8.25.2024 — 11.3.2024
Opening Reception: 8.25, 1-4pm
Can you see it? I'm trying to get a better view. Things aren't looking up lately, though I wish they would. I've been looking up every day. I read that it’s good for the mind. Look it up! Ask the sun. Read the clouds.
This Spring, I lived in Houston, where the most beautiful skies bloomed. Every morning, I walked by a field of grass where the great-tailed grackles gathered. My dad had told me about these birds, how they have this peculiar behavior of looking upwards and I often found myself joining them.
Growing up, my family owned an Audubon Society clock that announced every hour with a bird call. I remember eating breakfast when the song sparrow sang, and coming home from school when the northern cardinal called. Maybe that was the closest we got to letting the birds tell us how to live.
I always looked up to my dad. He could seemingly point at any bird and tell me its name. Now that I've left home, he shares his bird sightings in the family chat, with mom often replying in flowers. There’s a traditional genre of Chinese paintings called 花鳥畫 (flower-and-bird paintings) and I wonder if my ancestors’ group chat looked like this too, exchanging beauty between scrolls, talking through birds, as birds.
I think of the phrase 羽化 (yuhua), used to describe the moment a taoist becomes immortal, a euphemism to describe their passing. Taken literally, it is a changing of feathers; you are said to be riding on a crane to the West. But I was born here and find myself gazing towards the East, wondering if I should tell the birds to turn back. The business of plume hunting nearly brought the shorebirds to extinction. This is the reason the Audubon Society exists today. This is the reason the clock exists in our home.
The clock's speaker has since broken and the birds never call anymore. But it is not too late to look up and to listen for the birds ourselves. My friend Zandria tells me about the Sankofa, a bird that turns its neck back; it is a Ghanaian word that reminds us it is not too late to go back and fetch what we have forgotten. It is not too late to face East. It is not too late to see the sun rise once more. It is not too late to ask the sun what it has been painting.
Everything we want is in eye's reach but only for as long as we are looking. So try squinting your eyes, adjusting your head, and craning your neck further and further until you find yourself falling over backwards and upside down, and there you will see the world, changed. It will be frightening for a moment, but don't worry, falling and flying are not so different if you don't think too hard about the ending. All we have is now, so take your time flying, you're not in a rush.
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Hai-Wen Lin is a Taiwanese-American artist currently based in Chicago. They are an alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and earned a M.Des in Fashion, Body and Garment from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where they were selected as a Fashion Future Graduate by the CFDA upon graduating. They are a recipient of the Hopper Prize and have received fellowships from MacDowell and the Ox-Bow School of Art. Lin has performed publicly at the Chicago Cultural Center and MU Gallery and has exhibited work in a variety of places including Prairie, in Chicago; Queen, in Bellingham, Washington; the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles; the Pittsburgh Glass Center; the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art; the walls of their home; their friend’s home; on a plate; on a lake; on their body; in the sky.
4.14.2024 — 6.30.2024
Opening Reception: 4.14, 1-4pm
The works in Ai Kijima’s new show Wanderer’s Tales are probably best understood as sculpted paintings. In each she stitches together segments from a wide range of source textiles from around the world—Uzbek ikats found in Turkish bazaars, strips of indigo-dyed Japanese kimonos, Indian silk sarees—managing to reverently preserve phrases from the stories these fabrics tell, while collaging them to tell new stories of her own.
Like any true traveler, Ai Kijima is at home everywhere, but here is what weaves all the different strands of her border-crossing investigations into a single common thread: No matter where she is, no matter what culture her migratory mind is deep-diving into, Ai Kijima treats each scrap of fabric devoutly, as the elusive wisp of fragile dream-fluff it actually is. She gives every remnant, whether beautiful or banal, the benevolent kiss of her whole-hearted, absolute acceptance, granting each fragment a transcendent grace that can only be achieved through profoundly spiritual aesthetic acts of love.
Always lushly and intimately intricate, joyfully exuberant even when subdued, Ai Kijima’s work somehow manages to thread the needle between every category or label: the mundane and the sublime, East and West, art and craft, painting and sculpture. Like all the best artists she opens up meanings and opportunities where we least expect them, revealing unfathomed dimensions. Here, at long last, is a magic carpet ride through soul-nourishing, gently-tended never-ever-lands—the kinds we always need, but may have only dreamed of once upon a time.
4.14.2024 — 6.30.2024
Trust Yourself
This mural is a mantra for authenticity through self-empowerment. The woven letterforms intuit a journey of growth and self-discovery, illustrating the beauty found in embracing one's own identity. The message "trust yourself" fosters resilience through self-acceptance. This work encourages viewers to trust their instincts and follow their hearts in pursuit of their dreams.
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Tanner Woodford is founder and executive director of the Design Museum of Chicago. As an artist, he paints optimistic, typographic, and larger-than-life murals. His work has appeared at museums and galleries, and in public and private collections. As a designer, educator, and entrepreneur, he has taught, lectured, and led workshops on design issues, social change, and design history in classrooms and at conferences. He is happy to be scrappy, irrepressibly optimistic, and believes design has the capacity to fundamentally improve the human condition.
10.29.2023 — 1.28.2024
Justin Dougan-LeBlanc: Background Noise
Installation in five groups including video, 3d printed sculpture and found objects
People talk about core memories—memories that have impacted the trajectory of their personal journey. The artist, Justin Dougan-LeBlanc was born deaf. He is Deaf. His core memories are seen and defined through the lens of a deaf person. The collection of works on display explores the dialogue of the deaf experience through sculptural artifacts that capture his personal moments, feelings, and thoughts. Each work explores how people perceived the artist as a broken, crippled, or a lesser human. Society’s viewpoints only give the artist the opportunity to challenge, teach, and overcome with his unique stories that he will share.
Group #1: Can you hear me?
The collection of “Charlie Chimps” and spondee (two syllabi words) vocabularies are tools used in audiology in the 80s and 90s to determine if a child is deaf and how deaf they were. The monkey was the artifact that determined the artist’s identity as a deaf child by not looking at it when it was making a clashing sound with cymbals. It is a common object found in audiologist booths across America. The haunting stare and the aggressive motion of the monkey were some of the artist's earliest memories, as he was tested for his ability to hear. How can one comical object define the artist’s future as a deaf person? The artist revisited “Charlie Chimp” after three decades of not experiencing the object again to deconstruct, repurpose, and redefine what “Charlie Chimp” can be into a visual delight for the viewers.
Group #2: Do you understand?
This cluster of works explores the tension between spoken language and sign language. The artist identifies himself as a deaf man; however, he does not fit a traditional mold, because he speaks, and therefore finds himself in constant limbo. The collection of hands and artifacts creates a narrative of what is the right way, the cure, and what the artist was told to do to be hearing or deaf. The artist received a cochlear implant at age 18. These implants created a false sense of belonging for both the deaf and hearing communities.
Group #3: Can you see me?
This collection of busts and videos presents the idea of not matching the expectations of a hearing person and being left out of the dialogue intentionally. The bust explores the artist’s experience with strangers finding out that he is deaf and how they cannot take their eyes off his ears as if it is some kind of mutation, something that is broken. The video explores how the artist is neglected as a member of the deaf minority and, by default, excluded from many activities. We talk about invisible disabilities, but what do we do when those who have disabilities are left to be invisible? The artist’s statement is that he is not broken; he is just different from the expectations of society. It is up to society to change their lenses on how they can view those who are a minority.
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About Justin Dougan-LeBlanc
Justin Dougan-LeBlanc of Justin LeBlanc Design is a Deaf and Queer installation artist and textile designer. He is an Associate Professor of Fashion Studies at Columbia College Chicago where he teaches fashion and installation design. LeBlanc’s interdisciplinary career spans fashion, textile art, architecture, and technology. LeBlanc aims to push art and education forward by combining the strengths of emerging technology like 3D printing with the traditions of the hand. This knowledge and experience in multiple disciplines and his upbringings as a Deaf person allows him to exploit and fuse different approaches, resulting in artistic expression that cannot be conveyed by one discipline alone. All his works explores the topics and storytelling on Deaf Culture and LGTBQIA+. LeBlanc has been featured in a number of publications, exhibitions, fashion shows, and television in the United States and internationally. These include Mercedes New York Fashion Week, Marie Claire, Red Eye, The Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, USA Today, and The Face Magazine. He has competed on Project Runway and Project Runway All Stars. LeBlanc’s undergraduate degree is in Architecture from North Carolina State University, and his master’s degree is in Fashion Design and Installation from School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
4.28.2023 -
A Facility Artwork by Nick Cave and Bob Faust
This project commissioned by the Onassis Foundation as part of the Archive of Desire festival.
“Later, in a more perfect society, someone else made just like me is certain to appear and act freely.”
This excerpt from Cavafy’s “Hidden Things,” viscerally connects to human insecurities as well as the potential progress and empowerment. Each is simply attached to a certain time, place or situation, but all are reminders of the walls we build to keep ourselves safe, that without hard work, perseverance and vision for a greater future, can eventually become walls to keep us from truly living. ”Lit,” is a billboard-scaled expression of radical joy intended to refuel us on our way toward that more perfect society. It makes use of the cumulative powers of its components. The words, a Nick Cave soundsuit and the facade of National Sawdust itself. Originally created to conceal race, gender and class, Nick Cave’s soundsuits force a viewer to engage without preconceived judgment. They operate less as armor and more as a key to unlock one’s own full expression. Faust worked with Cave to select a performance still that would seamlessly integrate with the historic masonry. This one from 2003, is made of found materials including a vintage afghan, chainmail keychains, plastic beads and synthetic raffia. First worn as part of a series of “invasion-style” performances, this still comes from Cave’s film titled “Drive-By” that premiered in 2011 in the storefront windows, outside Cave’s former studio on the south side of Chicago. Cavafy’s words are skillfully integrated with the soundsuit as well as the building itself, taking advantage of the windows as a lightsource and frame for the “in a more perfect society,” to instigate the unofficial goal of the “Lit.”
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4.9.2023 - 8.9.2023
Katrin Schnabl, EWNS
Steel, felt, acrylic, mesh fabric
EWNS is an exploration of direction and dimension via line, texture, form, light and movement. Artist/designer Katrin Schnabl manipulates chroma-sheer fabrics through a process both mathematical and intuitive to “paint” portals, altars and spaces of memory that take the structured form of sculpture or the implied, functional forms of scrolls. EWNS is an initialism for East, West, North, South and will be a site specific project that repurposes sculptural pieces from Schnabl’s PORTAL and VOLUTION series and will be activated with moving bodies on occasion throughout its showing.
Opening reception April 16, 1-4PM with activations choreographed by Nicolas Blanc and performed by Evan Boersma, Lucia Connolly, Yumi Kanazawa and Davide Oldano at 2:15, 3, and 3:45PM.
Closing reception August 6, 1-4PM with activation by Nejla Yatkin.
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About Katrin Schnabl
b.1964, Germany; Katrin Schnabl is a multi-disciplinary artist, collaborator, and educator based in Chicago, Illinois, USA
I practice at the intersection of dance, fashion and visual art, exploring the sensory activation between space, movement and the body. I build membranes from sheer, tinted and assembled fabrics, aligning concepts to the human scale. These surfaces are then installed or can be worn, as well as specifically stretched over steel frames, where they become dimensional and kinetic paintings.
Centering the human body as a nexus and living instrument capable of amazing feats, I connect invisible with visible phenomena through an intuitive mathematical process which is expressed through pattern-tracing and -cutting; a non-verbal tool to process the complex, yet obvious matter of living and engaging with single-use plastics, chemical toxicity, and its chronic effects.
4.13.2023 - 4.13.2024
Niche Project viewable from the Addison Street sidewalk.
James Jankowiak, Happiness Is, Acrylic on wood panel, 2023
Happiness Is refers to a popular jazz song by the Vince Guaraldi Trio, and probably best known for being played in Peanuts cartoons. I approach my paintings, at least in my mind, as a musician might to song construction- I want to see the representation of a repetitive three note "pulse" of the piano, specifically, in that composition. The pink ground plays the left hand, and the blues and yellows are the right hand.
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About James Emmett Jankowiak
b. 1969
Chicago born artist and educator James Jankowiak’s current paintings and installation focuses on the role of color and familiar form as a means of communication in our day to day environment. His emotive abstract paintings and public artworks explore the intersections between color perception, visual rhythm, spirituality and music.
Jankowiak has utilized his painting practice as a vehicle for social engagement with Chicago communities as a teaching artist embedded in Chicago Public Schools. Jankowiak integrates contemporary art into a social and emotional learning model for students and teachers alike, using accessible, collaborative art practices, focusing on the process of making public works in public spaces.
Jankowiak has been the recipient of several grants and special commissions, including the Union Station Transit Center in the heart of Chicago, The Illinois Holocaust Museum’s Family Youth Center, and The Chicago White Sox. He is currently working with the Department of Cultural and Special Events of the city of Chicago on a new permanent public artwork for the West Town Public Library on the Southwest Side of the city, where he has been a lifetime resident.
6.6.2022 — 8.12.2022
A Facility art project by Bob Faust and Nick Cave
Your life has the power to effect change.
My life has the power to effect change.
Their lives had that power too ... until it was taken from them.
Help our kids see the power already inside themselves as so much greater than the power of a gun in their hand.
6.20.2021 — 8.20.2021
A Facility Artwork by Nick Cave and Bob Faust
Ways forward and the myriad means we use to get there are introduced to and absorbed by us through our parents, mentors and peers. The function as our filters as well as the signposts that illuminate our leaders and those we must resist. This collection, presented cumulatively, warms and connects us, providing a safe haven for making the critical and often difficult decisions that move us. “Ways and Means” was envisioned as a way to reenter shared spaces in the wake of George Floyd’s death and as the Covid-19 pandemic began to ebb.
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The City of Chicago Unveils New, Immersive Mobile Artwork along CTA’s Green Line
10.1.2021 — 10.1.2022
A Facility Artwork by Nick Cave and Bob Faust
Rapt on The Mile is designed to act as a multi-story beacon inviting Chicagoans and visitors from around the world to enjoy all that iconic Michigan Avenue has to offer. It was created from a single source photo from Nick Cave’s iconic soundsuit series applied to the building via a heat applied building wrap. Rapt is presented by The Magnificent Mile Association and EXPO Chicago in partnership with the City of Chicago, World Business Chicago, Choose Chicago, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
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6.19.20—
“As my heart continues to weep, my emotions continue to ask myself how I can be more purposeful. I rarely ask for your help but at this time I need yours.” — Nick Cave
AMENDS is a multi-component, community-based art project with the goal to eradicate racism—starting with self. Created by Nick Cave and Bob Faust and presented by Facility, it asks individuals to dig deep into themselves to acknowledge and take responsibility for their personal roles in the proliferation of racism through publicly shared confessions and apologies. It is a simple but personally confrontational act of looking in the mirror and acknowledging where each can each make necessary changes for the good of all people immediately, but even more so for the empowerment and success of our successors, our children.
The first component of AMENDS is a collection of handwritten, unapologetically transparent reflections from Chicago leaders titled “Letters to the World Toward the Eradication of Racism.”
Across the street at Carl Schurz Public High School, the project continues as a community-wide expression titled "Dirty Laundry." It asks any and all individuals to identify their own roles in racism and make amends with their fellow human beings by committing these apologies as personal commitments of change on yellow ribbons tied to a clothesline to create a public collection and initiate a community correction.
The final component asks for global participation in the form of a hashtag “#AMENDS.” It is not a call out, but rather a call to action through acknowledgement and subsequent change in each of us.
Make #AMENDS
"As Americans we are all aware that our country is founded on freedom. Black people know all too well the value of it, but white people actually get to feel it. Until all the unaccounted for racist actions are aired and real amends are made, with subsequent and sustained changes in the best interests of ALL, our American foundation is a false one. Those of us who come from especially privileged backgrounds have enormous responsibility in this moment. We must be more than allies, we must actively root out the truths so long buried and ignored, beginning with self. While policies must change, it is enlightenment and vulnerable acknowledgement with a willingness to change that begins and ends in each of our hearts that will finally put an end to racism." — Bob Faust
Thank you for your contributions to the project!
Akilah Haley
Amy Bluhm
Amy Eshelman
Angelique Power
Anke Loh
Carrie Lannon
Courtney Lederer
David Greene, Iron & Wire
Elisa Tenney
Ginger Farley
Justin Ahrens
Kahil El Zabar
Katrin Schnable
Lucy Slavinsky
Lulia Rodrigues
Marilyn Fields
Marshall Svendson
Michael Workman
Monique Meloche
Naomi Beckwith
Nathan Hoyle
Rob Rejamin
Sandro Miller
Stephanie Sick
Tanner Woodford
Tanya Quick
Tony Karmen
Vicki Heyman
Zoe Ryan
