Still Here: Torture, Resiliency and the Art of Memorializing
Exhibition Dates: March 15-April 26, 2019
Exhibition Opening:
Friday, March 15, 2019 | 6:00-8:00pm | FREE
Arts Incubator Gallery, 301 E Garfield Blvd., Chicago, IL | FREE
Presented by
Arts + Public Life and Chicago Torture Justice Memorials
Curated by
Hannah Jasper, Independent Interdisciplinary Curator, Arts + Public Life Exhibition Coordinator
Artists
Monica Chadha/Nelly Agassi, Juan Chavez, Sonja Henderson, Andres Hernandez, Preston Jackson, and Patricia Nguyen/John Lee.
Still Here is an exhibition showcasing six design proposals submitted by commissioned artists which will become the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial. The public memorial brings awareness to the torture of more than 120 Black men and women from 1972 to 1991 by the Chicago Police Department under the direction of former Police Commander Jon Burge. The memorial is intended to honor the decades-long struggle for justice, as well as the survivors, families, and communities targeted by Burge and his midnight crew.
The public memorial is one component of the historic Reparations Ordinance passed on May 6, 2015. Chicago is the first municipality in the United States to provide reparations for racially-motivated law enforcement violence. Six artists were invited to submit proposals to produce an ambitious, permanent public artwork to honor named and unnamed torture survivors. The artists are Monica Chadha/Nelly Agassi, Juan Chavez, Sonja Henderson, Andres Hernandez, Preston Jackson, and Patricia Nguyen/John Lee.
The winning design proposal will be selected by a team of jurors comprised of torture survivors, artists, community activists, cultural workers, architects, educators, and individuals in the philanthropic community. The selected proposal will be announced in the spring of 2019.
ABOUT CHICAGO TORTURE JUSTICE MEMORIALS
The memorial project was developed by artists, lawyers, survivors, educators and activists with the group Chicago Torture Justice Memorials (CTJM). CTJM started meeting in 2010 with the goal of imagining what a public memorial could be in the city that acknowledges and condemns the violence in the Burge torture cases while also embracing the struggle of those who endured the torture and fought against it from prison cells to Chicago’s streets. CTJM studied memorials to survivors of state violence from other nations and held workshops across the city, asking artists and residents. After receiving and exhibiting over 70 speculative memorials to the Burge torture cases, CTJM co-founder Joey Mogul (Partner, People’s Law Office) drafted and filed the reparations ordinance in Chicago’s City Council in the fall of 2013. CTJM then joined with Project NIA, We Charge Genocide, and Amnesty International, USA, to build a human rights campaign that organized tirelessly through the aldermanic and Mayoral election in 2014-2105 to succeed in getting the reparations legislation, including the creation of public memorial, passed in May of 2015.Since the passage of the legislation, CTJM has worked with several individuals and organizations to implement the legislation, and the last remaining plank of the legislation to be realized is the public memorial.
For more information about the Reparations Report Card and Burge survivors memorial, visit
https://www.chicagotorture.org/
facebook.com/chicagotorture
twitter.com/ChicagoTorture