea Bowers, MCA Chicago \ Work shown: A Long Walk Home, The Black Girlhood Altar \ November 20, 2021 – March 27, 2022 \ Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

Installation view, Andrea Bowers, MCA Chicago \ November 20, 2021 – March 27, 2022 \ Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago Installation view, Andrea Bowers, MCA Chicago November 20, 2021 – March 27, 2022 Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago