Vexillum is the second community-hosted collection created by Roman Susan Art Foundation. Composed of artist-made flags and banners, this collection was introduced in December 2019 with works donated by Carolina Fernandez Del Dago, Nora Moore Lloyd, Nancy Lu Rosenheim, and Liz Weinstein.
Carolina Fernandez Del Dago | Minim | Fabric, paint, thread | 76’’ x 22’’ | 2019 | VX–01
Minim by Carolina Fernandez Del Dago was created for the Fall 2019 season of the Roman Susan series Woman's Club at 7077 North Ashland Boulevard, the location of the former Rogers Park Woman's Club.
Carolina Fernandez Del Dago is a Miami-born Cuban, Barranquilla-raised visual artist. Fernandez Del Dago previously shared with Roman Susan Art Foundation as a part of More Than A Place (2014) and Blueprints (2016). She currently works as a freelance artist and woodworker in Bogotá, Colombia. Her work has been exhibited in Barranquilla, Chicago, London, Prague, and Tucson. Her film and media work have been exhibited in outlets such as Ballroom Projects, BBC Latin America, Canal Telecaribe, Expanded View Cinema, Ex-TV, Las2Orillas, and Cine a La Calle Festival. Fernandez Del Dago attended The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, earning a BFA in Film, Video & New Media and a BA in Visual and Critical Studies in 2014.
This work may be hosted indoors or outdoors.
Nora Moore Lloyd | birchbark, wiigwaas | Print on polyester | 50’’ x 84’’ | 2019 | VX–02
birchbark, wiigwaas was created for the Summer 2019 season of the Roman Susan series Woman's Club at 7077 North Ashland Boulevard, the location of the former Rogers Park Woman's Club. Birchbark is best harvested in springtime, leaving evidence of its departure for the following seasons. Two photographs taken a century apart combine in this summer flag, honoring the indigenous practice of birchbark harvesting in the Midwest, specifically by the Potawatomi and Ojibwe Nations in the Chicagoland area, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Nora Moore Lloyd spent twenty years in the graphic design business and now expresses her passion for photography by focusing on indigenous cultures, nature, and documenting community or family history through traditional storytelling and photos. Moore Lloyd previous shared work with Roman Susan Art Foundation as a part of Property (2017). Her work has been exhibited at American Indian Center, Cahokia Mounds Museum, Chicago History Museum, Comanche National Museum, Field Museum, Mashantucket Pequot Museum, Museo Nacional de Etnografia y Folklore (Bolivia), Museo Nacional de Arqueologia y Ethnologia de Guatemala (Guatemala), State of Illinois Museum Gallery (Champaign, Chicago, Lockport, Springfield, IL), and elsewhere. For more information, please visit nativepics.org.
This work may be hosted indoors or outdoors.
Nancy Lu Rosenheim | Winter Burst the Steam Pipe! | Fabric, thread | 60’’ x 106’’ | 2018 | VX–03
Winter Burst the Steam Pipe! was created for the Winter 2018-19 season of the Roman Susan series Woman's Club at 7077 North Ashland Boulevard, the location of the former Rogers Park Woman's Club. This flag highlights the particular challenge of Chicago's wintertime climate for the aging buildings of our neighborhood, and the difficulties faced by new arrivals to the city unprepared for the harsh conditions. The flag honors the activism of the Rogers Park Woman's Club for its contributions to community welfare. The original settlers’ village of Rogers Park was incorporated in 1873, joining Chicago in 1893 – two years after the founding of RPWC. Throughout the community's history, Rogers Park has been the home to thriving organizations that welcome immigrants and refugees.
Nancy Lu Rosenheim is an interdisciplinary artist who has maintained studio practices in New York City, Granada, Spain and Chicago, IL. Rosenheim has previously shared work with Roman Susan Art Foundation as a part of Community Area One (2014). Selected exhibitions include Slow, Hyde Park Art Center, Dickson Window Project Space, Roman Susan, Fine Arts Gallery of Northeastern Illinois University, Anchorage Museum of Art, Alaska, Galería Cartel and Galería Verlín in Granada, Spain and Singer Sweat Shop in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Rosenheim is founding director of The Bike Room, where she has showcased forty-nine emerging and established artists since 2011. For more information, please visit nancylurosenheim.com.
This work may be hosted indoors or outdoors.
Liz Weinstein | Hot Dog Flag | Print on polyester | 58’’ x 92’’ | 2019 | VX–04
Hot Dog Flag was shared during the Spring 2020 season of the Roman Susan series Woman's Club at 7077 North Ashland Boulevard, the location of the former Rogers Park Woman's Club. The flag was first created for the 2019 Terrain Biennial – sited one mile west of the Oscar Mayer mansion at 1030 Forest Avenue, Evanston.
Born and bred in the Midwest, Liz Weinstein is a photographer, printmaker, doodler, and mycology enthusiast with a BA from Columbia College Chicago and a Masters of Library Science from the U of I Champaign-Urbana. Much of her work is motivated by genealogy, gender, Holocaust studies, folklore and craft, trees, ghosts, slime molds, the Northwoods, and allrecipes.com.
This work may be hosted indoors or outdoors.
Angela Lopez | Bodies of Water | Fabric, thread | 45’’ x 62’’ | 2018 | VX–05
Bodies of Water was created for the Fall 2018 season of the Roman Susan series Woman's Club at 7077 North Ashland Boulevard, the location of the former Rogers Park Woman's Club. Lopez has previously shared work with Roman Susan as one of the organizers of the Extended Practice project Firsts and Starts: Art-Making as a New Mother (2018) and in the moving image series Streetlight (2014-2019).
Angela Lopez has exhibited her work in across the Midwest, including solo exhibitions at Charlotte Street Foundation, Demo Projects, and Wedge Projects, in addition to group exhibitions including the Mary & Leigh Block Museum of Art, Hyde Park Art Center, and Centro de Produccion y Edicion Grafica de Buenos Aires in Argentina. She holds a BFA from Kansas City Art Institute, and an MFA from Northwestern University. Lopez is a founder of the artist-led collaborative project Extended Practice. For more information, please visit lopezangela.com.
This work may be shared indoors or outdoors.
Maryam Taghavi | بیست و چهار هفت | Fabric, thread | 36’’ x 54’’ | 2019 | VX–06
بیست و چهار هفت was created for the Winter 2019-2020 season of the Roman Susan series Woman's Club at 7077 North Ashland Boulevard, the location of the former Rogers Park Woman's Club. The flag contains three words in Farsi, which may be translated as: Twenty Four / Seven. Taghavi has previously shared work with Roman Susan through a video installation project Untitled (2018).
Maryam Taghavi is a Tehran-born artist currently residing in Chicago. She employs a post-studio, site-specific practice to weigh and intervene in existing modes of production. She is interested in an interchangeable role as both observer and participant, and locates agency in the role of the trickster. As a maker, she never pretends to be wholly outside of the taxonomies and fantasies produced by art institutional structures. Her work could be seen in a lineage of institutional critique that seeks to demystify and explicate contemporary art’s relationship to labour, production, and discourse. She has exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions such as LAXART, Queens Museum, Exterressa Museum, Chicago Cultural Center, Sullivan Galleries, and Sazmanab Gallery among others. Her work is interdisciplinary, existing in photography, installation, video, publication, drawing, and performance. For more information, please visit maryamtaghavi.com.
This work may be hosted indoors or outdoors.
Kandis Friesen | Nie Täne | Digitally printed flag | 36’’ x 60’’ | 2020 | VX–07
Nie Täne is a digital scan of three stones I carried home, taken from the crumbling foundation of the former Lenin monument in my grandparent’s village of Molochansk, Ukraine. Like an excerpt from a larger text, they stand here flattened into image and blowing in the wind: letters from an opaque alphabet, new teeth with which to speak. Monuments are public architectures, and their stone bases speak a geological time, as if the figures they hold emerge from the earth and history is written in stone. If a flag marks territory or allegiance, let this one mark a fealty to disintegration, a dedication to building in the ruins. When language fails and colonial infrastructures still stand, it is here where new narratives are formed: let them fall, let them fall, we will know what to do with them in the after.
Translated from the oral Russian Mennonite language, Nie Täne means ‘new teeth’.
– Kandis Friesen
The image above is the design for the final work created for Woman's Club. Originally planned for Summer 2020 at 7077 N Ashland Blvd, this work will enter our community-hosted flag collection and debut at a residential address on August 18, 2020. This work may be hosted indoors or outdoors.
Kandis Friesen’s work is anchored in diasporic language, dispersed translations, and disintegrating archival forms. Drawing on Russian Mennonite, Ukrainian, and formerly Soviet geographies, her compositions build from architectural, material, and spectral inhabitations of exile, amplifying minute and myriad histories at once. Her work has been exhibited and screened internationally, at venues including LUX (London, UK), Plug In ICA (Winnipeg, CA), Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, US), MIX (NYC, US), and Festival international du film sur l’art (Montréal, CA). Her videos are distributed by Groupe Intervention Vidéo in Montréal. For more information, please visit kandisfriesen.com.
This work may be hosted indoors or outdoors.