Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois at Chicago will commission Mexican visual artist, Adela Goldbard, to stage The Last Judgment, a five-week exhibition at Gallery 400 and a one-day traveling, pyrotechnic performance in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood.
The work, featuring large-scale sculptures, will draw on Little Village residents to script their experiences of environmental justice, migration, and safety while envisioning a collective future for this Latino community. Both the exhibition and the participatory event will be unveiled in fall 2019.
“We could not be happier to have the support and affirmation of the Joyce Award for this project with Adela and Little Village residents,” said Lorelei Stewart, director and chief curator of Gallery 400. “Not only will Gallery 400 be able to strengthen our ties between the campus and the neighborhood, but Adela will be able to bring Mexican artisans to work with Chicago builders to construct the work, as well as enlist neighborhood artists and organizers in the co-writing workshops. Ultimately, The Last Judgment will be a bi-national bridge that reconnects Little Village residents to traditions rooted in, and remembered from, Mexico but not often practiced here in the U.S.”