December 15, 2020

High Concept Labs (HCL) announces 2021 Resident Artists: Propelled Animals, Lional Freeman aka Brother El, Aaliyah Christina, Tamara Cubas, Yoshinojo Fujima aka Rika Lin, Irene Hsaio, Ayako Kato, Sungjae Lee and Stella Lee, Sterling Lofton aka Steelo, Kristin McWharter, Aaron Wilder. Each will receive customized support through one of HCL’s newly defined programs, Artist in Residence (AIR), Fellow Artist in Residence (FAR), and the International LabX-change Artist in Residence (LabX).

HCL supports multidisciplinary artmakers who are committed to deepening their practice through artistic and cultural collaboration. Our three distinct programs ensure artists can access support across any stage of project or career development and allow us to tailor resources to the needs of each resident. Residents will develop their projects and have opportunities for public engagement including works in progress showing and workshops. HCL is honored to support these 2021 Resident Artists, who bring perspectives embedded in the voices, cultures, histories, and experiences from across Chicago, the US, Uruguay, Japan, India, Korea, France, and Burkina Faso.

HCL is emerging from a year of transformation in 2020. Early in the pandemic we committed to supporting our 2019 artists who had their projects interrupted by extending their timeline through year-end. Simultaneously, we focused internally on evaluating our programs and processes to build a more diverse, equitable, and responsive path forward.

“We at HCL are squarely focused on imagining a new way forward for creative workers and the creative economy – and we are guided by the artists in our 2021 residency.”, says Artistic Director Yolanda Cesta Cursach Montilla. “Every residency artist is looking beyond what we see and think we know about the community that raises us, the community we belong to, and the city and world we are a part of. They lift and build community in ways that are deeply reflective and bigger than the individual.”

HCL’s residency refinements include adjustments to its flagship AIR program, extending to a 12-month residency that allows for more in depth and individualized support. Artists are selected by a diverse, multidisciplinary panel of highly respected artists who are committed to mentorship throughout the residency year. Additionally, the AIR program offers select resources to artists engaging with Partners of HCL, which this year includes recipients of Chicago Dancemakers Forum’s 2020 Lab Artist Grant. HCL’s LabX program provides international artists opportunities for cultural exchange and is curated by HCL’s Artistic Director with a customized timeline and budget to meet the project’s needs. HCL’s FAR program provides space and shared marketing resources to Fellows of HCL who seek to expand the impact of their residency. Alongside the support of these programs in 2021, HCL will continue to envision and build a new foundation that is responsive to the evolving needs of artists.

For more information, please contact Missi Davis, Managing Director, at missi@highconceptlabs.org.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

AIR Program Participants:

• Lional Freeman aka Brother El is a composer, multidisciplinary creative, educator, and recognized expert in the Live PA field (electronic music for live performance). His creative practice converges with wellness. HCL is supporting the development of a participatory workshop series for all levels, produced as a live music set by Brother El and invited artists, and covering different genres and styles of electronic music for performance.

• Aaliyah Christina is a dancemaker and curator. Her practice focuses on the act of addressing and releasing past traumas, and the importance of self-care and self-love to shelter vulnerability and connection. HCL is supporting a series of workshops with a support group she is organizing, that culminate with a performance using personal archives to illuminate the range of the experience of Black American communities from a Femme perspective.

• Kristin McWharter is a multidisciplinary artist.  She examines how an embodied knowledge of social hierarchy is accessed in digital and virtual spaces, by exploring the possibilities of physical contact therein. HCL is supporting her development of a simulation of the American game of football rendered as an immersive sculptural installation and viewer-inclusive performance, to study the boundaries of social intimacy and competitive spirit.

• Aaron Wilder is an interdisciplinary artist. His practice synthesizes anthropology, sociology, and psychology to examine the relationship of masculinity to internalized forms of prejudice. HCL is supporting his installation for a gallery, which draws from video and audio recordings of conversations conducted over the year and incorporates original two-and three-dimensional objects.

Partner Artists of the AIR Program:

• Irene Hsiao is a Chicago Dancemakers Forum (CDF) 2020 Lab Artist, receiving no-cost studio space and marketing support through HCL’s Partnership with CDF. She is a dancer, writer, and multidisciplinary artist. Her research for the HCL residency was interrupted and ignited by the premature closure of the dual exhibition The Allure of Matter: Material Art from China at The Smart Museum and Wrightwood 659. HCL is supporting the continuation of her practice developed through repeated investigations in public spaces into the material, mortality, mark-making, and what it means to witness and undergo erasure.

• Sterling Lofton aka Steelo is a Chicago Dancemakers Forum (CDF) 2020 Lab Artist, receiving no-cost studio space and marketing support through HCL’s Partnership with CDF. He has been working to tell the story of Chicago footwork, a battle dance and music with roots in the 1980s, since 2014, when he co-founded The Era Footwork Crew. HCL is supporting Sterling Publishing Company (SPC), his new venture and named after Johnson Publishing Company (JPC), that draws on Black culture archives and fits pieces of Black history into choreography, costuming, and aesthetics. The culmination performance is planned for the Stony Island Arts Bank, the depository of the Johnson collection, and created with longtime collaborators Morris “DJ Spinn” Harper and filmmakers Wills Glasspiegel and Brandon Calhoun.

LabX Program Participants:

• Propelled Animals (Philadelphia, Chicago/Detroit, Burkina Faso, Pittsburg) are Esther Baker-Tarpaga, Barber, Boubacar Dijga, Raquel Monroe, and Heidi Wiren Bartlett. The collective is a culturally diverse group of visual artists, dancers, scholars, musicians, and designers. The members embed innovative and provocative art in unconventional spaces, through a process of workshops and participatory performance. HCL is supporting the development of UNLOCK: or how to practice the freedom of joy, designed to tour and which in Chicago unfolds as workshops hosted in Woodlawn and a participatory performance march through Washington and Jackson Parks, prodding the local body politic and building on the BlackLivesMatter and WaterIsLife movements.

• Tamara Cubas (Uruguay) is a choreographer, visual artist, and culture producer. She is recognized internationally for solo and large-scale participatory performances and immersive installations. HCL incubated earlier embodied interview workshops by Cubas with non-US born women residents of La Villita and Pilsen, and is supporting her synthesis of the essential material for Sculpting Silence/Womyn body (Esculpir el Silencio/Mujer cuerpo), an immersive installation for a theater that premieres in Chile at Santiago a Mil 2021, the largest international theater festival in Latin America. Acclaimed playwright Gabriel Calderón contributes dramaturgy.

FAR Program Participants:

• Yoshinojo Fujima aka Rika Lin has been making Yu, Japanese for “do something with joy” as a traditional Japanese dancer, choreographer, and increasingly a producer and curator for nearly twenty years. HCL is supporting several of Yoshimojo Fuijima’s projects in development, notably Kurokami - E {m} urge, eponymously titled for “Kurokami” (Black Hair), her latest work with master Shodo artist Hekiun Oda and musician Tatsu Aoki. Their collaboration intersects Japanese classical dance, calligraphy, and shamisen, respectively. In addition, Nozawa Matsuya, a Kabuki Gidayu Shamisen player in Kyoto, Japan, is contributing music for the performance; and Subhash Kumar Maskara, a filmmaker in Mumbai, India, will direct the filming.

• Ayako Kato is a contemporary choreographer and dancer. Her practice is in deep collaboration with music and grounded on the principles of furyu, Japanese for “wind flow”, as it relates to cyclical transformation and human motion in nature. Among several projects, HCL is supporting her development of the second and third part of ETHOS, an aesthetic and physical inquiry about an ideal ethos of humanity and how it is perceptible through dance. In addition, HCL is supporting her long-form experimental music and dance ensemble work with Suzuribako, a collaboration unit with violist Frantz Loriot (France/Japan) and saxophonist Sebastian Strinning (Switzerland).

• Sungjae Lee and Stella Lee are interdisciplinary artists, and often begin from written narrative in making performative sculptural work that explores spatial relationship, gender and race. Their collaborative practice took seed in 2019 during Stella Lee’s participation at HCL in Sungjae Lee’s Queer Asian workshop. HCL is supporting their weekly virtual meeting for somatic movement practice and critical readings of pivotal writers who trace and archive the history of queer, Korean generations, such as Todd A. Henry (Queer Korea), and their culmination a series of interventions in domestic and public space in Chicago and Seoul, where Sungjae Lee is temporarily based.

ABOUT THE RESIDENCY PROGRAMS

Artists are encouraged to shape each residency in ways that intersect with any combination of disciplines, collaborators, and communities. HCL prioritizes vision, mission, and fiduciary leadership that centers cultural and racial equity and inclusion.

• The Artist in Residence (AIR) program is HCL’s flagship, 12-month residency that supports artists to create time-based work. Artists receive stipends, no-cost studio space, and documentation, along with tailored curatorial, development, and marketing support. Artists are invited to apply through an annual open application and are selected by HCL’s 10-member juried panel. Certain slots may be curated by invitation from HCL’s Artistic Director.

  • Partners of the AIR Program: HCL additionally invites artists who are grantees of valued organizational partners to leverage select resources of this residency. Partner organizations have included Chicago Dancemakers Forum and 3Arts.

• The Fellow Artist in Residence (FAR) program invites Fellows of HCL to continue or return after a break since completing their AIR year to further their projects or deepen their practice. Fellows receive no-cost studio space and shared marketing resources, as well as tailored additional support based on the needs of the Fellow and alignment with HCL’s initiatives.

• The International LabX-change Artist in Residence (LabX) program presents opportunities for cultural and international exchange. Artists are curated by invitation and are supported on a unique, customized, and rolling basis based on the needs of each individual project. LabX artists receive stipends, and projects are fundraised for individually to support travel, housing, and/or additional expenses. HCL actively seeks partnerships to support LabX projects to further exchange opportunities and promote community involvement.

ABOUT HIGH CONCEPT LABS

High Concept Labs (HCL) strengthens the creative sector by providing accessible residency programs for artists across disciplines interested in experimentation, discovery, exchange, and risk. Through these residencies, HCL meets artists where they are while promoting visibility for the creative process and advocating for critical investment across every stage in the development of new work.

HCL is generously supported by The Walder Foundation, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, the MacArthur Funds for Arts and Culture at The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council, LYRASIS and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Saints, the Norwottock Charitable Trust, the Martha Struthers Farley and Donald C. Farley, Jr. Family Foundation, and individual donors. HCL is in residence at Mana Contemporary Chicago and receives additional space support by the Harris Theater for Music and Dance.

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HCL is based at Mana Contemporary Chicago at 2233 S. Throop St. Chicago, Illinois 60608.