Tiger Strikes Asteroid Chicago is pleased to present Body Switchers, curated by Holly Cahill, at Booth 115 at the Satellite Art Show in Miami.

Endlessly interfacing with communication technologies, the human species has changed.  We have mutated so that we are still flesh and blood, but also possessed of a form of electronic embodiment.  As we shuttle back and forth between our physical surroundings and immaterial space, our bodies and minds multiply as we get sucked into portals of the internet. This mixing creates a tension and perhaps another order of space, a third space, a disorienting space, where the physical and the virtual compete for recognition.

What are we to do with the body and its double? How might we re-insert or re-imagine our dimensions, form and gender in virtual space?  Has the virtual become the material of our physical surroundings?  Body Switchers includes the work of five Chicago-based artists who negotiate these questions.

Michael C. Andrews, Helen Maurene Cooper, Meg Duguid, Kelly Kaczynski, and Jeroen Nelemans practices span engagements ranging from the advent of the supercomputer to our interaction with hand held devices as well as those worlds that exist somewhere between the virtual and the physical.  

Michael C. Andrews tapestries, sculptures, and animations taunt the categorizations of textile, cinema, and object. His hybrid approach to making is fueled by the desires and anxieties of a schizophrenic and body conscious culture. Exhibitions include MCA Chicago, Dan Devening Projects and Exhibitions in Chicago, IL, The Chicago Cultural Center, and PENELOPE in New York City. Michael C. Andrews is the Executive and Creative Director at Ox-Bow School of the Arts and Artists’ Residency.

Helen Maurene Cooper earned a BA from Bard College and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  Cooper’s work is driven by personal connection and building relationships with community. She is an artist who uses numerous photographic processes along with installation and publication to connect and build relationships, explore feminism, entrepreneurship, small economies, the power of adornment, and intimacy. Since 2008, her worked has been focused on place-based exploration, specifically within beauty-centered communities in Chicago. Subjects have included custom made prom dresses, drag queen culture, and the specialty minority-owned nail businesses of Chicago’s west side.

She has received funding for exhibitions and publications through the University of Chicago, the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Council of Eindhoven, Netherlands. Her work has been reviewed by the Chicago Tribune, New City, International Forum for Contemporary Visual Arts, New York Photo Review, Temporary Art Review, Bust.com and Vice. Her monograph, Paint & Polish, Cultural Economy and Visual Culture from the West Side, Onomatopee, Eindhoven Netherlands, debuted in 2017 with an accompanying exhibition in Netherlands.

Meg Duguid believes that documentation is paramount to her art making and is invested in the ways that documentation and art can be integrated in a single practice. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA from Bard College. She has performed and exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 6018 NORTH, Slow Gallery, the Mission, Terrain, Roman Susan, the Chicago Cultural Center, and Defibrillator Performance Art Space in Chicago, as well as the DUMBO Arts Festival in Brooklyn, 667 Shotwell in San Francisco, and the Zona Maco Art Fair in Mexico City. Duguid has screened work at Synthetic Zero in New York, Spiderbug in Chicago, and the Last Supper Festival in Brooklyn. From 2009 to 2011 she ran Clutch Gallery, a 25-square-inch white cube located in the heart of her purse; since then, she lends her purse to others to curate and carry. Duguid is a member of Tiger Strikes Asteroid Chicago and lives and works in Chicago with her husband, her son, and three cats.

Kelly Kaczynski is a Chicago based artist working within the language of sculpture. Selected exhibitions include Peregrineprogram, IL; Ortega y Gasset Projects, NY; Soap Factory, MN; Comfort Station, IL; Gahlberg Gallery, IL; threewalls, IL; Hyde Park Art Center, IL; Rowland Contemporary, IL; University at Buffalo Art Gallery, NY; Triple Candie, NY; Islip Art Museum, NY; Josee Bienvenu Gallery, NY; DeCordova Museum, MA; Boston Center for the Arts, MA. Public installations include projects with the Main Line Art Center, Haverford, PA; the Interfaith Center, NY; Institute for Contemporary Art, Boston and the Boston National Historic Parks, MA; Boston Public Library, MA. Curatorial projects include the 2014 exhibitions, Roving Room at Habersham Mills, GA and Virtually Physically Speaking at Columbia College, Chicago, IL and the 2011 exhibition Mouthing (a sentient limb) at the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL. Recipient of Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award ’15; Artadia, Chicago ’08; Visible Republic, Boston, ’00. Kaczynski received an MFA from Bard College, NY and BA from The Evergreen State College, WA. She is a Lecturer with the School of the Art Institute, Chicago.

Jeroen Nelemans (1974) was born in the Netherlands and currently resides in Chicago. Nelemans has shown at the Mission gallery in Chicago, Aspect/Ratio gallery in Chicago, the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, the de la Cruz Collection Contemporary Space in Miami, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art in Greece, Elmhurst Art Museum in Illinois, the Nice&Fit gallery in Berlin and the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids. His works has also been screened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami, the Banff Center in Canada, Gallery 400 in Chicago, as well as the Werkleitz Centre for Media Art, Halle, Germany, the Magmart International VideoArt Festival in Napoli, the Dublin Electronic Arts Festival in Ireland and the Kortfilm festival in Copenhagen as well as the 25th Festival Les Instant Video in Marseille France. Nelemans received a Full Merit Scholarship from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and finished his MFA in 2007. He was a resident at the Jentel residency, Vermont Studio Center.

Holly Cahill is an artist member of the newest branch of Tiger Strikes Asteroid in Chicago.  Trained as a painter, she uses an exploration of materials and process to engage with ideas connected to choreography, landscape, hyper-dimensional phenomena, and architecture.  Her work has been shown at Penn State University, DEMO Project, Chicago Artist Coalition, David and Reva Logan Center for the Arts, D Gallery, The Franklin, Hyde Park Art Center, and the Walter Philips Gallery in Banff Canada, among others.  She received her BFA in painting from Syracuse University and an MFA from the University of Cincinnati.  She has been an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center, 8550 Ohio, the Banff Centre, and Ox-Bow.