Mutual Insurance Building
4750 N Sheridan Road, Chicago IL
Moving image works by Elena Ailes, Mark Alcazar Diaz, Kayla Anderson, Kioto Aoki, Qais Assali and Jose Luis Benavides, Leslie Crum, Norman W. Long, John Marks and Crystal Myslajek, Regina Martinez, Meida McNeal, Kristin McWharter, Curtis Miller, Zachary Nicol, Josh Rios, Oona Taper, and others, with new works added periodically. Please set an appointment to visit our media room, or view the works online through the links above.
Elena Ailes
urchin
Video, color, stereo
8 minutes 54 seconds
2018
Some thoughts and research materials include: the lowercase Latin alphabet letter of ‘m’ as a locus of pleasure and dissent (mmm being a universal sound of release and a call to pause, what does aaaaa mean?), the prospect of a theatre of objects as a site for exploring material intimacies, how to create an image sans single point perspective, objects that have been held accountable for the curve of their history, and self-orienting objects, such as shuttlecocks and satellites.
This short video work, urchin, is the first of a series of videos wading through these notions. The text and imagery in urchin is especially concerned with the ☄ shape in relation to traveling beyond with a sense of urgency and need: shuttlecock (the net), the larval urchin (the sea), the sputnik (the edge of the planet).
Elena Ailes (b. Albuquerque, NM) is concerned with the encounters, intimacies and discordances found between human (actions, bodies, histories) and nonhuman (thing, being, astral) worlds. She has presented her texts, videos, and installations widely, including at Apparatus Projects, the SculptureCenter, Randy Alexander Gallery, Sector2337, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and 4th Ward Project Space. She received her MFA in Sculpture from School of the Art Institute. She is interested in that which makes her a better person and a worse person, especially in theory. In reality, she is an artist and writer living and working in Chicago, and currently teaches at SAIC. For more information and work, please visit elenaailes.com.
Evergreen is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council Agency; Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation; Reva and David Logan Foundation; and Teiger Foundation.