Creative Wing Open Studio Night

Meet our Radicle Residents and Creative Wing artists in their studios during our Summer edition of Creative Wing Open Studio Night! Connect with artists, collectors, and curators in our community over light bites and refreshments. This event is free and open to all.

About the Radicle Residency:

Radicle Studio Residents are rooted for a year at the Art Center through high-quality, free studio space where they make work, research new projects, have access to the Art Center’s broad International network of artists and resources, and connect with a dynamic public.

Meet the Residents:

Leila Tamari

Leila Tamari’s artistic practice currently explores belonging through relationship to place, identity, and money. Her work derives meaning through the relationships she develops, which are created through collaboration and facilitation. She aspires to cultivate a culture of care; so love and play are essential ingredients in her creative endeavors. Some of her past collaborations include exchange/value, The Sistah Friends Project, Hyperopia: 20/30 Vision, and Contracts with Ourselves.

Leila carries a lineage of people who were the displaced, as well as the displacers. Her heritage spans African and Jewish diasporas, and as the daughter of immigrants, one of her lifelong quests is coming into deeper understanding and relationship to “home.” She is interested in creating pathways to reparations through place-based re-investment, and she is curious about how art will lead us there.

Leila founded This Place Works (TPW) – her creative home and consultancy – to live into the many expressions of her art practice. At TPW, she takes on various roles from artist coach, cultural strategist/advisor, organizational healer/facilitator, and more. Her professional experience spans organizing, public art production, and wealth redistribution.

Yasmin Spiro

Yasmin Spiro was born and grew up in Kingston, Jamaica and currently lives and works in Chicago. Spiro’s work is multi-disciplinary, primarily based in sculpture and immersive installations, with video, drawing and performance – exploring issues of cultural identity and socio-economic issues within the framework of urban development and social politics – often through the lens of Caribbean culture.

Spiro’s work explores concepts related to architecture and urbanism, socio-economics, futuristic cities, and craft and culture. Research is often layered with personal narratives connected to both the landscape and culture of Jamaica. Spiro’s body of work explores materiality, and is often textile based, and also utilizes wood, rope, and cast materials – plaster, ceramic, and cement. Creating architectural elements that reference futurism and femininity in our built environments, her studio practice pulls in various aspects of personal and cultural history to build stories within the work – layered with conceptual research, and material experimentation.

Spiro’s work has been shown at galleries internationally, recently at the Arts Club of Chicago. Her work has been covered in Art News, Interior Design, NewCity, Washington Times, Miami Herald and others. She attended Pratt Institute and has held residencies at the Dora Maar Foundation, The Kohler Arts and Industry residency, Vermont Studio Center, and the Chicago Artist Coalition.

Keith S. Wilson

Keith S. Wilson is a game designer, poet, and interdisciplinary artist. He is a recipient of an NEA Fellowship, an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, and an Illinois Arts Council Agency Award, and has received both a Kenyon Review Fellowship and a Stegner Fellowship. Additionally, he has received fellowships or grants from Bread Loaf, Tin House, the MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center, UCross, the Millay Colony, and James Merrill House, among others. His book, Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love (Copper Canyon), was recognized by the New York Times as a best new book of poetry. Keith’s work in new media includes “Once Upon a Tale,” a storytelling card game designed for Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, and alternate reality games (ARGs) for the University of Chicago. He has worked with or taught new media with Kenyon College, the Field Museum, the Adler Planetarium, and the University of Chicago.

Natasha Moustache

Natasha Moustache is a photo-based installation artist whose work explores identity, shared histories, and familial ties within colonized spaces. Moustache’s work reflects their experience as a first-generation, Seychellois-American, examining African Diasporic ties across oceans and manmade borders. They regularly engage strangers as collaborator-participants, utilizing portraiture, and the reimagining of domestic spaces through installation. Moustache is interested in bringing the human community into a conversation with itself that transcends difference and emphasizes commonality.

Moustache completed their MFA (2021) at Columbia College Chicago and their BFA (2004) at Simmons College in Boston, Ma. Their work has most recently been shown at the Vermont Center for Photography, the Lubeznik Center, the Hyde Park Arts Center, the Houston Center for Photography, and the International Center for Photography. They have had residencies at the Center for Photography at Woodstock and Latitude Chicago. Moustache’s editorial work has been published internationally in academic literature and periodicals. They were a 2021 MOCP Snider Prize Honorable mention and a 2020 Hopper Prize finalist.