Woven Being: Art for Zhegagoynak/Chicagoland

The Chicagoland region is a longstanding cultural and economic hub for Indigenous peoples, including the Council of Three Fires— the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa—as well as the Menominee, Miami, Ho-Chunk, Sac, Fox, Kickapoo, and Illinois nations. People from many Indigenous nations call the region home today, and the city of Chicago has the third-largest urban Indigenous population in the United States. Indigenous voices, however, are often absent from art narratives of Chicago, past and present. This silence is damaging. The Block initiated the exhibition Woven Being: Art for Zhegagoynak/Chicagoland with the question: what would it mean if Indigenous people with ties to this land were the point of entry for thinking about art in Chicago and its region through time? Guided by Indigenous collaborations, priorities, and voices, the exhibition foregrounds the perspectives of Indigenous artists currently based in the city and those from nations forcibly displaced from the area in the nineteenth century. The Block is forming Woven Being through Indigenous curatorial methodologies that prioritize collaboration, reciprocity, and sustained dialogue with an expanding, intergenerational community of Indigenous knowledge sharers and non-Indigenous allies.