Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me @ MCA Chicago - Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me 

MCA Chicago 

Through October 19, 2025

Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, 

MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025.

Photo: @bob.mov (Robert Chase Heishman)

Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, 

MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025.

Photo: @bob.mov (Robert Chase Heishman)

Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, 

MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025.

Photo: @bob.mov (Robert Chase Heishman)

Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, 

MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025.

Photo: @bob.mov (Robert Chase Heishman)

Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, 

MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025.

Photo: @bob.mov (Robert Chase Heishman)

Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, 

MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025.

Photo: @bob.mov (Robert Chase Heishman)

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago presents the exhibition Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me. This is a major survey of renowned artist WAFAA BILAL (b. 1966, Najaf, Iraq; lives in New York, NY). Crucially, the exhibition takes a comprehensive look at Bilal’s myriad practice, highlighting the development of his work across decades and placing it in conversation with broader art histories. It also explores cultural cannibalism—that is, how culture (specifically the culture of the other) is used, disassembled, and consumed.

Working in performance, sculpture, and with online and interactive technologies, Bilal’s interdisciplinary practice investigates the dynamic between international and interpersonal politics while highlighting the tension between the United States, which he has deemed the “comfort zone,” and the “conflict zone” of Iraq. Through methods such as using his own body to interrogate notions of power and using innovative technologies to rectify acts of cultural destruction, Wafaa Bilal shows us what it means to consciously engage across cultures while highlighting negative global implications of consumption, exploitation, and profiteering.

The exhibition is organized into five immersive sections, each of which focuses on a major work from Bilal’s practice. Artworks on display include a reconstruction of a room in Chicago’s FLATFILE Gallery that the artist confined himself to for a month-long performance in Domestic Tension (2007). During this performance, Wafaa Bilal invited the audience to shoot at him with a paintball gun that was operated virtually by viewers who could also interact with him via camera feed and live chat. Over the course of thirty days, a total of 60,000 shots were fired by "shooters" from 128 countries. 

Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, 

MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025.

Photo: @bob.mov (Robert Chase Heishman)

Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, 

MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025.

Photo: @bob.mov (Robert Chase Heishman)

Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, 

MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025.

Photo: @bob.mov (Robert Chase Heishman)

Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, 

MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025.

Photo: @bob.mov (Robert Chase Heishman)

Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, 

MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025.

Photo: @bob.mov (Robert Chase Heishman)

Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, 

MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025.

Photo: @bob.mov (Robert Chase Heishman)

Also included in the MCA exhibition is a large-scale, towering video displaying images from Bilal’s year-long performance 3rdi (2010–11), wherein Wafaa Bilal surgically implanted a camera into the back of his head that, every minute on the minute, captured photographs. The photos included in the MCA display correspond to the minute, hour, and day they were taken.

Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me also presents Thumbsat Satellite (2024), which comprises a golden bust of Saddam Hussein fixed to a satellite and launched into Earth’s orbit as part of the exhibition. Developed as a critique of the former Iraqi president’s rumored desire to launch a bust of himself into space, the work will also feature a number of in-gallery components, including a model of the satellite and bust and a way for visitors to track the artwork’s location through live-captured images before it is destroyed upon re-entry into the atmosphere.

Additionally, the exhibition features In a Grain of Wheat: Cultivating Hybrid Futures in Ancient Seed DNA, Bilal’s response to ISIS’s destruction of the Winged Bull of Nineveh sculpture, or Lamassu, in 2015. The piece involves inserting high-resolution 3D scans of the sculpture into the DNA of heirloom Iraqi wheat seeds. A commission by the MCA see the project activated in a new, sculptural form, which considers if it is possible for a wheat seed to transform terrorist violence into restorative agency.

The exhibition is accompanied by a major publication, the first to survey multiple projects by the visionary artist.

Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me is curated by Bana Kattan, Pamela Alper Associate Curator, with Iris Colburn, Curatorial Associate.

WAFAA BILAL

Image courtesy of the artist

WAFAA BILAL (b. 1966, Najaf, Iraq; lives in New York, NY) is known internationally for his online performative and interactive works provoking dialogue about international and interpersonal politics. Bilal's work explores tensions between the cultural spaces he occupies—his home in the “comfort zone” of the US and his consciousness in the “conflict zone” in Iraq. For his 2007 installation, Domestic Tension, Wafaa Bilal spent a month in Chicago's FLATFILE Gallery where people could shoot him via a remote-access paintball gun. The Chicago Tribune called it "one of the sharpest works of political art to be seen in a long time"—naming him 2008 Artist of the Year. That same year, City Lights published Shoot an Iraqi: Art, Life and Resistance Under the Gun about Bilal's life and Domestic Tension. His work was part of the Iranian pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale.

Wafaa Bilal's work is in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL; MATHAF: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha,

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART CHICAGO - MCA CHICAGO

220 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL

mcachicago.org

Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, MCA Chicago, February 1 – October 19, 2025

Yoko Ono @ MCA Chicago - Museum of Contemporary Art - "Music of the Mind" - Exhibition Overview + Biography

Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

October 18, 2025 – February 22, 2026

Yoko Ono

Cut Piece, 1964 

Performance view,

New Works by Yoko Ono, 

Carnegie Recital Hall, New York, NY, March 21, 1965

Photo © Minoru Niizuma

Yoko Ono with Glass Hammer, 1967, 

from Half-A-Wind Show, 

Lisson Gallery, London, UK, 1967.

Artwork © Yoko Ono. Photo © Clay Perry

Yoko Ono

FLY (still), 1970–71

16mm film (color, mono sound)

© Yoko Ono

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago announced Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind, opening October 2025. The MCA is the exclusive US venue for this comprehensive solo exhibition dedicated to artist, musician, and activist YOKO ONO (b. 1933, Tokyo, Japan; lives in New York, NY). Traveling from Tate Modern in London, where it enjoyed record attendance, and in close collaboration with Ono’s studio, this groundbreaking retrospective covers seventy years of Ono’s trailblazing career, with over 200 works including participatory instruction pieces and scores, installations, a curated music room, films, music and photography, and archival materials. The exhibition reveals Ono’s innovative approach to language, art and participation that continues to speak to the present moment.

Participation is an important feature of Yoko Ono’s vision as an artist, which is why visitors will be able to partake in several interactive, instruction-based artworks throughout Music of the Mind. This exhibition underscores Ono’s legacy of radical performance and her significant and influential contributions to visual art, including Fluxus and Conceptualism; music; film, and activism. The MCA is proud to welcome this timely exhibition, spotlighting Ono’s revelatory art from the last seven decades.

“We are thrilled to present Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind here at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago—a celebration of Ono’s expansive practice which continues to challenge the boundaries of artist and audience,” Pritzker Director Madeleine Grynsztejn said. “This exhibition underscores the avant-garde and interdisciplinary roots that made the MCA what it is today—our first performance in 1967 featured Fluxus artists. We’re overjoyed to bring Ono’s work to the MCA, a museum that so truly aligns with her practice and overlaps with her history.”

Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind documents the artist’s career starting with the mid-1950s, exploring her pivotal role in avant-garde circles in New York, Tokyo, and London, including the development of her ‘instruction pieces’, and the active role she played in the formation of Fluxus, the loose art collective and movement founded in New York in the early 1960s. The exhibition highlights key works from across her decades-long career, including her performance Cut Piece (1964), considered a landmark in performance and feminist art; her collaborations with notable musicians such as John Cage, Ornette Coleman, and her late husband, John Lennon; selected activations of instruction-based art from her influential book Grapefruit (1964); her innovative films of the 1960s and 70s including FLY (1970–71) and her banned Film No.4 (Bottoms) (1966–67) which she created as a ‘petition for peace’; recent works such as her ongoing Wish Tree installation, (1996-present); and public artworks that are emblematic of Ono’s commitment to peace activism.

The exhibition features several participatory artworks, such as Painting to Hammer a Nail (1961/1966), Bag Piece (1964), and White Chess Set (1966), among others. Later works like Add Color (Refugee Boat) (1960/2016) encourage guests to write their hopes and beliefs on a white boat and its surroundings, while the installation My Mommy Is Beautiful (2004) gives the public an opportunity to share thoughts about their relationship to their mothers and motherhood and attach photographs of their mother. Additionally, there will be public activations of Ono’s peace-driven artworks on billboards throughout the city of Chicago and on the MCA’s premises.

“Yoko Ono is a wildly influential and significant figure in performance, conceptualism, music, and activism. She has inspired generations of audiences to think differently about the everyday and seeing art,” said Manilow Senior Curator Jamillah James. “It is an honor to host this wide-ranging exhibition, which is a critical opportunity that invites the public to deeply engage with Ono’s many important contributions to visual art in new and exciting ways."

Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind is organized by Tate Modern, London in collaboration with Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf and Gropius Bau, Berlin and curated by Juliet Bingham, Curator, International Art, Tate Modern with Andrew de Brún, Assistant Curator, International Art, Tate Modern. The MCA presentation is organized (curated) by Jamillah James, Manilow Senior Curator with Korina Hernandez, Curatorial Assistant.

YOKO ONO: ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Yoko Ono is an artist, musician, and activist.

Born in Tokyo, 1933, Ono grew up in Japan, with periods spent abroad in San Francisco and New York. She was the first woman admitted to the philosophy program at Gakushuin University in Tokyo, where she studied before moving to New York in 1953 to attend Sarah Lawrence College.

In 1956, she settled in Manhattan with her then husband, composer Toshi Ichiyanagi. Immersed in a community of artists and composers, Ono began to develop her own art practice, often in the form of instructions that invited the viewer’s participation. In 1960, she rented a loft on Chambers Street in Lower Manhattan and began organizing performances and events in the space with La Monte Young, becoming a vital part of the New York art and music scene.

In 1961, Ono’s first solo exhibition was held at George Maciunas’ AG Gallery in New York. Painting to Be Stepped On, a work of canvas placed on the floor with a card inviting the viewer to step on it, was one of several Instruction Paintings exhibited. Later that year, she gave a performance at Carnegie Recital Hall that included works involving movement, sound, and voice, such as, AOS – To David Tudor, and A Grapefruit in the World of Park.

In March 1962, Ono returned to Tokyo, where she debuted new performances at the Sogetsu Art Center, including The Pulse, and exhibited her Instructions for Paintings, a progression from works shown at AG Gallery. These works, comprised only of written instructions, marked a key moment in the history of conceptual art. Later that year, she performed with John Cage and David Tudor on a concert tour throughout Japan. In 1964, Ono performed Cut Piece and Bag Piece in Kyoto and Tokyo, and self-published Grapefruit, her foundational book of instructions.

In the fall of 1964, Ono returned to New York, continuing to perform and stage events, and pioneering new ways of disseminating her art through advertising and postcard events. She also began making her own films, including Film No. 4, Match and Eyeblink.

In September 1966, Ono was invited to London to perform and lecture in the Destruction in Art Symposium. Remaining in London, she had a solo exhibition at Indica Gallery and Lisson Gallery the following year, showing new conceptual object-based works such as White Chess Set, Apple, and Half-A-Room. During this period, she continued to make films, including a new version of Film No. 4 (Bottoms), and presented a series of performances on her concert tour Music of the Mind.

At her Indica Gallery exhibition, Ono met John Lennon, beginning a personal and artistic relationship in art, music, and activism. By 1969 their conceptual events to promote peace had become world-wide news, including the WAR IS OVER! If you want it campaign, and Bed-In for Peace, held in an Amsterdam hotel room during their honeymoon in 1969 and later in Montreal.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Ono and Lennon’s activities centered primarily on music, film, and activism. Ono released four solo albums and four collaborative albums with Lennon over just five years, while also making multiple films, including FLY, Freedom, “RAPE”, Apotheosis, and Imagine.

In 1971 Ono had her first retrospective exhibition, This Is Not Here, at the Everson Art Museum. Later that year, her unofficial conceptual exhibition, Museum of Modern [F]art at the Museum of Modern Art was advertised in the Village Voice and documented as a new film.

In 1973, Ono and Lennon announced the birth of a new conceptual country, Nutopia, with “no land, no boundaries, no passports, only people.” In 1975 the birth of their son, Sean Ono Lennon, influenced the couple’s decision to take a break from public life.

In August 1980, Ono and Lennon returned to the studio to record their first album together since 1972. Double Fantasy was released in November and went on to win the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Less than a month after its release, Lennon was shot and killed by an assassin outside their home in New York.

Emerging from the tragedy of Lennon’s death, Ono immersed herself in making music, releasing several albums during the decade. “It was the music that made me survive,” Ono said. After a long absence from exhibiting her art in museums and galleries, her 1989 solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Yoko Ono: Objects, Film, signaled a renewed interest in her art. She continued to exhibit extensively around the world.

In 2000 Yes Yoko Ono, a retrospective exhibition originating at the Japan Society Gallery in New York toured to thirteen international venues over four years. In 2007, Ono unveiled the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER on Videy, an island off the coast of Reykjavik, Iceland, giving a permanent home to her and Lennon’s long-standing commitment to world peace. In 2009, she was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 53rd Venice Biennale. That same year, Ono released Between My Head and the Sky, her first studio album as Plastic Ono Band since 1973. In 2018, Ono released her thirteenth solo studio album, Warzone.

Ono’s work has continued to be honored with numerous exhibitions at some of the world’s most prestigious venues, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York (2015) and Tate Modern in London (2024).

In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ono’s work as an artist and activist remains singularly relevant and continues to challenge the boundaries of artist and audience.

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART - MCA - CHICAGO

220 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611

mcachicago.org

Related Post on Wanafoto:

Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind (in English)

Tate Modern, London 

February 15 – September 1, 2024 

Yoko Ono : Lumière de l'aube (in French)

Musée d'art contemporain, Lyon 

9 mars – 10 juillet 2016 

Yoko Ono: Grapefruit (in English)

Moderna Museet, Stockholm 

6 June – 16 September 2012

 

Yoko Ono: Between the Sky and My Head (in English)

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead 

14 December 2008 – 15 March 2009

Yoko Ono: Have You Seen the Horizon Lately? (in English)

Israel Museum, Jerusalem

November 26, 1999 – May 31 2000

Taking it all away: MCA Collection, Sydney

Taking it all away: MCA Collection 
Museum of Contemporary Art , Sydney, Australia
Through 22 February 2015

Stuart Ringholt

Untitled (Clock), 2014, clockwork, tubular bells, world globe, steel, glass, electronics 

Museum of Contemporary Art, purchased with funds provided by the MCA Foundation, 2014

Installation view Stuart Ringholt: Kraft, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, 2014

Image courtesy the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane © the artist, photograph: Andrew Curtis

What might happen if you took away time, so a 24-hour day passed in just 18 hours? What are you left with once 260 volunteers have spent five years erasing a magazine by hand – page by page? These questions about our relationship to time, and how it might be spent and measured, represent one line of enquiry within Taking it all away, an exhibition of works drawn from the Museum of Contemporary Art Collection that is on display this summer.

Taking it all away: MCA Collection presents works that speculate upon the continued importance of Minimalism and conceptual art, the processes of erasure and abstraction, and the social impact of art.

The exhibition includes work by Gordon Bennett, Christian Capurro et. al. (featuring Chris Bond), Peter Cripps, Gail Hastings, Robert Hunter, Rose Nolan and Stuart Ringholt. It presents recent works acquired by the MCA Foundation, along with artworks drawn from the MCA Collection.

Exhibition highlights include Christian Capurro’s erased magazine, which passed through the hands of 250 people over five years and Stuart Ringholt’s 18-hour clock, which explores not only the potential impact of time being taken away but also cosmology and our place within a vast universe. 

In different ways Peter Cripps, Gail Hastings and Robert Hunter explore how art activates our senses of spatiality and temporality, requiring not only our occupation of space but also our input of time and contemplation. Through mirrored surfaces, subtle painted grids or objects to walk around, these works map out the interaction between gallery and spectator.

Gordon Bennett’s soft ground etchings featuring black squares directly reference the origins of abstraction, while Rose Nolan’s banners recall the radical aesthetics of Constructivism’s political slogans. Yet hers are a call to arms of a more individualistic nature, in which party ideology is pared down to personal anxiety.

Natasha Bullock, MCA Senior Curator said ‘If there is a link between the diverse works by the artists featured in Taking it all away it is in their exploration of the dynamics of space and time, set against the complexities of modern life.’

The museum dedicates this exhibition to the memory of artists Gordon Bennett and Robert Hunter, who both sadly passed away during its development.

ARTIST LIST
Gordon Bennett was born 1955, Monto, Queensland. Lived and worked Brisbane. Died Brisbane 2014.
Christian Capurro was born 1968, Dampier, Western Australia. Lives and works Melbourne.
Peter Cripps was born 1948, Melbourne. Lives and works Melbourne.
Gail Hastings was born 1965, Perth. Lives and works Sydney.
Robert Hunter was born 1947, Melbourne. Lived and worked Melbourne. Died Melbourne 2014.
Rose Nolan was born 1959, Melbourne. Lives and works Melbourne.
Stuart Ringholt was born 1971, Perth. Lives and works Melbourne.

Museum of Contemporary Art Australia
www.mca.com.au

Tell Me Tell Me: Australian and Korean Art 1976–2011 A MCA Sydney and MOCA Seoul Collaboration

Tell Me Tell Me: Australian and Korean Art 1976-2011 
MCA Sydney off-site exhibition at the National Art School Gallery, Darlinghurst, Sydney 

17 June - 24 August 2011 
National Museum of Contemporary Art Korea, Seoul

8 November 2011 - 19 February 2012 

YEESOOKYUNG

Yeesookyung, While Our Tryst Has Been Delayed, 2010, DVD, 16:25 mins, sound 

Image Courtesy and © Yeesookyung

TELL ME TELL ME: AUSTRALIAN AND KOREAN ART 1976-2011 is a major new exhibition of Korean and Australian contemporary art celebrating 2011 as the Australian-Korean Year of Friendship. 

The exhibition is a first-time collaboration between the MCA in Sydney and the National Museum of Contemporary Art Korea in Seoul (MOCA Korea) and is the first stage in a two-part cultural exchange of art and ideas. The project highlights the historical and ongoing connections between Australian and Korean art and showcases works from the collections of both museums. Due to the MCA's redevelopment the exhibition take place at the National Art School Gallery, Darlinghurst. Tell Me Tell Me: Australian and Korean Art 1976 - 2011 will be exhibited at the MOCA Korea in Seoul from 8 November 2011 to 19 February 2012. 

It is inspired by Nam June Paik’s 1976 visit to Sydney and the 1976 Biennale of Sydney, that included a group of important Korean artists. Tell Me Tell Me explores conceptual, fluxus and technological art being created in both Korea and Australia at that time and regional variations in both countries over three decades to the present day.

The exhibition also explores the idea of artists using recent art histories to influence new work and sculpture, installation and object- based art forms now under the weight of conceptualism. 

LOUISE WEAVER

Louise Weaver, It would seem that eyes can live without hearts (Oracle Fox), 2005  

wool, foam, glass, felt, nylon, cotton, perspex, plastic, lurex thread, Swarovski crystals, 

wood  53 x 50 x 30 cm (fox)  37 x 61.5 x 67 cm (base)  

Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, purchased with the assistance of Jill & Michael Hawker, 

Andrew Cameron, John Reid, Mark Nelson, and silent pledge at Bella Dinner, 2006  

Image courtesy the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney © Louise Weaver 

The core of the exhibition comprises a significant collection of historical works by important artists from both countries, including Nam June Paik, Marr Grounds, Terry Reid, Noel Sheridan, Stelarc, Ken Unsworth, Moon-Seup Shim, Kang So-Lee, Insik Quac, Rosalie Gascoigne, Gaiyabidja Lalara, Don Gundinga and U-Fan Lee.

The contemporary Australian and Korean artists featured include Brook Andrew, Louise Weaver, Nyapanyapa, Charlie Sofo, Brown Council, Lou Hubbard, Stuart Ringholt, TV Moore, Beom Kim, Park Chan Kyong, Haegue Yang, Kim Eull, Hyun Ki Park, Chung Seo-Young, Jooyeon Park. 

Jointly curated by MCA Sydney Curator GLENN BARKLEY and MOCA Seoul Curator INHYE KIM. 

This exhibition is a partnership between the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, presented in association with the National Art School, Sydney. Supported by the Australian Government through the Australia International Cultural Council and the Australia-Korea Foundation, initiatives of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
www.mca.com.au

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART KOREA, SEOUL
www.moca.go.kr

Museum Contemporary Art Sydney reopens march 2012

MCA - Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia: A Major redevelopment

MCA Sydney redevelopment by Sydney architect Sam Marshall
in partnership with the New South Wales Government Architect
Image Courtesy Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney

Following a major AUD$53 million redevelopment, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney will reopen in March 2012 as a bold, new and significantly expanded Museum. The opening of the new MCA promises to be a highlight on the international art calendar, as the Museum is transformed into a major cultural centre for contemporary art and education. 

Commencing in August 2010, the redevelopment is by Sydney architect Sam Marshall in partnership with the New South Wales Government Architect. It will create an additional 4,500 square metres, increasing the MCA’s total size by almost 50 per cent. In addition to building three spacious new galleries, the building program will involve a complete refurbishment of existing facilities. The new Museum will house an entire floor dedicated to the MCA Collection, offering a major national resource for education and interpretative programs.

The National Centre for Creative Learning (NCCL) is one of the most significant highlights of the upgrade, created to complement the Museum’s commitment to innovation and its role as a leader in art education. The NCCL features a dedicated multimedia room and digital classroom, two practical studios, a 120-seat lecture theatre and a room for the MCA’s Bella program for children with special needs. Using unique learning programs and the latest technology, the Centre will connect with classrooms across Australia and the world to engage people with art through seamless accessibility. 

MCA Sydney redevelopment by Sydney architect Sam Marshall
in partnership with the New South Wales Government Architect
Image Courtesy Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney

New venue spaces will also be added on top of the existing building to take advantage of the MCA’s stunning location with spectacular views over Sydney Harbour to the Opera House. The redevelopment will create a new rooftop café and Sculpture Terrace, featuring an annually commissioned artwork. This expansion directly responds to the MCA’s growing audience – which reached over 580,000 in 2010 and has increased five-fold in the last decade. According to MCA Director, Elizabeth Ann Macgregor: ‘This expansion will cement the MCA’s role as a locally loved and internationally renowned contemporary art museum, which supports and promotes Australian artists alongside their international peers. Our commitment to education comes from our belief that creativity and education in the arts are the critical building blocks for a dynamic community’. 

The MCA redevelopment has been made possible as a result of public and private sector support. The Federal Government and the NSW State Government have contributed $13 million each. The MCA’s Chairman, Simon Mordant, and his family have pledged $15 million, in recognition of which the extension will be named the Mordant Wing. The City of Sydney has contributed $1 million and nearly $9 million has been pledged by private donors. The MCA has just launched a campaign to raise the final $2 million. 

The MCA also announced four new commissions by Australian artists, two of which will change annually. The Australian representative for the International Art Exhibition of the 2011 Venice Biennale, Hany Armanious, will create the first work for the new Sculpture Terrace. Additionally,  Emily Floyd will create the first sensory environment for the MCA’s Bella Room and Brook Andrew will install a permanent work which responds to the colonial naval dock remains underneath the new extension. Finally, Grant Stevens will create a video work for the new foyer, featuring names of building donors.  

MCA - MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART - SYDNEY 

www.mca.com.au

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Architecture, MCA, Chicago

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Architecture

Museum of Contemporary art - MCA, Chicago

February 22 - June 2, 2003

Profoundly beautiful and powerfully evocative, the new body of work Architecture by internationally-acclaimed Japanese photographer HIROSHI SUGIMOTO is presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago. This series of breathtaking black-and-white photographs dissolves the lines between time, memory, and history in icons of modernist architecture that include the Eiffel Tower, the Guggenheim Bilbao, and Corbusier's Notre-Dame-du-Haut in Ronchamp.

Hiroshi Sugimoto was first commissioned to photograph great works of architecture in 1997 for the MCA exhibition At the End of the Century: One Hundred Years of Architecture (1999). The Hiroshi Sugimoto: Architecture exhibition represents the first time the series are shown together. Manilow Senior Curator Francesco Bonami explains the conceptual nature of the work, "Sugimoto has two recurring obsessions: history and time. He once described this work as 'architecture after the end of the world,' which is interesting when you consider how he uses time – in long exposures -- to literally blur reality and question architecture and its history."

Hiroshi Sugimoto is known for taking years to work through a series of long-exposure works on themes ranging from museum dioramas, movie theaters, seascapes, and historical wax figures. The new architectural series runs counter to the traditional sense of a photograph as capturing a moment in time. By sometimes leaving the lens open for hours Hiroshi Sugimoto captures the essence, rather than the specifics, of his subject.

Hiroshi Sugimoto established his reputation for working in series in 1976 with a group of photographs of natural history museum dioramas that questioned what is real and what is reconstructed. For his following series, Hiroshi Sugimoto chose the interior of movie theaters built in the 1920s and 1930s. By using a time exposure the length of the film, the result was an illuminated but blank white rectangle that paid homage to the Minimalists.

His series of seascapes occupied him for over 20 years. Taken primarily at night, they exhibit a more spiritual relationship to time. Divided into simply "water and air," the seascapes inspire a zen-like sense of contemplation and timelessness with their sublime transitions between sea and sky. The seascapes were followed by a series of photographs of life-size historical figures in wax museums. These frozen portraits have a distinct sense of artificiality, reinforced by the varied time periods being brought together in one space.

The architectural icons in his most recent series Hiroshi Sugimoto: Architecture represent the fifth major theme that Sugimoto has explored in depth. With this series, Hiroshi Sugimoto has essentially broken all the rules of architectural photography. Photographing great landmarks of modernist architecture around the world, Hiroshi Sugimoto has deliberately taken the images out of focus and at unusual angles, isolating the recognizable forms. The blurred forms evoke the passage of time, muting the architectural details and leaving the essence of the building; suggestive of the way in which our memories preserve images.

The unique installation at the MCA parallels the architectural space of the work. Each of the 30 five by six foot photographs is mounted on a dark gray monolithic wall (15 in each gallery space) with the photographs faced away from the entrance so the viewer must experience the entire space before encountering the actual work.

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Architecture is accompanied by a beautiful catalogue with full-page illustrations and essays by Francesco Bonami, John Yau, and Marco Di Michelis. 

After the exhibition concludes at the MCA, it will travel to the Williamson Gallery at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, from November 15, 2003, to February 8, 2004.

MCA - MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, CHICAGO

220 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611

www.mcachicago.org

Katharina Fritsch, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago - Heart with Wheat

Katharina Fritsch: Heart with Wheat 

Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago 

March 3 - May 27, 2001 

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago, presents an installation created especially for the Museum by German artist KATHARINA FRITSCH.

Heart with Wheat (2000), presented in the MCA's second floor Bergman Gallery, consists of 40,000 greenish-gold aluminum multiples formed in the shape of shafts of wheat and configured to form an enormous heart, 45-feet in diameter. Sitting directly on the floor, the work resembles a literal field, creating an environment that relates to landscape and minimalist sculpture. The exhibition is curated by James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator Elizabeth Smith.

Recognized as one of Germany's most prominent artists to emerge during the past 20 years, Katharina Fritsch works in a variety of media, but is best known for her meticulously crafted sculptures that are inspired by both mass culture and high art sources. Katharina Fritsch's work gives form to images with associations rooted in American culture, while challenging the viewers' understanding of the meanings of those images.

"Heart with Wheat is dramatic, even overpowering in scale, while singularly commingling the representational and abstract to crystallize an idea, experience, or memory completely," said Elizabeth Smith. "Most importantly, it reveals Fritsch's ongoing quest to find new forms for old symbols."

Katharina Fritsch has recently created other works based on the heart shape. Herz mit Zahnen (Heart with Teeth) (1998), is made up of molars cast in red plastic, juxtaposing the warm symbol of the heart with threatening teeth. Herz mit Geld (Heart with Money) (1998-99), consists of artificial silver coins, producing a different effect as it shimmers in the light. In Heart with Wheat (2000), the golden wheat raises the concept of everyday objects-in this case staple foods-being reflected upon and transformed into works of art.

KATHARINA FRITSCH was born in Essen, Germany, in 1956 and studied at the Art Academy in Dusseldorf under sculptor Fritz Schwegler. In 1995, Fritsch-alongside Thomas Ruff and Martin Honert-was chosen to represent Germany in the Venice Biennale. In 1996, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art presented a retrospective of her work. She has also presented solo exhibitions at venues such as Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), London; DIA Center for the Arts, New York; Ludwigforum, Aachen; Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; and White Cube, London, and has been represented in numerous group exhibitions. Katharina Fritsch lives and works in Düsseldorf.

An accompanying 32-page full-color catalogue with an essay by James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator Elizabeth Smith is available.

MCA - MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, CHICAGO

220 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago

www.mcachicago.org

Sharon Lockhart, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

Sharon Lockhart

Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago

March 3 - May 20, 2001

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago, presents a major exhibition of Los Angeles-based artist SHARON LOCKHART's work. A survey of photographs and films from 1993 to the present, this exhibition is the largest and most significant solo presentation of the artist in an American museum to date. Sharon Lockhart features approximately 35 photographs and multi-photograph series, and includes screenings of her films Khalil, Shaun, A Woman Under the Influence (1994), Goshogaoka (1997), Shirley (1999), (created with artist Daniel Marlos), and Teatro Amazonas (1999) in the MCA Theater.

The exhibition is curated by MCA Associate Curator Dominic Molon.

"Sharon Lockhart's work presents the fragile moments and overlooked details of the everyday through the removed lens of conceptual photography and structuralist film," said Dominic Molon. "Her photographs and films are the result of meticulous organization and elaborate production, yet are profoundly intimate and immediately affecting. Lockhart's work encourages the viewer toward a more vigilant observation of the photographic and cinematic image, provoking a heightened consideration of perspective or of seemingly insignificant objects, gestures, and details."

Sharon Lockhart's photographs complicate the various visual codes that determine our ways of seeing. Since 1994, she has created numerous multi-photographic works that investigate concepts of time, narrative, and sequence.

These works create a tension between the intimacy and familiarity of a single image and the detached, categorical form of the overall whole. Much of Sharon Lockhart's early work-such as the five-photograph series Auditions (1994), or her Untitled photographs from 1996-employed the staging of scenes characteristic of filmmaking, requiring rigorous research and set-up to produce quiet scenes of the everyday.

The work that she has created in Japan, Mexico, and Brazil from 1997 to 1999, begins with a predetermined photographic situation, and allows subtle variations to emerge from image to image through collaboration with the subject or by simply recording the unseen changes that naturally occur over time.

Sharon Lockhart's films emphasize the photographic basis of the moving image, often using a fixed perspective to capture fragile and unexpected movements and human reactions in a given situation. Teatro Amazonas for example, records the occasional gestures and ambient sounds of a Brazilian audience listening to a 24-minute choral work by California composer Becky Allen which gradually fades to reveal the indistinct murmuring of the people at the conclusion of the performance.

Creating the illusion of an audience watching the audience viewing the film, Sharon Lockhart's film joins much of her recent work in presenting images of other cultures-such as Mexico and Japan-in a manner that addresses the complexities of cross-cultural representation.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated, 112-page full-color catalogue-the first major English language publication on the artist to date-featuring essays by art historian Norman Bryson and exhibition curator Dominic Molon. This is the first publication to present a full range of Sharon Lockhart's color and black-and-white photographs from throughout her career. 

Sharon Lockhart is scheduled to travel to the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, from June 9 through September 2, 2001.

This exhibition and its national tour are sponsored by the Sara Lee Foundation.

SHARON LOCKHART was born in 1964 in Norwood, Massachusetts. She received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and her MFA from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

Sharon Lockhart's work was recently presented in a major solo exhibition organized by the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, The Netherlands in 1999, which traveled to the Kunsthalle Zurich and the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg in 2000. Her work has been included in numerous important group exhibitions such as the 2000 and 1997 Biennial exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; "Cinéma Cinéma" at the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, (1999); and "Truce: Echoes of Art in an Age of Endless Conclusions" at SITE Santa Fe (1997).

Her film Goshogaoka has been screened internationally at such prestigious venues as the Museum of Modern Art, New York (as part of its New Directors/New Films series), the Rotterdam Film Festival, and the Sundance Film Festival. Teatro Amazonas has been screened at the Internationales Forum des Jungen Films, film festival in Berlin (2000), the Pitti Imagine, Florence, (1999), and the New York Film Festival (2000).

MCA - MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, CHICAGO

220 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago 60611.2604

www.mcachicago.org