Featured: Photos from “The Sympathetic Imagination” at the Museum of Contemporary Art 🎨

True life: I’m an art museum junkie.

I’ve explored art museums all over the world – way too many to count. But, last weekend I was finally able to check out the Museum of Contemporary  Art in Chicago.

With help from my muse, Honore, I’m now able to share my experience with the SoulCulture fam.

Matter

I’m not sure of the exact name of this piece, but I’m calling it Matter.  A seemingly comprehensive list of the types of matter that exist in the world – a list that quite frankly barely makes sense. Right in the middle of this list is the statement, black lives matter. 

Throughout our current political landscape, many people have struggled to understand or find comfort in such a simple statement: black lives matter.  This art piece seems to shed light on how obvious and simple this statement can and should be – in the midst of chaos, clutter and nothing-ness, black lives still matter.

I found it to be an interesting take on the Black Lives Matter movement – interesting enough to warrant a couple of photographs.

The Sympathetic Imagination

This exhibit, created by Diana Thater, presents a series of immersive film and video installations that forces its viewers to imagine animal experiences in natural habitats. Each room of the exhibit mimics natural habitats from the viewpoint of the animal.

The intersection of film and video with installation practices in Thater’s work, which often incorporates viewers’ bodies and even the projectors themselves, is one of the artist’s major contributions to the field of contemporary art.

The colorful installations break out of the video rectangle—often falling somewhere between sculpture and architecture—to imagine fluid worlds of dolphins, dancing bees, and the animals that inhabit the irradiated explosion site at Chernobyl.

What first seemed to me as a Yo! MTV Raps tribute, actually turned out to be a complex and interactive installation without me even realizing it.

Shoutout to modern art!

For more information on Thater’s installation, visit the MCA website.

Honore was styled by yours truly, rocking a Tommy Hilfiger flannel from Indianapolis consignment shop, Naptown Thrift.

Selena Quintanilla tribute tee is from Urban Outfitters.

If you love vintage street wear, shop with Naptown Thrift on Instagram and read our interview with its founder!

For more photos from our art museum visit, follow SoulCulture Blog on Instagram!