Museum of Contemporary Art

Deborah Stratman

Chicago Works

17 Mar - 06 Dec 2020

Deborah Stratman, Still from The Illinois Parables, 2016. 16 mm film or DCP. 60 min
Image courtesy of the artist
DEBORAH STRATMAN
Chicago Works
17 March – 6 December 2020

Ed and Jackie Rabin Gallery
Third Floor, North Side
Dr. Paul and Dorie Sternberg Family Gallery
Third Floor, North Side

Chicago Works: Deborah Stratman is centered on the artist’s celebrated film The Illinois Parables, which chronicles the history of the region through 11 chapters addressing everything from the ‘resettlement’ of the Cherokee people, to the invention of the nuclear reactor at the University of Chicago, to the deadly police raid of Chicago’s Black Panther headquarters. In the film, Stratman travels to the charged locations where these events occurred and discovers the ways that belief, force, technology, and government mark the land, and how the landscape in turn marks those who call it home.

On the occasion of the exhibition, Stratman created an extension of the film—a twelfth chapter—in the form of a recreation of Studs Terkel’s WFMT radio booth and an accompanying audio program of the oral historian's interviews.

The exhibition is organized by Jack Schneider, Curatorial Assistant. It is presented in the Dr. Paul and Dorie Sternberg Family Gallery and Ed and Jackie Rabin Gallery on the museum’s third floor.