SIDEBAR: Devin T. Mays, Caroline Kent, Theaster Gates & Zachary Cahill
Please join us for a special Sidebar conversation with artists Devin T. Mays and Caroline Kent in conversation with UChicago Professor Theaster Gates and the Gray Center's Zachary Cahill. Visit the Gray Center's homepage for a link to the Livestream premiere at 7:00pm on October 20. The video will be available to view from October 20 - 27, 2021.
The conversation is captioned. Presented by the Rebuild Foundation and the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry.
About the artists
Caroline Kent’s work is included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, among others. Her work has been exhibited at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; California African American Museum, Los Angeles; The Flag Art Foundation, New York; Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles; Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Chicago; Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco; and Soap Factory, Minneapolis, among others. Kent has received a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant; McKnight Fellowship for Visual Arts; Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant; and Jerome Foundation Fellowship. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Artforum, Art News, The Chicago Tribune, The Art Newspaper, Sixty Inches from Center, and Newcity Art. Kent received her M.F.A. from the University of Minnesota and her B.S. from Illinois State University. The artist is represented by PATRON Gallery, Chicago; Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles; and Casey Kaplan, New York. Kent lives and works in Chicago.
Devin T. Mays holds a BBA in International Business and Marketing from Howard University. After receiving his degree, he worked in advertising developing brand strategies and commercials for the better part of a decade. He returned to school to pursue an MFA (2016) in studio practice from the University of Chicago. There, he developed an interdisciplinary practice he often refers to as an investigation of the infinite, a practice-in-participation, a practice-in-practice. Since then, he has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Photography; Lowe Art Museum, University of Florida; Nahmad Projects, London; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago; Regards, Chicago; and the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, among others.
Theaster Gates lives and works in Chicago. Gates creates work that focuses on space theory and land development, sculpture and performance. Drawing on his interest and training in urban planning and preservation, Gates redeems spaces that have been left behind. Known for his recirculation of art-world capital, Gates creates work that focuses on the possibility of the “life within things.” Gates smartly upturns art values, land values, and human values. In all aspects of his work, he contends with the notion of Black space as a formal exercise – one defined by collective desire, artistic agency, and the tactics of a pragmatist. Gates has exhibited and performed worldwide. He was the winner of the Artes Mundi 6 prize and a recipient of the Légion d'Honneur in 2017. He was awarded the Nasher Prize for Sculpture 2018, as well as the Urban Land Institute’s J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development. Gates is a professor at the University of Chicago in the Department of Visual Arts and the College and serves as the Senior Advisor for Cultural Innovation and Advisor to the Dean.
Zachary Cahill is an artist based in Chicago and is the Director of Programs and Fellowship at the University of Chicago's Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry. Cahill is also the founding editor in chief of Portable Gray, the Gray Center's journal published twice a year by the University of Chicago Press.