Curation of the show Performative Acts of the Everyday at DfbrL8r Gallery, Chicago.

Performative Acts of the Everyday (May 16th, DfbrL8r Gallery at Zhou B Art Center, Chicago) takes the form of a digital archival collection with images and videos that redefine or enhance aspects of every day; looking for the absurdity, humor, and the uncanny in the mundanity, appropriating digital language, approaching random quotidian acts from anthropological and geopolitical perspectives creating intergenerational and transnational dialogues. The digital archival takes a physical form as a one on one multimedia experience where the works are projected along with the multidimensional room in dialogue with one another, expanding and occupying the space. It includes the works of artists Ayshia Taskin, Benna G. Maris, Gabriel Embeha, Kim Thornton, Lucas Priest, Maeline Li, Marquisha Lu, Nina Davies, Noah Fields, Sasha Asensio, Shahar Tuchner, Transalien, and Ouroboros_Occultus. Performative Mundane acts of the Everyday emerges as an exploration of the context of the pandemic, a time that has offered new opportunities for production that have been important to open dialogues not only on our relationship with the mundaneness and the household but also on the nature of creation and art. The performativity of every day such as common acts of communication or the temporal dynamics of the routine have exposed and transcended the bases of art itself and have reminded us that art indeed mimics, enhances, emphasizes, and exaggerates reality. But most importantly, they have evidenced the intuitiveness, primitivity, playfulness, and democratization of the role of art and of the act of art-making. Away from the studio spaces and the professional art tools, driven by the boredom and limitations of the covid restrictions; people have abandoned their own “I'm not an artist” complexes and embraced the “do it yourself”, embarking themselves in crafting and creative Odysseus, sometimes just for therapeutic purposes, yet demonstrating the importance of the self-taught artist. Art should escape the confinements of academia and blur its boundaries with reality. Driven from the work of Nathan Jurgenson The Social Photo and Baudelaire´s understanding of the role of photography in the understanding of art, life, and social communication, Performative Acts of the Everyday inquire in the digitalization of language, new modes of communication, and intergenerational dialogues. Performative Mundane Acts of the Everyday takes the form of a digital archival collection and a multimedia experience with images and videos that redefine or enhance aspects of every day; looking for the absurdity, humor, and the uncanny in the mundanity, appropriating digital language, approaching random quotidian acts from anthropological and geopolitical perspectives creating intergenerational and transnational dialogues. While the exploration of humor, language, digitalization of information, and absurdity are prevalent throughout the exhibition, they often crossover with geopolitics, domesticity, anthropological approaches, symbolism, mysticism, gender analysis, and a dissection of the home(land). Performative Acts of the Everyday has multiple crossed dialogues between a different set of artists, they all explore humor, absurdity, domesticity, language, and identity in the mundaneness. The inclusion of different levels of artistic background, gender, geopolitical, intergenerational, and interdisciplinary approaches are essential in reflecting a more accurate and whole view of the mundaneness. Site: https://www.performativeactsoftheeveryday.com/collection ​ ​