Sherwin Ovid,
Assistant Professor of Instruction, Advisor to the Minor,
Channeling concepts of cultural transmission through the movement of mixed media, Sherwin Ovid draws from the experience of immigration as a space of contingent exchange. A morphology of forms encompass the dynamic interplay of material; curiosity forged as a visual bricolage that makes virtuous the implicitly uneven similitude of diasporic phenomena. Domestic spaces of leisure yield a plethora of objects in his study of migratory aesthetics, invoking class aspirations that fuse ornament and heirloom. Pigment, cotton, resin, dirt, are but a few of the cumalitive ingredients that entice us to the surfaces of his work. However, a melange of narrative idioms underpin the vernacular dexterity of forms that bristles against and along the primacy of formal cohesion.
Ovid received his BFA from the School Art Institute of Chicago (2007) and a Master’s of Fine Art from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he received a Lincoln Fellowship. Ovid has exhibited with Unit 2 Art Collective (Chicago), University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee), Chicago Pop-Up Loop Alliance Gallery and Swimming Pool Project Space (Chicago).
Zachary Buchner,
Assistant Professor of Instruction, Director of Undergraduate Studies,
Zachary Buchner (Canadian, b. 1979) lives and works in Oak Park IL. Buchner received a BFA from Bowling Green State University in 2001 and an MFA from Northwestern University in 2005. Zachary has had recent solo exhibitions at Monaco Gallery (St. Louis, MO) and Andrew Rafacz Gallery (Chicago, IL). His work has been included in recent group exhibitions at Heaven Gallery (Chicago, IL), Ace Hotel (Chicago, IL), Soccer Club Club (Chicago, IL), Gallery 400 at The University of Illinois (Chicago, IL), Elder Gallery at Nebraska Wesleyan University (Lincoln, NE), La Montagne Gallery (Boston, MA), Green Gallery (Milwaukee, WI), Monya Rowe Gallery (New York, NY) and the Illinois State University Gallery (Normal, IL) among many others. Zachary is the Director of the artist-centered exhibition space PRACTISE in Oak Park, IL. and has curated multiple recent satellite exhibitions including Inside/Outside at Apparatus Projects (Chicago, IL) and Screen Grab at Monaco Gallery (St. Louis, MO). He is represented by Andrew Rafacz Gallery.
Brendan Fernandes,
Associate Professor,
Brendan Fernandes (b. 1979, Nairobi, Kenya) is an internationally recognized Canadian artist working at the intersection of dance and visual art. Based in Chicago, his practice explores race, queer culture, migration, protest, and other forms of collective movement. Seeking to create new spaces for agency and belonging, Fernandes’ work often takes hybrid forms; part ballet, part queer dance party, part political protest, while remaining grounded in collaboration and participation in order to find solidarity. Fernandes is a graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program (2007) and has received numerous awards, including the Platform Award (2024), the Creative Voice Award from Arts Alliance Illinois (2024), an Artadia Award (2019), a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant (2019), a Robert Rauschenberg Residency Fellowship (2014), and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2020). His work has been presented internationally at institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, among many others. He was included in the 2019 Whitney Biennial and has developed major projects with museums, public art organizations, and performing arts institutions across North America and beyond. Fernandes is Associate Professor in the Department of Art, Theory, and Practice at Northwestern University and is represented by Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago, and Susan Inglett Gallery, New York. Recent solo exhibitions and performances have been presented at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation (St. Louis), the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, The Fabric Workshop and Museum (Philadelphia), Museo Tamayo (Mexico City), and Prospect.6 (New Orleans). Current projects include a major solo exhibition at the Driehaus Museum (Chicago), presentations at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and Ford Foundation Gallery (New York), and participation in the 2026 Toronto Biennial of Art.
brendanfernandes.ca,
Pamela Bannos,
Professor of Instruction,
Pamela Bannos is an artist and researcher who utilizes methods that highlight the forgotten and overlooked, exploring the links between visual representation, urban space, history, and collective memory. Bannos art practice splits its focus between pictures that reinterpret found imagery and site-specific investigations that result in web-based projects or on-site installations. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally, including in solo exhibitions at the Photographers' Gallery in London, England, and the Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York.
The web-based project, 8th Avenue at 14th Street, examined the physical space within a 19th-century glass negative of a New York City street corner. Hidden Truths, a site-specific and web-based project about Chicago's Lincoln Park introduced questions about how visual evidence does not accurately represent the past, and showed how a lack of such evidence may be literally hiding more historically accurate information. For the group exhibition, “The Way of the Shovel: Art as Archaeology,” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Bannos’s project Shifting Grounds, presented an investigation of the history and transformation of the land upon which the MCA sits.
Bannos wrote the critically acclaimed Vivian Maier: A Photographer’s Life and Afterlife, a book that stemmed from her research-based art practice. The book presents a counter-narrative to the popular depiction of mid-twentieth-century American photographer, Vivian Maier as the “mysterious nanny photographer,” de-mythologizing Maier by presenting her life through her own photographs, and demonstrating how she became an international sensation in the age of social media.
Lize Mogel,
2011
Lize Mogel is an interdisciplinary artist who works with the interstices between art and cultural geography. She creates and disseminates counter-cartography-- maps and mappings that produce new understandings of social and political issues. Her work connects the real history and collective imaginary about specific places to larger narratives of global economies. She has mapped public parks in Los Angeles; future territorial disputes in the Arctic; and wastewater economies in New York City.
Lize is co-editor of the book/map collection "An Atlas of Radical Cartography" and co-curator of a related traveling exhibition which toured internationally. She has worked with groups including the Center for Land Use Interpretation and the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. Exhibitions include the Sharjah (U.A.E.), Gwangju (South Korea) and Pittsburgh Biennials, "Greater New York" at PS1, and "Experimental Geography". She has lectured about her work at numerous venues nationally and internationally including the Whitney Museum, the New Museum (NYC), and the Royal Danish Art Academy (Copenhagen). She has received grants from the Jerome Foundation, the Graham Foundation, the LEF Foundation, and the Danish Arts Council.
publicgreen.com,
