Exhibition Closing Party: A Different Future in the Making

1520 West Division Street,Chicago IL 60642

26 May, 2022

Description

Join us to celebrate Studio Gang and Blue Tin's collaborative exhibition, A Different Future in the Making! A Different Future in the Making, the first exhibition to be held in Studio Gang's new Wicker Park gallery space, is closing on Thursday, May 26th.Come through between 6-8pm to see the show, talk with some of the collaborators, and toast to the future of 63rd House, Blue Tin's upcoming community space and manufacturing studio in Chicago Lawn.All guests must please present proof of vaccination at entry and wear a mask while indoors. Thank you for keeping our community safe. An architectural model and suspended images of the design for 63rd House. Photograph (c) Steve Hall.About the Exhibition A Different Future in the Making: Building Garment Worker Power and A Broader Abolitionist Movement with Blue Tin Production and 63rd HouseWhat can bottom-up, systemic change look like in the garment industry—and beyond—when exploitation and violence are replaced by community and care? And what role might architecture and design play in this transformation? A Different Future in the Making shows how these questions are being explored by Chicago’s Blue Tin Production, the first apparel manufacturing worker co-operative in America run by immigrant, refugee, and working-class women of color. Blue Tin is set on ending the fashion industry’s reliance on sweatshops and gender-based violence to make our clothing, and in its place building garment worker power and destabilizing power structures from the bottom up. Materializing Blue Tin’s radical model and vision using the tools and techniques of garment work, this exhibition also reveals how the co-operative is seeding greater change through their newest project: 63rd House, a multifunctional community space and manufacturing studio in Chicago Lawn. Designed by Studio Gang and envisioned in partnership with local Black and brown youth-led organizations, the project aims to remake a vacant former post office into a neighborhood center where Blue Tin and the community’s larger abolitionist vision can flourish—and in doing so, create vital infrastructures of care and safety outside of police, prisons, and sweatshops. Conceptual design for the first floor (above left) and second floor (above right) of 63rd House. Images by Studio Gang.Exhibition Team Design and Fabrication: Studio Gang and Blue Tin Production Collaborating Artist: Hale Ekinci Lighting Design Consultant: Kerri Callahan, Polymath Design Screen Printing: Justin Clemons, Magnolia Screen Printing Printing: Best Imaging Solutions