Not Just Another Pretty Face 

LandFORMS at EXPO Chicago

Hyde Park Art Center > Exhibitions > LandFORMS at EXPO Chicago

The Hyde Park Art Center is proud to present a micro-exhibition of works by Regina Agu and Farah Salem that reflect on the relationship between geography, the body, and the histories and traditions embedded in landscapes. Agu’s interest in landscapes, particularly of the Gulf South began as a lens-based biographical exploration, and grew into a deep visual study of Black geographies and spatial concerns informed by her academic training in policy studies and data science. Salem’s most recent multimedia installations trace relationships between land and ancestral healing practices. Informed by her profession as an art therapist and counselor applying somatic-based therapies for trauma healing, research and experiments with movement-based and musical traditions from the Arabian Peninsula, Salem’s practice explores the potential erasure of socio-cultural conditioning that influences and distorts shared realities.

Salem and Agu are alumni of the Hyde Park Art Center’s Jackman Goldwasser Residency Program. The works exhibited were developed during their residencies. Curated by Mariela Acuna, Exhibitions and Residency Manager.

  • April 13 – 16, 2023
  • Navy Pier, Booth 453

About The Artists

Regina Agu was born in Houston, TX and raised between the United States, Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, South Africa, and Switzerland. She relocated to Chicago at the beginning of 2020, where she now lives and works. Her work has been included in exhibitions, public readings, publications, and performances internationally. Agu is currently a 2022 Radicle artist-in-residence in the Jackman Goldwasser Residency at Hyde Park Art Center. She has exhibited most recently in the 2021 Atlanta Biennial: Of Care and Destruction, and the 2021 Texas Biennial: A New Landscape, A Possible Horizon. Her first solo museum show, Passage, was presented at the New Orleans Museum of Art (2019-2020). Her work has been supported by an Artadia Houston award, grants from Houston Arts Alliance, The Idea Fund, and the Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts + Project Row Houses fellowship at the University of Houston for her research project A Psychogeography of Emancipation Park. She has attended residencies at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans through a partnership with For Freedoms, A Studio in the Woods, Open Sessions at The Drawing Center in NYC, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Lawndale Artist Studio Program, among others. From 2014-2017, Agu was the co-director of Alabama Song, a collaboratively-run art space in Third Ward, Houston, which received a 2016 SEED grant from The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Agu is the founder of the Houston-based WOC Reading Group, and her other collaborative projects include Friends of Angela Davis Park. Agu holds a BS from Cornell University and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Farah Salem (Kuwaiti, b.1991) is a Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist and art therapist. In her studio practice, she merges present experiences of human and geologic happenings, while looking at themes of access, agency, power, and the invisibly visible. She investigates the distortion of reality and perception, questioning the potential erasure of socio-cultural conditioning that influences and distorts our shared realities. She holds an MA in Art Therapy and Counseling from School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Farah’s work has been featured at Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), American University Museum Katzen Art Center (Washington DC), United Photo Industries (New York), Mana Contemporary (Chicago), Centro Cultural De Santa Cruz (Bolivia), Paris Contemporary Art Fair, Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE), and Contemporary Art Platform (Kuwait). She has also completed residencies at Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago Artist Coalition, ACRE, and Crossway Foundation.