Inscape Arts Open Studios - Fall/Winter 2023 Recap
Big thanks to everyone who came out to our Fall/Winter Open Studios event and all of the artists and vendors who made the whole thing possible!
Thanks also to the building’s new management company Urban Worklofts, who welcomed guests with coffee and pastries!
Photos by Kirsten Mohan
The event marked the opening of Tracy Tsutsumoto’s new installation Freedom and Dignity Over Fear in the building’s foyer:
Freedom and Dignity Over Fear - Tracy Tsutsumoto
Freedom and Dignity Over Fear features 72 jumpsuits, one for each year the building operated as the Immigration and Naturalization Services, silk-screened with words in a typeface designed by Tsutsumoto based on tar graffiti left by past detainees on the building’s second floor courtyards.
The installation represents the voices and experiences of immigration detainees both in the past and present, including the artist’s own family members who were imprisoned there on December 7, 1941, and in the Minidoka WWII incarceration camp.
The project was produced by the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience.
Photo by Kirsten Mohan
And our Artists-in-Residence Sabella Flagg and Ching-In Chen shared work they’ve been developing during their residencies.
Sabella Flagg created works memorializing her great-grandmother’s decaying Chicago home, utilizing the photographs and other artifacts she brought back from a visit documenting the house for a reconstruction loan. The works explore grief, loss of home, and the process of rebuilding, not only a place to call home but a state of being at home.
In collaboration with Cassie Mira, Ching-In Chen worked on the creation of a communal Breaths archive which highlights creative strategies of survival for BIPOC and trans/nonbinary/intersex/gendercreative communities, alongside community rituals and stories. You can view some of the rituals and stories in the Breathing in a Time of Disaster archive here: https://uwb.ds.lib.uw.edu/breathinginatimeofdisaster/
Thanks again to one and all; please stay tuned for info about our upcoming Spring Open Studios!
