Toolbox @ Twenty

Hyde Park Art Center, the renowned non-profit hub for contemporary art located on Chicago’s vibrant South Side, partners with experimental dance company The Seldoms to celebrate the group’s twenty years of performance in Chicago and globally, with an exhibition featuring unique multidisciplinary art installations activated by choreography. Titled Toolbox @ Twenty, this exhibition is curated and choreographed by Carrie Hanson, Artistic Director of The Seldoms, in collaboration with Allison Peters Quinn, Art Center Director of Exhibitions and Residency, and is on view from September 24 – November 13, 2022.

The performative exhibition, taking place during the Year of Chicago Dance, includes new collaborative works created by four pairs of dancers and visual artists who share their processes, techniques, and values with one another. From this dialogue, the dancer identifies one essential word undergirding the visual artist's practice, then translates it to a choreographic “tool” that determines body movements for a dance piece created in response. The four tools developed in this exhibition includes:splice, mask, knot, and bowerbirding (building a nest from decorative objects). The dance pieces will be presented in the forms of both live performances throughout the duration of the exhibition and recorded videos seen in four art installations including large paintings, a sound installation, and massive woven fiber work.

The four dancer/artist pairings include Damon Green/Sadie Woods, Sarah Gonsiorowski/Jacqueline Surdell, Carrie Hanson/Edra Soto, and Maggie Vannucci (with choreography design by Dee Alaba)/Jackie Kazarian. The four visual artists--all Chicago-based, female, with human physicality present in their media--were selected by Hanson and Quinn to celebrate the female led dance company consisting of primarily female dancers.

Toolbox @ Twenty is the latest installment of Toolbox, an ongoing special project of The Seldoms, born out of a cross-disciplinary exchange between visual and dance artists in Glasgow in July 2017 around how to translate visual art practice to choreographic, spark new tactics of dance making, and invigorate choreographic practices. A series of live performances followed by conversations featuring the paired artists and dancers will be announced later. For updates, visit www.hydeparkart.org.

Admission, hours, and COVID-19-related safety protocols

Exhibition admission is free and allows walk-ins. Masks are encouraged but not required to enter the building. Hyde Park Art Center views its community's health and safety as the number one priority and is utilizing the guidance from the City and State to inform its safety protocols. For latest exhibition hours and COVID policy, visit https://www.hydeparkart.org/plan-your-visit/.

About The Seldoms

Now in its 20th Anniversary Season, The Seldoms creates multimedia performance charged by bold, exacting physicality, and believes that dance can inspire thinking about critical social issues. Each project is fueled by an appetite for research and incubated with partners from fields including history and science. The company designs expansive productions with practitioners of visual arts, architecture, theater, sound, and fashion, creating works on topics such as the 2008 recession, plastic and landfills, climate change, and power and powerlessness in America. The Seldoms has performed in twenty US cities and developed international connections, touring in Russia, Canada, Taiwan, and Scotland where it exchanged with Glasgow visual artists to create Toolbox. Its 2015 work Power Goes on the legacy of Lyndon Baines Johnson, commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, received a National Performance Network Creation Fund and NEFA National Dance Project Award, and toured to nine US venues. Locally, the company has performed at a range of venues including the Museum of Contemporary Art and Steppenwolf’s 1700 Theater, the Harris Theater of Music and Dance, in addition to designing spectacular works for sites including a truck garage, an outdoor pool, the Morton Arboretum, and a “Chicago Landmark” park fieldhouse. It has partnered with local entities including Chicago Humanities Festival, Newberry Library, Experimental Station, and many more.

About 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 and production 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 quirky artists to establishing a strong legacy of innovative development and emerging as a unique Chicago arts institution with social impact. The Art Center functions as an amplifier for today and tomorrow’s creative voices, providing the space to cultivate and create new work and connections. For more information, please visit www.hydeparkart.org.