A Different Future in the Making
Book an appointment on Tock to visit the exhibition during regular public hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3–6 pm.
Book an appointment on Tock to visit the exhibition during regular public hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3–6 pm.
Location
Studio Gang Gallery, 1520 West Division Street, Chicago
On View
November 20, 2021 – May 26, 2022
Curation
Studio Gang and Blue Tin Production
Exhibition Design
Studio Gang
Tags
What 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?
This inaugural exhibition in Studio Gang’s new Gallery shows how these questions are being explored by Chicago’s Blue Tin Production, the first apparel manufacturing worker cooperative in America run by immigrant, refugee, and working-class women of color.
Concept model and drawings of 63rd House by Studio Gang
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, the exhibition also reveals how the cooperative 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 organizers, the 63rd House 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.
A trench coat made by Blue Tin, glimpsed through a hand-sewn curtain by Diana Aguilar and Hale Ekinci, 2021
A fast-fashion t-shirt with “receipt” essay and map document the true cost of the sweatshop system
A trench coat made by Blue Tin, glimpsed through a hand-sewn curtain by Diana Aguilar and Hale Ekinci, 2021
Studio Gang’s Gallery connects to a new Visible Archive, which holds the Studio’s growing collection of architectural models, sketches, ephemera, and other mateials
Exhibition Team
Exhibition Design, Fabrication, and Installation: 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
Related
Exhibition On View: A Different Future in the Making
On view until March 31, our collaborative exhibition with Blue Tin Production is the first to be held in Studio Gang’s new Wicker Park gallery space and a partner program of the Chicago Architecture Biennial.
Visiting Hours are Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:00 – 6:00 p.m. (Tickets)