Aay Preston-Myint
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Artist's statement:
In my work I use the disruption and queering of objects, sites, and relationships to make propositions about our present and future, (re)imagining sites of magic, myth, anguish, anxiety, and promise. The works that compose Tonight is the night is the night are sculptures of protest banners based on visions of stills of karaoke screens. In this series, the intimate, cathartic projection of self onto the late-capitalist celebrity other employs the same vocabulary as the strained rallying cry of utopic collectivism. The portable, tactical display of the banner reflects the power of performative context over the limits of language, and sets the stage for us to consider the ways in which we identify with mass culture and counter-culture can lead to personal and political transfiguration.
- Aay Preston-Myint
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Notes on the location and titles of the pieces:
Individual works in order from L to R as hung on the building:
Who will be hurt / Who will be blamed? (Resolution)
No more sorrow / Nothing borrowed (In the Good Life)
Hold on to the night / There will be no shame (Erasure)
The future's owned by you and me (A Different Class)
It has been before / So why can't it be now? (A rush and a push, here we come)
The pieces are hanging off of the 400 S Peoria building/ Art & Design Hall at UIC - formerly industrial (used to be a bra factory), but not abandoned, save for perhaps by the state budget. In the installation shown they were also visible from the UIC-Halsted Blue Line station and the Eisenhower Expressway.