Hyde Park Art Center, the renowned non-profit hub for contemporary art located on Chicago’s vibrant South Side, presents free public programming to celebrate the Pride month: Art of Pride, Now in its fifth year, the event returns with an afternoon of queer joy, radical imagination, and collective celebration, with programming ranging from a queer artist vendor market, artmaking, film screening, live DJ, to explorations of queerness in the natural world. An all-ages, family-friendly event, Art of Pride takes place on Sunday, June 7, 12 – 4 p.m. Registration is encouraged at hydeparkart.org and walk-ups are also welcome.
This intergenerational event brings together LGBTQ+ artists, performers, makers, and community organizations from across Chicago to honor the transformative power of art and the brilliance of the queer and trans communities. This year’s programming includes:
12:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Film screening: Chicago Underground in Motion
The Chicago Underground Film Festival presents Chicago Underground in Motion, a 48-minute looping program of Chicago-made short films. Audiences are invited to enter at any point and engage with the work in an open, flexible format. The program brings together narrative, experimental, performance, and archival practices, with a focus on bodies, identity, and the textures of Chicago’s underground. Designed to be experienced in fragments, the sequence builds a cumulative rhythm for those who stay. Films include: Chew This! (Delphyne Panther-Brutzkus, 2 min), 90 Degrees (Finn O’Connell, 4 min), Glass in Motion(Amanda Reid, 8 min), Ask A Punk (Kevin Contento, 15 min), A Heart of Real Flesh (Eden Wenning, 3 min).
12:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Workshop: Veronica Casado Hernandez / The Sun is A Star (and so are you!)
Humans are literally made out of star dust, and the sun is a star. In this workshop, participants will build their own sun/star/comet, with a multi-color tail of tissue paper. This star is activated by moving it or running with it!
12:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Workshop: Nabeela Washington
NaBeela Washington from Lucky Jefferson, an award-winning arts publishing nonprofit, leads a community photo archive of pride. She will be photographing guests and gathering their words to build a collective memory that can be revisited long after the day ends.
12:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Workshop: GPLXC
The Gage Park Latinx Council invites participants to co-create a queer garden. During a time when the LGBTQIA2S+ community continues to be stigmatized as “unnatural,” participants resist this rhetoric and recognize queerness woven through the natural world. With many organisms, including clownfish and roses that challenge the binary categorization of male and female biological sex and over 1,500 species expressing queer behavior, the natural world affirms queerness is abundant and complex. The event will have large-scale stencils of flowers and mushrooms for eventgoers to trace, cut out, and paint, as well as cool facts of queerness found in the natural world.
12:00 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.
Queer & Trans Artist Vendor Market
The vendors include: HINK, Scoops Color Lab, Angel's Crystals, Haphazard Ceramics, ebere agwuncha, Javier Vineula, Nao Goldstein, Lyric's Treasures, Swampy Boy Ceramics, Kazimi Kafé, and Young Semilla Medicina.
DJs will play music throughout the event, and the lineup includes A.J. McClenon, Ava Wanbli, Zachary Nichol, Rain Garden, Chelliah, and NAXO 9999.
ABOUT THE HYDE PARK ART CENTER
Hyde Park Art Center, at 5020 South Cornell Avenue on Chicago’s vibrant South Side, is a hub for contemporary arts in Chicago, serving as a gathering, production, and exhibition space for artists and the broader community to cultivate ideas, impact social change, and connect with new networks. Since its inception in 1939, Hyde Park Art Center has grown from a small collective of artists to establishing a strong legacy of risk-taking and experimentation, emerging as a unique Chicago arts institution with social impact. Today, the Art Center offers a diverse suite of programs for artists and art lovers of all backgrounds, ages, and stages in their careers including: contemporary art exhibitions in six galleries; an open-access community-based school with 2,000 annual enrollments; weekly arts education to 1,000 elementary school students in public schools; weekly and summer teen programs for 100 teen artists; professional-advancement programs for artists; a local and international artist residency; and public programs that connect residents with Chicago art and artists. The Art Center’s Oakman Clinton School + Studio is the nation’s first fully contribute-what-you-can visual art school for all ages. The Art Center functions as an amplifier for creative voices of today and tomorrow, providing the space to cultivate new work and connections. For more information, visit www.hydeparkart.org.
