To Scatter What Remains
1224 W Loyola Ave, Chicago IL
May 30, 2025 - June 15, 2025
Opening Friday, May 30 from 6-9 PM
Reading and Workshop Sunday, June 8 from 2-4 PM with Natasha Mijares
My artistic practice centers around transforming everyday objects into anthropomorphic forms, where the material world splits and reconverges, entangling matter to flow, move, and propel forward. I cut, snip, paint, stitch, construct, integrate found objects, building materials, and manipulate steel into corporeal assemblages. This process responds to the embodied and disembodied experiences inscribed with societal expectations and norms.
The materials and processes I use symbolize the cyclical nature of transformation, where rupture and repair coexist. I look for the space between fragmented and whole, a dialogue between separation and growth. The splitting of cells, the cutting and breaking of form, is not merely destruction but a process of creation, renewal, and life. The unruliness of nature finds its balance and flow, shaping and bending to reveal harmony. Control, in this context, disrespects the natural order—the non-order that exists between growth and decay, rupture and repair. It is in this space of seemingly contradictory forces that my work exists.
Through exploring an aesthetic of repulsion and attraction, I hold a space for the tension between fragility and strength, trauma and renewal, and tenderness and violence. It reflects how knowledge and understanding are intertwined with history, culture, and power. By delinking from the logic and grammar of modernity and coloniality, I carve out a space for alternative epistemologies and ways of knowing. The materiality of my work acts as a metaphor for how bodies are transformed, exhausted, and reclaimed in the face of oppression.
–– Lauren Flaaen
Lauren Flaaen (b. Los Angeles, CA) holds an MFA from Yale School of Art in Painting and Printmaking. Their work has been exhibited at the Metal Museum, Memphis; the Logan Center, University of Chicago; SAIC Galleries; Bard Fisher Arts; Roman Susan; Woman Made Gallery; Terrain Exhibits; and Stay Home Gallery. A recipient of the Richard Welling Scholarship, the Yale Pathways Fellowship, the Joseph and Emily Gidwitz Scholarship, and the FIRE (Foundry Invitational + River Exhibition) Scholarship, their work has also been featured in the Vassar Review (2022) and Emerge Journal (2023).