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KIRSTEN LEENAARS


(Re)Housing the American Dream: Freedom Principles, 2018, video still

Butler University Jordan College of Artis series is a High-Impact Artist and Scholar Residency Program for Student Enrichment and Community Enjoyment

Look here for more information on the event and registration.


Who gets to imagine what? The act of imagining itself is not a fair, objective, or equitable thing. So what happens when you follow the same group of twenty-two American born and refugee youth over a period of 4 years and ask them collectively to imagine different future scenarios, reframe histories, and contextualize their own lived experiences and truth? Re)Housing the American Dream: Freedom Principles is part of an ongoing community-based performative documentary project, set in the city of Milwaukee, that explores the role of film as political action, and examines the politics of imagination through the act of collective making.


Kirsten Leenaars is an interdisciplinary video artist based in Chicago. Various forms of performance, theater, and documentary strategies make up the threads that run through her work. She engages with communities to create participatory video and performance work. Her work oscillates between fiction and documentation, reinterprets personal stories and reimagines everyday realities through shared authorship, staging and improvisation. In her work she explores the performance, production and intersection of dominant fictions, our collective imagination and lived realities. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, at venues including the Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City; MAI, Montreal; Formerly known as Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; the Broad Museum of Art MSU, East Lansing; The Haggerty Museum of Art, Milwaukee; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Leenaars has received grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation; The Mondrian Fund; the Dutch Consulate in New York. She currently is an associate professor in the Department of Contemporary Practices at SAIC.


Additional Residency Activities:


• Workshop with ART 210, Professional Practices, TBD with Steve Nyktas



Imaginary Homelands, 2020, video still

Against the backdrop of a global pandemic and a renewed reckoning over racial justice and inequality, The Long Dream invites visitors to see the city of Chicago, the world, and themselves, through the eyes of more than 70 local artists whose work offers us ways to imagine a more equitable and interconnected world.


Named after the 1958 novel by socially committed author Richard Wright, The Long Dream brings together work by both emerging and established Chicago artists, and includes painting, performance, sculpture, video, and sound art. The exhibition extends beyond the gallery walls into the digital space, culminating in a live arts event in January where artists from across the exhibition will share their work.


The Long Dream is organized collectively by the Artistic Division, which includes the museum's curatorial, learning, and content teams. It is presented in the Griffin Galleries of Contemporary Art on the museum's fourth floor.


Participating artists, amongst others: Candida Alvarez, Kirsten Leenaars, Tonika Lewis Johnson, Riva Lehrer, Claire Pentecost, Cheryl Pope, and Rhonda Wheatley, Brendan Fernandes, Edra Soto, Sadie Woods, Dawoud Bey, Nick Cave, Julia Fish, Jim Nutt, William Pope.L, Amanda Williams, Selina Trepp, Lise Haller Bagessen, The Floating Museum, Jefferson Pinder, Alberto Aguilar, Joanna Furnans, Derek McPhatter, Darling Shear


THE LONG DREAM

Nov 7, 2020–Jan 17, 2021

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

220 E Chicago Ave, , IL 60611




Artist talk: The Politics of Imagination with Kirsten Leenaars

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25

12:00 pm (PDT)

All ages, FREE


Join us on Zoom for a virtual screening of Kirsten Leenaars’ work (Re)Housing the American Dream: Freedom Principles (2018) followed by an artist’s talk, “(Re)Housing the American Dream and the Politics of Imagination.”  


Who gets to imagine what? The act of imagining itself is not a fair, objective, or equitable thing. So what happens when you follow the same group of twenty-two American born and refugee youth over a period of years and ask them collectively to imagine different future scenarios, reframe-histories, and contextualize their own lived experiences and truth? Kirsten Leenaars’ (Re)Housing the American Dream: Freedom Principles is part of an ongoing community-based performative documentary project, set in the city of Milwaukee, that explores the role of film as political action, and examines the politics of imagination through the act of collective making.

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