Events

View times

Michael Cunningham, Claire Burke Dain, Erin Lynch, Catherine Lyu, Elias Mendel, Naeemeh Naeemaei, Billy Tucker, Justyna Wąsik

The culminating work of eight students in the MFA program in the UIC School of Art and Art History.

Michael Cunningham (b. 1982,  Long Beach, CA) is a Chicago based interdisciplinary artist, writer, traveler, chef, musician and educator. His works are meditations on the concept of home, both as a place of dwelling and a site of loss and longing. His sound-based sculptures and performances reveal the potential and aesthetic value of play through collaborative practices.

Claire Burke Dain (b. 1995, Chicago, IL) is a Chicago-based painter born and raised in Chicago. In the past couple of years she has had solo and two person exhibitions, including “Drifting Back to Dreamland” at Compound Yellow, “Fondage” at Purple Window and “Do You Love Me Now” at Rubberneck Gallery. She makes paintings that include planes, trains and automobiles.

Erin E. Lynch (b. 1996, Chicago, IL) is an artist and filmmaker working with 16mm film, video, sound, installation, and text. Drawing on film theory, psychoanalysis, and camp, her work explores spectatorship, humor, and multispecies life through genre cinema’s formal slippages. She was named a 2025 Artist To Watch by Comfort Station. Instagram: @erinelizlynch

Catherine Lyu is a Chinese artist currently based in Chicago. She is a multidisciplinary artist, and her practice explores languages as words, images, and objects. She uses bodily knowledge like memory, sensory, emotion, and thought process to guide her decisions in art making. Her works are attempts to treat language spatially, physically, and bodily.

Elias Mendel (b. 1998, London, UK) is an interdisciplinary artist, archivist and educator who makes videos, sculptures, drawings, writings and performances. He is interested in the intersection between memory, roots, and the abyss and examining legibility, language, and diaspora. Mendel draws from a vast family history and archive.

Naeemeh Naeemaei (b. 1984, Tehran) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores ecological grief, folklore, and reconstructed memory. She has exhibited in museums and galleries internationally, and her work has featured in essays and on the covers of Leonardo, Sonic Acts, Dark Matter, Animal Studies Journal, Banyan Review, Walker Reader, and Orion.

Billy Tucker (b. 1980, Chicago, IL) – I grew up in poverty and still struggle with connection to place. While researching the Eisenhower Expressway I’ve learned how its site embodies displacement and warmth in its material lessons through observation, collaboration, and curiosity.

Justyna Wąsik works across film, sound & practices of everyday life. She created the post-artistic festival Polish Soundtrack with Krzysztof Kaczmarek & Łukasz Jastrubczak. Her works were featured at MESS Festival in Sarajevo, Edinburgh Fringe, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Dream Factory in Ostrava. Author of lyrics for Boring Drug & cli-fi, sonic love story of Lake Michigan & Baltic. Instagram: @polishsoundtrack