Del Otro Lado — The Other Side / O’Hare International Airport / Terminal 5 Arrivals Corridor
Completed:2023
Client: City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE)
City of Chicago Departent of Aviation (CDA)
Curation:The arrival corridor at O’Hare’s International Terminal 5 could be perceived as a “non-place,” which in this context could appear universal—it could be anywhere. But it was important for us to highlight that this corridor is also a specific place, with a particular use. The corridor is the first place that travelers will see when arriving in Chicago, a place that welcomes new visitors or welcomes back home Chicago residents. But this corridor is also a place of transit where passengers will move —in only one direction — to get to customs. The journey to customs can be emotional and politically charged for many, especially for non-U.S. citizens moving through mandatory immigration processes. The corridor is a space made of expectation, you are almost somewhere, you are almost in customs, almost outside of the airport, almost in Chicago, almost on “the other side.”
The installations that follow represent the largest acquisition ever made by the CIty of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. Therefore we understoodd them as “time capsules” — “containers holding historical records or objects representative of current culture that are deposited (as in a cornerstone) for preservation until discovery by some future age” (Merriam-Webster). It was important to consider how these works might be received in 25 years.
One of the challenges in displaying art at any airport is the fact that travelers are likely to be tired or anxious for at least several reasons: being away from home, transiting through security, and for many the loss of control inherent in traveling on an airplane. Therefore, the artists’ installations were conceived as rhythmic intervals for people to experience either briefly as they pass by or as a way to slow down and even stop time. Each commissioned work has a very different visual allure from the others, to pull in visitors in, even when the works are experienced up close, from afar, or in movement.
Installations:
Nelly Agassi and Emmanuel Evron-Agassi, Welcome Home / Come Home
Welcome Home / Come Home is a collaborative effort from Israeli-born artist Nelly Agassi and her son, Emmanual Evon-Agassi. A neon-lighted sculpture formed from handwritten text captures the essence of relief felt when one is truly at home. Inspired by the experience of waiting for -- then receiving -- their family's green card, the artists convey warmth and compassion to passengers heading toward the immigration line, through the soft neon glow of home.
Assaf Evron, Untitled (A Window for Lake Michigan)
"The picture in its frame should give the illusion of being a window to the three-dimensional world," noted Renaissance polymath Leon Batista Alberti. In the spirit of the Alberti window, Chicago artist and photographer Assaf Evron treats the draped corridor vitrine as a view of Lake Michigan, the treasured backdrop for the City of Chicago, allowing space for travelers to embrace the expansive, natural beauty of our celebrated Great Lake.
Krista Franklin, Wherever You Go There You Are
Wherever You Go There You Are is a large-scale mixed media collage that adopts its primary form from Rorschach test inkblots, the famed psychological tests designed to reveal particular personality and emotional characteristics. Musing upon the joy and magic of children, the artist weaves archival Chicago photographs through amorphous shapes, forming the inkblots, and creating a dreamlike, surreal ecology that mirrors itself on each side.
Wills Glasspiegel, P-Top De La Cruz, Winfield RedCloud Woundedeye, Skywalkers
Skywalkers is an incredible, side-by-side video installation that juxtaposes the local phenomenon known as Chicago Footwork with the Native American Grass Dance, which has roots in the Midwest. Blending slow-motion, high resolution video footage with animation, the lightning-fast steps of both dances are captured to show viewers the intricate movements that are not typically seen with the human eye. As an ode to O'Hare's Terminal 5, Skywalkers depicts this dance as the art of flying, via takeoff and landing. Filmed on the shores of Lake Michigan, as well as the Sky Deck of Chicago's Willis Tower, Skywalkers features The Era, dancers from The Era's summer camp, and Winfield RedCloud Woundedeye, whose performance of the Grass Dance demonstrates the deep, heart-based connection between both original art forms.
Hương Ngô | Hồng-Ân Trương, chân trời foot of the sky
Using the visual play of two-way mirrors – reflecting, refracting and unsettling the viewer’s gaze – chân trời / the foot of the sky seeks to expand the space of the corridor into boundlessness, while creating protection from the spectral power of state surveillance. A photographic mural is the backdrop for play with light, mirror, and text. The piece is created from archival documents of Vietnamese refugees that highlight moments of physical connection, agency, and radical joy. It also points to the disciplined body under state authority, connoting tension in our relationship with state power: freedom vs. control; subordination vs. autonomy. The artists, both refugees from Vietnam, use mirrors to fragment and echo the image and text, suggesting our collective evasion. Written in a hybrid of English and Vietnamese, "gặp nhau at the chân trời foot of the sky," in bright red neon, stretches across the space, between mirror fragments. While the phrase can be translated as “meet together at the horizon,” the word “horizon” is literally translated as “foot of the sky.”
Jenny Kendler, Close to You
The deep blue night sky of Chicago is the setting for this piece that recreates nine avian constellations with metallic “stars” in the form of migrating birds. The artist created these flying or falling forms by 3D scanning birds who died in window collisions. The work’s title, derived from a popular love song, is complicated by clues found on the glass of the vitrine itself—ghostly moments of impact which urge us to do more than simply love birds.
Mayumi Lake, Shinsekai Yori (新世界より) | From the New World
Shinsekai Yori means “from the new world" in Japanese. Elements of Kimono flowers, clouds, and wind converge in the pastel-colored, cyclone-like backdrop. A pulsating sense of movement combines native flowers, representing both Chicago and Japan. Like individual cells of the human body and with reverence to the artist's Japanese heritage, the flowers take shape amid formless, floating clouds, which both protect and release the image.
Inspired by Antonin Dvorak's From the New World, a symphony he composed while residing in the U.S., and the corridor curatorial theme of The Other Side, this piece evokes the excitement of arriving in the new world, contrasted with the reflection of leaving home -- creating a sense of nowhere and everywhere, all at once. The hand-cut images of Kimono flowers are assembled in spirals to create the illusion of movement, as passengers walk through the corridor.
Faheem Majeed, Push Pull
Push Pull is a 20-minute video performance that was filmed at the South Side Community Art Center's historic Margaret Burroughs Gallery during the spring of 2021. Capturing the struggle and beauty of the role of the cultural worker within a culturally specific institution, performer Damon Green slowly and tenderly unfurls, pushes, and pulls a large piece of fabric from one side of the gallery to the other. A seemingly unnecessary amount of effort, his adaptive performative movements articulate the care and attention that permeates cultural workers' approach to labor. The video is shown on a loop, which transforms the performance of moving the fabric into a Sisyphean task.
Accompanying this piece are five paintings from the South Side Community Art Center's collection that reference the legacy of the institution and the community.
Cecil McDonald Jr., I Wonder As I Wander
Part of the artist's series The Heat of Cool, I Wonder As I Wander features large scale still photographs taken from parties, dances and other celebrations of movement, where participants (dancers) and collaborators (DJs, still and video photographers) merge into time-based imagery. Moving bodies symbolize freedom and the ability to express one's own time, space and sense of self. The ecstatic experiences captured in the images momentarily connect the artist, the subject and the viewer to the divine.
Yvette Mayorga, Pilgrimage to the Isle of Pink
Pilgrimage to the Isle of Pink is a surrealist mixed media installation that showcases the artist's excessive sensorial installations and invites you into a world of pink. Created with the artist's distinctive "painterly" process and technique analogous to icing a cake, acrylic-filled piping bags are used to decorate 3D fabricated relief wood elements, custom wallpaper, and shoes that reflect Latinx 90s childhood nostalgia and Rococo ornamental style. Reminiscent of her childhood experiences traveling through Terminal 5 to visit her parents' homeland of Mexico, the artist invites you to feel a mixture of relief and excitement, and ultimately welcomes you into her world of pink.
Chris Pappan, Akikipa Washpezhi – Zhegagoynak (The Meeting Place – Chicago)
Chicago (Zhegagoynak) is an Indigenous place. The title of this work arises from a combination of the Kanzaá (akikipa washpezhi) and Potawatomi (Zhegagoynak) languages. Truthful representations of the people endemic to the area have been erased and replaced with images of generalized, plains-based misconceptions of Native Americans. From a hand-drawn image on ledger paper that survived the Great Chicago Fire, combined with historical maps from a time when the Fox and other local tribes lived freely in this area, the piece represents resilience and reverence for the contributions of indigenous peoples of Chicago.
Cheryl Pope, Up Against
Up Against speaks to the state one often feels after just landing, of being both here and there; where one came from and where one is going. A poetic visual of the hours one spends in their head while flying above the clouds, thinking, dreaming, sleeping, remembering, pondering. As the first piece in the arrival corridor, passengers who have just come down from the clouds can reflect on their celestial experience as they assimilate back into their earthly body.
Edra Soto, Tropicalamerican
Tropicalamerican approaches the patriotic art tradition that for centuries artists like Rauschenberg, Johns, Hammons, among many others, have followed with the intent of canonizing events, aesthetics, and American culture. Rigorously crafted, Tropicalamerican was made using a variety of tropical leaves from Robert Rauschenberg’s Captiva terrain, collaged with simple shapes derived from traditional quilting practices. Once the collages were made, they were photographed and transferred to a digital format. Tropicalamerican inserts Soto's Latinx identity into the lineage of American art history, questions the responsibilities associated with geographical allegiances and alludes to the complexity of her nationality.
Leonard Suryajaya, Connection Lookup
A kaleidoscope of images and color, Connection Lookup features photos and photorealistic patterns constructed and staged in a newsstand layout. Portraits of the artists' friends and family, neighborhood landmarks, and culturally-coded objects, wrap around the entire vitrine, framing two large scale familial photographs. Meticulously hand-camouflaged soda cans, artificial plants, and Maneki-Neko (Welcome Cats) are displayed in a shadow box of a shared space. A photographic "block party" serves as a warm Chicago welcome to arriving passengers. A playful explosion of color, Connection Lookup invites you on a journey of discovery, offering a vision of diversity and persistent longing for human connection.
Maryam Taghavi, Spell for Passage
Traditionally carrying Qur'anic inscriptions and images of astrology, Spell for Passage depicts the Islamic Talisman for protection, which appears ad infinitum to the passersby, conveying messages of warmth and protection for weary travelers.
Selina Trepp, We Walk Together
Inspired by the needs of arriving passengers, moving from airplane to customs -- tired, stressed, achy, smelly and nervous. To be calm, awake and aware will help them make it through immigration, customs and baggage claim. A stop-motion animated video of hand-made sculptures and paintings reflect the path of the passenger, as they walk through the corridors and overcome obstacles to get through immigration to their final destination. This piece is the passengers' guide -- and companion -- through the process.
Buffalo Chart at O'Hare
Artist: Bernard Williams
A collection of approximately 150 signs, symbols, and objects reflecting on artistic and cultural forms with worldwide origins. The Buffalo Chart at O'Hare borrows forms, shapes, and words from Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Suggesting the complexities of our global community, and calling attention to the similarities and differences among diverse groups and locations, the piece calls to mind historical events and human accomplishments.