For Each Other Access

Introductory Wall Text and Audio Description

EXHIBITION WALL LABEL

Applied to the wall is vinyl text. Above two columns of text is a heading. The heading reads

September 9–December 17, 2022 in smaller letters

For Each Other in large bold and italics letters

The column below on the left reads:

GnarWare Workshop, Liz McCarthy, Lan Tuazon, and various other donating artists

Kennedy Healy and Marley Molkentin

Public Media Institute

Real Fake Artists, Inc.

The Love Fridge Chicago

UIC Disability Cultural Center Community Care Cohort

Latham Zearfoss

The column on the right reads:

Forms of care, the multiple ways they manifest and/or are found missing, have been thrown into dramatic relief in the last two and half years of COVID-19. This exhibition highlights the ways a group of Chicago-based artists and collectives consider care in their work and in the contexts they create for their work. In the included artworks and projects care is an active, participatory process. Some of the included works creatively self-advocate for missing forms of care. Others reveal the interdependence at the heart of care. Yet others meld artmaking and mutual aid to support and sustain Chicago communities, while others provide respite and grounding for gallery visitors.

What and where is care in your life? What are our collective responsibilities to care for one another? We would love to hear from you. In the space across the room, we invite you to pause and participate by sharing your thoughts.

Support for For Each Other is provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency; and the School of Art & Art History, College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts, University of Illinois Chicago.

The Stuff is Fake but the Need is Real, Real Fake Artists, Inc.

EXHIBITION LABEL WITH ARTWORK SPECIFICS AND SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS

REAL FAKE ARTISTS, INC.

The Stuff is Fake but the Need is Real, 2022

Cardboard, paint

Verbal Description

A two-dimensional, teal couch made of painted cardboard hangs on the back wall of the Gallery. Layered on top of the couch are two throw pillows—the larger one yellow and the smaller pink—and a dark blue throw blanket. The pillows and blanket are also made of flat cardboard, but set in front of the couch to create a slight three-dimensional effect.

On either side of the couch, two three-dimensional, white coffee tables made of cardboard jut out from the wall. The left-hand table has a flat, gray, cardboard microwave on it. The window of the microwave is shiny, clear plastic, and behind the window is a painted cheeseburger. There is a flat cardboard potted plant with long, green leaves standing a few inches out from the wall to the left of this table. The right table has another cardboard plant on top of it. Above the tables on the wall are two cardboard windows showing painted views of the Chicago skyline around UIC. Another potted plant made of dark green vines hangs to the right and slightly in front of the left window.

On the floor in front of the couch is a bright yellow coffee table with white sides and brown legs. Although it is flat against the floor, the perspective of the table gives it a three-dimensional effect. Propped against the pillars on either side are three flat, green armchairs, which are also painted in perspective to give them a three-dimensional quality. Between the two chairs on the right stands another potted plant.

Against the wall to the right of this furniture set-up is a life-sized, black vending machine made of cardboard. The vending machine is three-dimensional, but its depth is much shallower than a real vending machine. The snacks in the vending machine are made from empty snack wrappers, including a green and black popchips bag, a yellow butterfinger wrapper, a red skittles wrapper, and a blue Mike and Ike Mega Mix box. A yellow chips bag in the top row reads “UIC” in white lettering within a red circle, with a blue banner below which reads “take our survey” in all caps. Below this text is a QR code which leads to a survey about creating a student lounge in this building. On the third row, in spot C3, a green chips bag also depicts the text “UIC” in white lettering in a red circle. Below this text, a white banner with green lettering reads “Visit the Cultural Centers” in all caps. A QR code beneath this text leads to information about UIC’s seven Centers for Cultural Understanding and Social Change. To the right of the window is a gray rectangle with white buttons to order snacks and slots for money. A black rectangle with yellow letters above the buttons reads “C3 $250”. Beneath the window, large white uppercase letters read “PUSH” on a rectangle of cardboard.

To the right of the vending machine stands another flat green cardboard armchair, identical to the other three. In front of the armchair on the floor lies a red rug. The rug is covered with fringed strips of paper, making it resemble a shag rug.

Extended Label

“Having a space that we build together, creating a familiar and welcoming environment is how we envision collective well-being in a learning environment.”

—Real Fake Artists, Inc.

This installation by Real Fake Artists, Inc., a group of six recent UIC alumni, recreates a sculptural proposition—initially created in a UIC course—for a student lounge in UIC’s Art and Exhibition Hall, the building that houses Gallery 400 and UIC’s art programs. Included are full-scale cardboard reproductions of the items necessary for a communal space that creates a sense of community and belonging.

The artists—Jon Aldrich, Eric Perez, Edith Mendez, Jessa Mendiola, Nydia Mendiola Angelica Mendoza—propose that a proper student lounge with a convenient location and amenities would improve student comfort and morale. More than a reproduction, this installation aims to inspire community awareness and action toward making the student lounge a reality. As the artists put it, “There is no student lounge that is comfortable and has the amenities students are looking for. There is no place to heat up food and eat. There is no space to collaborate. There is no space to relax, play games, or foster community.” Without a space to gather with others, the artists— when they were students in this building—felt disconnected and alienated from their peers.

UIC art students: take the Real Fake Artists, Inc.’s survey on making a student lounge a reality in this building. A QR code to the survey is accessible on the vending machine.

UIC has seven Centers for Cultural Understanding and Social Change, which are great spaces for students. Learn more about them via a QR code accessible on the vending machine.

Take Me With You, UIC DCC Community Care Cohort

EXHIBITION LABEL WITH ARTWORK SPECIFICS AND SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS

UIC DISABILITY CULTURAL CENTER COMMUNITY CARE COHORT

Take Me With You: Waiting Room Edition

2022 Photocopied zine

Verbal Description

Many copies of one zine are scattered across one bench, which sits perpendicular to an empty bench. You are welcome to sit on the empty bench and read the zine or take one with you. At the top of the front cover of the zine, multicolored text reads “take me with you.” Each letter is a different font and enclosed in its own colored box, like letters cut from different magazines and newspapers. Below this text is a picture of a blue and white waiting room, with a closed door on the left and two metal and fabric chairs to the right. The text “waiting room edition” appears in white, lowercase font above the chairs. At the bottom left, text in three different shades of blue reads “Community Care Cohort.” At the bottom right is a blue toolbox with a handle on top and a white UIC Disability Cultural Center logo on the front.

Extended Label

There is “harm in thinking of individuals as solely responsible for their own care. When do practices of self-care become another demand that we condition ourselves for ever greater productivity, or another niche for consumer culture? In the tradition of abolitionist feminism, the [Community Care Kit Project] is simultaneously critical and creative, grounded in recognizing our interdependence and dreaming ways to put it into practice. Given that institutionalized routes of care fail many of us and create harm, how can we build care structures for ourselves?” —from the Community Care Kit Project Mission Statement

Have an upcoming doctor’s appointment? Take this zine with you! Earlier this year, the Community Care Cohort of the UIC Disability Cultural Center (DCC) compiled poems, coloring pages, games, tips, and music to alleviate the wait and anxiety of waiting rooms.

In the Community Care Cohort internship at the DCC, undergraduate students experiment with creating and leading care projects in a supportive environment while they learn from disability justice and healing justice practitioners. The cohort of six UIC students (Rhiannon Bellia, Madeline Cardona, Iemaan Khiyani, Ashley Perez, Nia Sims, and Skyelar Thomas) created this zine after meditating on unmet needs in their varied communities. DCC graduate assistant Shan Shan Song and Community Care Kit Project lead Sylvie Rosenkalt facilitated the process and made contributions of their own. From the spark of the idea to the zine’s endpoint as a sharable resource, interns engaged in a cluster of practice-based explorations that aimed to expand our notions of what counts as care: sharing skills, building consensus, creating interdependently, and practicing collective access.

To access other Community Care Kit Project resources and to learn more, visit dcc.uic.edu/cckp.

To view a screen-reader friendly version of the zine, visit https://go.uic.edu/ScreenreaderZine

Reflection Space

REFLECTION SPACE VERBAL DESCRIPTION

In the corner of the room is a seating area called the For Each Other Reflection Space. A brown couch without arms is flanked by a mustard yellow modern armchair and a navy blue upholstered chair. A walnut coffee table sit between them all on a cool red rug with grey and white wavy stripes on it. On the table, are five printed cards on which visitors can write responses to questions.

The questions are:

What are you taking care of?

How will I show up for my community?

How has the concept of care shifted for you over the last 2-1/2 years due to COVID-19?

In my life a fulfilling instance of community care was:

At UIC I imagine care should look like:

Above the couch applied to the wall printed text asks:

What are our collective responsibilities to care for one another?

To the left of the mustard chair, applied to the wall a second printed text asks:

What are where is care in your life?

Below that question are rows of hooks on which visitors can hang the cards with their reflections.

Quilt, Kennedy Healy

EXHIBITION LABEL WITH ARTWORK SPECIFICS AND SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS

KENNEDY HEALY

Quilt, 2022

CPAP headgear and attachment pieces

Verbal Description

Four clear, plastic CPAP masks hang suspended in a web of nine gray, fabric CPAP attachment pieces. Each mask is fastened from four points to the straps of four different attachment pieces. The other straps of the attachment pieces are fastened to other attachment pieces, creating a two-dimensional, rectangular web with the four masks centered in two rows of two directly on top of each other. The entire artwork is hung across the entryway to the side galleries from the upper-left and upper-right edges of the rectangle. The top is stretched tight between these two points, but the artwork sags at the bottom. The unconnected straps along the sides and bottom of the artwork dangle freely.

Introductory Text to Kennedy Healy and Marley Molkentin Installation

INSTALLATION WALL LABEL

Applied to the wall is vinyl text, arranged in two columns. In larger letters above the columns text reads:

Care by Kennedy Healy and Marley Molkentin

The column on the left reads:

Kennedy: Hi, I’m Kennedy (she/they). I’m a 27-year-old fat, queer, physically disabled femme. I receive state funded home-care services that allow me to utilize Personal Assistants, or PAs, who help me with bathing, dressing, hygiene, household chores, and more. Though my life is structured around care, it is a reality that is invisible to many people around me; one that disabled people rarely see reflected in media.

Marley: I’m Marley (she/her), and I graduated college with a photojournalism degree and no job in the middle of the pandemic. I found Kennedy’s PA job posting in a queer social media group. I was the first PA she hired under COVID, essentially trusting me with her life due to her high-risk status. Though I knew nothing about care work, I spent the rest of the pandemic working for her, learning from her, and ultimately creating with her.

Kennedy: One night as we were doing our routine, we decided to shoot a photo project together. I had never seen care documented in an authentic way that wasn’t for the cover of some brochure about state funded care or a medical magazine. And I had never had a care worker who was a photographer. Marley introduced me to the concept of self-portraiture, and I quickly fell into the role of creative director as we made these images together.

The column on the right reads:

Marley: Our creative process allowed us to reclaim power in a society that devalues disabled lives and care work. Due to the way the home care system is structured, the time spent during care shifts is heavily policed by the state. Under the system’s rules and regulations, disabled people’s autonomy over their own lives is stripped away and care workers receive little support and low wages.

Kennedy: This system has always been fraught; the pandemic has only intensified the vulnerable positions me and my care workers are put in. Our photographs and art pieces critique all violence that gets framed as care. The pieces made from care-related items emphasize the time, energy, repetition, routine, volume, coordination, and cost currently required to maintain disabled lives. Our work resists the current home and health care systems in the U.S. and asks what it would mean to build something better, for each other.

Found Object Art, Kennedy Healy

EXHIBITION LABEL WITH ARTWORK SPECIFICS AND SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS

Kennedy Healy

Found Object Art, 2022

Mask, gloves, service plan

Verbal description

Pinned to the wall is a 8-1/2 x 11 sheet of photocopy reproduction of a Home Services Program Plan. It outlines the total hours per week allowed for Kennedy’s personal assistance care, the pay rate of $14 per hour, and total estimated monthly cost of $3,251.50. At the bottom, Kennedy has signed an attestation that reads:

I have been given the choice of care in my home or in a nursing home. I choose to remain at home and agree that the plan of services described above will allow me to remain there. I understand that my eligibility for these services and the appropriateness of this service plan will be reviewed yearly, every six months or more often if my situation changes. I have been given a copy of this Service Plan and the Customer Rights and Responsibilities brochure (HSP:1). These documents have been explained to me and I understand the contents of both.

Care Photographs, Marley Molkentin and Kennedy Healy

EXHIBITION LABEL WITH ARTWORK SPECIFICS AND SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS

Marley Molkentin and Kennedy Healy

Care, 2021

Nine color photographs on Photo Tex

Verbal description

Nine images are arrayed on the long wall of the room, one large vertical image in the center and four smaller images on each side. The sets of four images are displayed two in the center stacked with an image on each side.

From left to right the images are:

In a horizontal image, the window shade beside Kennedy’s bed is open, framing Marley as she kneels on the bed lifting Kennedy’s leg as though to stretch it. Both Kennedy and Marley are wearing face masks.

The top center image on this side is a close up of the side of Kennedy’s back, butt, and hip. Marley’s hand presses on Kennedy’s skin, leaving shadows surrounding her fingers. Kennedy’s skin is patterned with stretch marks and fat rolls. Marley’s hand has knuckle tattoos on it. There is a pink knit blanket next to Kennedy’s body.

The bottom center image on this side is a close-up horizontal with bright green leaves framing the left and bottom. Beyond the leaves, Marley is wearing a mask and wielding a silver watering can as Kennedy verbally directs her, maskless.

In the right most image on this side of center, in a vertical image, Kennedy is in her power wheelchair looking in the bathroom mirror in front of them. Marley stands beside her with one hand brushing through Kennedy’s hair and the other hand taking a photo with a camera, standing on a tripod, fully visible in the mirror. The counter is cluttered with toiletries. Marley is wearing a mask.

The center image of the entire display is larger vertical image almost three times the size of the smaller images. Kennedy sits naked on a chair in her pink tiled shower, holding a hot pink loofah across their chest. She gives a harrowed look directly toward the camera. Their catheter dangles from below her stomach. Their feet are dark and her skin is wet. Marley stands to their right, lifting one of Kennedy’s arms and directing the shower stream onto Kennedy’s armpit with a detachable shower head. Marley is wearing a white t-shirt, green shorts, shower shoes, and a mask.

In the left most image on the right side of center Kennedy is facing towards the pink tiled walls of the shower with the back of her head, back, and butt filling the frame. They have a long scar down the center of her back and multiple back fat rolls and freckles. A metal chair back frames their body. Marley’s hand reaches in from the left with a purple bar of soap.

In the top center image on this side, Facing each other in masks, Marley and Kennedy are framed by a doorway as Marley reaches up to operate the hoyer lift Kennedy is suspended in. Warm light pours in from the bathroom door behind them though the rest of the surroundings are dim. Kennedy holds the remote operating the lift, her butt and legs hang down from the sling. They are wearing a towel over her upper body.

The bottom center image on this side frames Kennedy’s legs laying in bed from the knees down. They are splayed open with her cat sitting between them. The calico cat is raising its left leg and grooming itself. A black sheet and pink knit blanket fill the frame behind them. The cat is wearing a hot pink collar.

In the last image on the far right, Kennedy lays naked in her bed on their side with her back facing the frame. The room is softly lit, the pinkness of her skin contrasting with the teal bedroom wall behind them. Fat rolls and the scar down her back are visible. Their feet are dark and her right leg is folded over the left. A small towel is under her head and a pink knit blanket is on the bed beyond their body.

Extended label

“Interdependence exists in all my relationships in ways that are fairly obvious to me and others. Disability Justice teaches us that that is true for everyone whether it is obvious or not. Your friends, family, coworkers, people who clean the spaces you inhabit, farm your food, make your clothes—everything is interdependent. American culture wants to sell us independence, to isolate people because they know our togetherness makes us a collective force.” —Kennedy Healy

“Most of my young, able-bodied friends didn’t understand or respect the severity of my COVID precautions that protected Kennedy. So, we were all we had. We were, at the same time, both being left for dead by the state care system. They offered no sick days for care workers who hadn’t worked for two or more years and sent us one disposable mask per personal assistant…for the entire pandemic.”—Marley Molkentin

Vanity, Marley Molkentin and Kennedy Healy

EXHIBITION LABEL WITH ARTWORK SPECIFICS AND SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS

Marley Molkentin and Kennedy Healy

Vanity, 2022

Painted vanity, mirror, lamp, care-related items

Verbal description

Above a light pink painted vanity table with curlicue hardware and curving legs is a large mirror with a multi-colored padded frame. On top of the vanity sits an array of personal care items, a hairbrush, a comb, a nail file, nail polish, a pill case marked with days of the week compartments. There are several candles on top of a purple doily on the left side of the vanity. A lamp sits to the right on the vanity. Pinned on the mirror’s padded frame are cards that ask the questions:

Where do you notice care in your life?

Is the care you give and receive valued?

What would allow community care to thrive?

Extended label

The vanity acts as a physical manifestation of the care environment shown in the artists’ photographs, grounding visitors in a site found across cultures and generations. For example, the doily on the vanity was made by Kennedy’s great-grandmother, Mable Louise Rachow. Littered with items related to Healy’s everyday practices of care, the vanity is an
altar to the tasks we perform and the people with whom we engage in care. It also acts as a point of reflection. The artists invite visitors to interact with the items on the vanity, consider care and its locations in their own lives, and imagine the care they desire.

Medical Bill, Kennedy Healy

EXHIBITION LABEL WITH ARTWORK SPECIFICS AND SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS

Kennedy Healy

Medical Bill Figure, 2022

Medical Bills and receipts, Styrofoam, metal rod, wire, Hoyer lift sling

Verbal Description

A Hoyer lift sling is hanging from the ceiling. There is a human figure made with Styrofoam and metal rods; there are medical bills and receipts torn through the wires that created the human body shape.

Braids, 2022

CPAP tubes, wire

Three braids are hanging from the ceiling. Each of the hangings has three CPAP tubes interlaced in a shape of braids.

Disco Balls, 2022

CPAP face cushions, timesheets, Styrofoam, wire

Three 29.5-inch styrofoam sphares are hanging from the ceiling. Two of the spheres are covered with timesheets glued on them. Another one is glued with face cushions. There are two small 8.81-inch spheres glued with timesheets.

Suspended Catheters, 2022

Catheters and valves

Three Catheters and valves are hanging from the ceiling through the wire.

Timesheets, Kennedy Healy

EXHIBITION LABEL WITH ARTWORK SPECIFICS AND SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS

Kennedy Healy

Time Sheets, 2022

Portions of recycled personal assistant timesheets

Verbal Description

In five columns six and half feet high, yellow half sheet paper timesheets are tacked to the wall. The timesheet are organized in a checkerboard fashion with every other page rightside up and the other pages upside down. Each timesheet has lines and boxes for dates, start-to-stop times, daily total hours, and pay period totals on each of them. Records of times that personal assistants worked for Kennedy are visible in the boxes and on the lines.

Grant Us Serenity, Latham Zearfoss

EXHIBITION LABEL WITH ARTWORK SPECIFICS AND SHORT CONTEXTUAL TEXTS

Latham Zearfoss

Grant Us Serenity, 2022

Looping video, stereo sound, sections of dead maple trees, hand-dyed deadstock velvet, recycled carpet padding, 5:00 mins

Verbal Description:

In a darkened room a looping video of a clear blue sky with moving white clouds is projected onto a 5 ft 6 inch/ 10ft 1-inch screen while what sounds like cloud-moving winds play on the audio track. An amoeba shaped, teal-colored velvet carpet runs from the center of the room back toward to projection wall. Three thick maple tree stumps are placed in the middle of the room for visitors to sit on or touch to feel the audiotrack.