put a bow on it.

Feb 1 - Mar 15, 2025

Tiger Strikes Asteroid Chicago is pleased to present, put a bow on it., a group exhibition featuring work by Chicago-based artists Cecilia Beaven, Sarabeth Dunton, Mari Eastman, Flor Flores, Jazmine., Cydney M. Lewis, Liz McCarthy, Matt Morris, Selina Trepp, and Allison Wade.

This exhibition investigates a visual vocabulary that we are calling “girl stuff”: iconographies that read as unapologetically feminine, formal strategies that suggest a restlessness around the idea of adornment, materials and making processes that move towards craft,

and representations of introspection and intimate exchange. “Girl stuff” is a category that we see operating in the practices of artists that employ a wide variety of media, come from different generations, and may or may not identify as “girls.” Many of the elements of this vocabulary have been viewed, historically and contemporarily, as surface-level effects: artistic moves that are lacking in creativity, originality, or depth, that are trivial or not worth attending to. put a bow on it. ties together these elements to make a prism through which to both see and reflect on “girl stuff.”

put a bow on it. provokes consideration of the range and depth of these formal strategies. What might attending to an aesthetic vocabulary of the unserious allow us to uncover? Can the secretive or unfashionable nature of that vocabulary allow for it to be subversive? Can it create a liberated space for personal and political conversations? Can it mobilize gestures of play and fantasy to imagine alternatives to our current world? Can it sneak in serious content beneath an unserious veneer? Is it a method of representing selves and experiences that operates outside of the male gaze and/or the patriarchy? Can it spark dialogue about the way that gendered, sexed, and racialized tropes have been forged and perpetuated? We hope that this exhibition will open up conversations around the potentialities of what “girl stuff” might be able to do.

put a bow on it. is curated by Maggie Borowitz and TSA Chicago member, Frances Lee with exhibition graphics designed by TSA Chicago member, Debra Kayes.

Programs

In addition to the opening reception on Saturday, February 1 from 1 pm - 4 pm please join Tiger Strikes Asteroid Chicago for the following programs during the run of the exhibition.

Saturday, February 15, 2pm–4pm join us in the gallery for a workshop by musician and fashion disruptor Anabel Hirano. In this workshop titled T-Shirts Can Be Better participants will explore methods in deconstructing and reconstructing the ubiquitous form of a t-shirt. Processes will include cutting, tying and basic hand sewing techniques. The workshop is free and open to the public. BYO t-shirts, all other materials will be provided while supplies last.

Saturday, February 22, 2pm join us in the gallery for live performances by participating artists Flor Flores and Liz McCarthy. In the first performance, Flor Flores will conjure Kiki, a queer monarch butterfly, into the space through a blend of poetry and

sensorial gestures. In the second performance, titled “The Mother Players,” McCarthy’s sculptural works will be activated by artist-mothers following a score of sound and movement. The performance will explore the idea of babies as vessels for desire, and how parents and society project their expectations and normalizations on these small forms.

Wednesday, March 12, (time TBA) join us for an evening virtual panel discussion between artists in the exhibition. The curators Maggie Borowitz and Frances Lee will moderate a conversation that explores themes present in the artists’ practices and exhibition at large including: iconographies that read as unapologetically feminine, formal strategies that suggest a restlessness around the idea of adornment, and representations of introspection and intimate exchange.

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Artist Bios

Cecilia Beaven is a visual artist and art instructor from Mexico City, based in Chicago. Through her work, which includes painting, drawing, animation, film, and sculpture, she develops a speculative mythology with unique visual narratives. Beaven draws on her life in Mexico City and her mythological, ethnographic and introspective explorations to create a narrative in which intriguing and absurd mythical creatures and landscapes make us aware of the fictional nature of the artist’s world, staging a monstrous, fragile and introspective setting. Beaven holds an MFA in Studio from SAIC, which she pursued as a Fulbright scholar, and a BFA with honors from ENPEG La Esmeralda (Mexico City). Her multidisciplinary artwork has been shown in solo shows in Mexico City, Houston, and Chicago, as well as in group exhibitions in Mexico, the US, Colombia, Sweden, Italy, and Japan.

Sarabeth Dunton works in drawing, collage, and sculpture. Central to her practice is her position as a queer woman investigating the role of desire in aesthetics. The work seeks to simultaneously subvert and revel in representations of desire in dominant media. Dunton received her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and her BFA from the University of Michigan. She has been an artist in residence at ChaNorth, MassMoCA, and Harold Arts. She has been a program participant at Anderson Ranch, The Hyde Park Arts Center Program, and Artist, Inc. Her work has been shown at Parlour & Ramp, The Hyde Park Art Center, Gallery 400, G-CADD, Plug Projects, H&R Block Artspace, and NADA, among others.

Mari Eastman makes work that emerges from a pictorial study of images from magazines and the internet which become intertwined with personal narratives, executed in an intentionally loose manner. Eastman holds an MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited at Bombon Projects (Barcelona), Broadway (New York), Green Gallery (Milwaukee) and the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles) among other venues. Her work has been included in Modern Painters and The New York Times and on the websites Artforum.com and Contemporary Art Daily. Eastman lives and works in Chicago and is on the faculty at the University of Chicago.

Flor Flores is a transdisciplinary artist and poet whose creative works are proposals for queer belongings with new modes of expressing and relating to one another. Some themes or subjects in their work include flowers as a symbol for self (Flor), Kiki – a queer monarch butterfly that enjoys going to the discotheque, which has evolved into an experimental and collaborative publishing project, and "X" - an Epic poem about the letter X, exploring its significance in Latinx identity and its other uses as a gesture of erasure, inclusion, voidance, and a placeholder for a language that is yet to come. Flores has had solo exhibitions at Everybody Gallery, Chicago Artists Coalition, ADDS DONNA, and BAR4000. Their work has been featured in publications including Artmaze, Sixty Inches From Center, New American Paintings, Newcity Art, Chicago Artist Writers, and Monsters & Dust. They are represented by Good Naked Gallery.

Jazmine. deconstructs personal, communal, and political narratives through photography, video, and text. Memory, both found and fabricated, serves as her primary material; the acts of remembrance inform and shape the processes she employs. As she addresses the beauty and failure of collective memory, Jazmine. seeks to mine, archive, and reimagine impressions left on the personal as one navigates the everyday familiar and unknown. Jazmine. holds a BS from Florida A&M University and an MFA from the University of Chicago, and has been recognized as a 2021 Writing Fellow for A Public Space, Fall 2021 Hopper Prize awardee, 2022 grantee for Kartemquin Films, Newcity Breakout artist in 2022, and 2024 OVERRIDE | A Billboard Project artist as well as DCASE Individual Artists Program grantee.

Cydney M. Lewis is a Chicago-based multimedia artist with a multi-disciplinary and distinguished background. Her work delves into material manipulation, drawing her viewers into a realm of visual archaeology. Lewis intricately weaves the natural, spiritual, and scientific, observing nature's resilience and our potential for harmonious existence. Her art is held in private collections around the world, and has been exhibited widely, including Satellite Art Fair at Art Basel in Miami, Lubeznik Center for the Arts, National Museum in Berlin and the Hyde Park Art Center. Lewis's foundation lies in architecture, holding a degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and having studied at L'ecole D'architecture des Versailles, France. Recognitions encompass residencies at Chicago Public Schools, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, and Lyseloth Musikerwohnhaus in Basel, Switzerland.

Liz McCarthy makes art that explores the body in relation to material culture and as an ever-changing material intertwined with human and nonhuman environments. McCarthy (she/they) draws on queer/feminist ideas about the body and clay’s deep and diverse humanist tradition. She holds an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and BFA from the University of North Carolina at Asheville. Most notably she has exhibited/performed at: Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago), Goldfinch (Chicago), and Ghebaly Gallery (Los Angeles). She is currently in the group exhibition “Synchronicities” at the Bemis Center in Omaha NE; she has participated in residencies such as: Atlantic Center for the Arts, ACRE, Banff Centre, Ox-Bow, and Lighthouse Works; and has received support from: Joan Mitchell Foundation, Illinois Arts Council, Chicago’s Department of Tourism, and Chicago Artist Run Spaces Award.

Matt Morris is a dedicated polymath based in Chicago who has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and Europe. Morris writes prolifically about art, perfume, and culture for numerous journals, exhibition monographs, and websites. Morris is a transplant from southern Louisiana who holds a BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati and earned an MFA in Art Theory + Practice from Northwestern University, as well as a Certificate in Gender + Sexuality Studies.

Selina Trepp is a Swiss/American artist researching economy and improvisation. For Trepp, finding a balance between the intuitive and the conceptual is a goal. She works across media and space combining performance, installation, painting, and sculpture to create intricate setups that result in photos, drawings and animations. In addition to her studio-based work, Trepp is active in the experimental music scene. In this context she sings and plays the videolah, her midi controlled video synthesizer, creating projected animations in real-time as visual music. She performs with a varying cast of collaborators and as one half of Spectralina.

Allison Wade is a visual artist and educator whose practice is material-based, intuitive, and formally focused. She received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and holds a BA in English literature from Stanford University. She has been a visiting artist at Cranbrook Academy of Art’s Ceramics Department, Kansas City Art Institute, Nebraska Wesleyan University, and Miami University, among others. Residencies include Ragdale, Loghaven, Watershed Ceramics Residency, Ox-Bow, ACRE, and the Vermont Studio Center. She lives in Chicago, where she is represented by Devening Projects and is Assistant Professor of Instruction at Northwestern University.