Participant in the 2014 Jackman Residency Program at Hyde Park Art Center, Nuria Montiel expanded her participatory printmaking practice by collaborating with various communities across Chicago and producing a new series of relief prints. Montiel brought her mobile printing press, La Imprenta Móvil, to The Franklin, Sweet Water Foundation, Hull House, National Museum of Mexican Art, among other sites to play with language through conversations over art-making.
The exhibited monoprints feature the Bauhaus-Chicago type created by the Mexico City-based artist to voice desires and concerns from the city’s citizens. The font combines traits from the letterforms of Dutch graphic designer Jurriaan Schrofers and a type found in south east Mexico that references Mayan architecture. Inspired by Brazillian educator Paulo Freire’s (1921-1997) pedagogy connecting knowledge and literacy to social change and action, Montiel turns every encounter into an opportunity to learn, hoping that “the written word can be understood as action.” The exhibition Wxnder Wxrds presents the artist’s process in collecting words, wandering through neighborhoods, pasting up posters in various wards, and wondering about the how these abstract collected poems on posters can activate a public.
