Never The Same
Chicago artist and activist Daniel Tucker and Art Historian Rebecca Zorach expand a project entitled Never the Same which, since 2010, has sought to archive and document the history of Chicago’s rich storehouse of politically and socially engaged art practices.
In conjunction with the exhibition Unfurling: Five Explorations in Art, Activism and Archiving, Never the Same invited Extinct Entities, an artistic/curatorial collaborative, to present three commissioned performances by Alexandria Eregbu, Tomeka Reid, and Baraka de Soleil. Each artist was asked to create a new work inspired by the Affro-Arts Theater—a South Side art space initiated by Kelan Phil Cohran and others in 1967, and closed at the insistence of the city in 1968. Extinct Entities is a collaborative project by Erin Nixon, Anthony Romero, and Anthony Stepter that investigates possibilities for reengaging with art spaces that no longer exist. A free publication produced in collaboration with Brandon Alvendia will be available throughout the run of the exhibition.