Chicago Grid

kornfeld galerie 2019

For the Bauhaus Centennial, artist and educator Jan Tichy organized a group exhibition at 68projects that explored education as a creative dialogue between students and instructors. This exchange—central to Bauhaus ideals—mirrors my own interest in learning as an act of making. Within this context, I presented Tracing Respect, a series of six site-specific rubbings and six photographs created as part of writer and historian Romi Crawford’s Fleeting Monuments project.

The work commemorates the Wall of Respect and the Community Mural Movement of 1967, which transformed how art functioned in public space and within community life. Using charcoal and graphite, I made rubbings of the ground where the Wall of Respect once stood on Chicago’s South Side—a site charged with history and loss after the building and mural were mysteriously destroyed by fire in 1971.

Each rubbing became a meditative act of remembrance, a tactile tracing of absence and persistence. Installed within a dialogue about networks—of artists, communities, and shared knowledge—the work connects Bauhaus principles of experimentation and pedagogy to the radical legacy of the Black Arts Movement. Tracing Respect considers how teaching, mentorship, and collective practice can serve as living monuments, sustaining the stories, gestures, and relationships that continue to shape art’s role in building community.

Curated by Jan Tichy