Marcel Broodthaers
Judith Brotman
Chiara Fumai
Marcia Hafif
Mark Harris
Kelly Lloyd
André Marin
Eliza Myrie
Nat Pyper
Zachary Rawe
Christina Zion


Chiara Fumai, Annie Jones reads Valerie Solanas, 2013, C-print, 80 x 120 cm



September 19 – November 28, 2021

Public opening: Sunday, September 19, 3–6pm

Masks will be required for entry, and there will be a limited capacity in the gallery; lobby and patio spaces will accommodate overflow.

Following the opening, gallery hours are available by appointment only.

Please contact thewaves@ruschwoman.blue to make arrangements to visit RUSCHWOMAN during the run of the exhibition.

RUSCHWOMAN’s inaugural exhibition brings together a group of artists—both historical and contemporary, hailing from new and far—in Speculative Magenta Hauntology. Including works from Marcel Broodthaers, Judith Brotman, Chiara Fumai, Marcia Hafif, Mark Harris, Kelly Lloyd, André Marin, Eliza Myrie, Nat Pyper, Zachary Rawe, and Christina Zion. Excerpts from these artists’ rigorous and playful practices have been brought into dialogue in order to inquire into the means by which DISCOURSE is constituted, maintained, and supported. In the process of building this exhibition, DESIRE and LANGUAGE have been shown to be significant axes in the development of discursive meaning production. Strategies of quotation, citation, appropriation, divination, recycling, translation, political organizing, confession, and fragmentation carry with them references to pop lyrics, affect theorists, radical feminists, lesbian collectivity, critical race theory in the diaspora, and vaulted pieces of classic literature. Therein the potential for encouraging doubt as a means to proceed positivistically is explored. And with it, an interrogation into what role the historical construct of the ‘feminine’ may serve as it is dis/located within a condition of otherness and directed toward the as yet uncertain. As a discussion, as a total composition, Speculative Magenta Hauntology seeks to substantiate the implications of Karen Barad’s notion that the epistemological and the ontological are coextensive; an upset in the rigid assumptions of how identity and agency operate is inevitable.

RUSCHWOMAN is located at 2100 S Marshall Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60623. After the opening weekend, Speculative Magenta Hauntology will be viewable only by appointment. Those interested in visiting the exhibition may contact the gallery through her website ruschwoman.blue/info, where directions to the space whether by driving or public transit are also available.

By some powerfully magical coincidence, the opening weekend for RUSCHWOMAN’s first exhibition Speculative Magenta Hauntology will take place mere feet from RIOT FEST that occurs annually in Douglass Park, just across the train tracks from RUSCHWOMAN’s building.

Please keep these additional events in mind when planning your trip; mostly there will be more traffic and more competition for parking spaces on the streets directly adjacent to RUSCHWOMAN.

We recommend using CTA if possible, as the California Pink Line Station is a mere block east of the gallery.

Artist Bios

Marcel Broodthaers (1924–1976) worked primarily as a poet until the age of 40, when he turned to the visual arts. Over the next 12 years, his work retained a poetic quality and a sense of humor that balanced its conceptual framework; for his first solo exhibition, he encased unsold copies of his latest poetry book, Pense-Bête (Memory aid, 1964), in plaster, turning them into a sculpture. Broodthaers continued to invent ways to give material form to language while working across mediums—poetry, sculpture, painting, artist’s books, printmaking, and film. From 1968 to 1972, he operated the Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles (Museum of Modern Art, Department of Eagles), a traveling museum dedicated not to his work as an artist but to the role of the institution itself and the function of art in society. In the final years of his life, Broodthaers created immersive “décors,” large-scale displays in which examples of his past work were often unified with objects borrowed for the occasion. His has been an indelible impact on the development of conceptual art practices that have followed on his years of activity. In the scope of Broodthaers’ work, Institutional Critique and a playful blurring between the roles of artist, curator, writer, and other mechanisms of cultural production are advanced.

Judith Brotman is a multidisciplinary artist and educator from Chicago. Her work includes mixed media installations, theatrical immersive environments, and language/text-based projects. Brotman’s work frequently occupies a space between abstraction and figuration, deterioration and regeneration, elegance and awkwardness, generosity and obligation. In a world of uncertain outcomes, Brotman emphasizes the possibility of healing and transformation. Additionally, she explores the potential of social media as a site of real interaction or conversation. In all her works, Brotman considers spaces of not knowing to be both complex and generative despite, or perhaps due to, the resulting cliffhanger of uncertainty. Exhibitions venues include: Smart Museum of Art, SOFA Chicago, Columbia College/Chicago, Indiana University Northwest, Franconia Sculpture Park, Hampshire College, The Society of Arts & Crafts/Boston, Mobilia Gallery, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Asphodel Gallery, INOVA, the DeVos Art Museum, Weinberg/Newton Gallery, Threewalls, Circa Modern, Slow Gallery, Chicago Cultural Center, Tiger Strikes Asteroid/Chicago, Chicago Artists Coalition, Hyde Park Art Center, Gallery 400, and The Illinois State Museum. Brotman’s work is in the collection of The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Illinois State Museum, and the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection as well as in many private collections. Brotman received her BFA and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies where she currently teaches.

Chiara Fumai (1978–2017) was an Italian artist known for her performative and multi-media works featuring psychic abilities, anti-spectacle strategies and counterculture icons. She participated in dOCUMENTA(13) with The Moral Exhibition House: creating a space for feminist insurrection disguised as a freak show between Kassel's Aueparke and the roof of the Fridericianum. She channeled the spirit of an Anonymous Woman in the historical art collection of the Querini Stampalia Foundation in Venice (I Did Not Say or Mean “Warning”, 2013) and created a fictional propaganda of Valerie Solanas' S.C.U.M. Manifesto mirroring the first political campaign of Silvio Berlusconi (Chiara Fumai reads Valerie Solanas, 2013), with which she received the IX Furla Art Award. In 2017 Chiara Fumai won the XIV Premio New York held by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage. In May 2019 her work was exhibited at the Italian Pavilion on the occasion of the 58th Venice Biennale of Visual Arts. Other solo exhibitions include: ISCP, New York (2019); Rosa Santos, Valencia (2016); Museion, Bolzano (2015); Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice (2013); A Palazzo Gallery, Brescia (2013); Futura - Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague (2013); MACRO Testaccio, Rome (2011); and Careof - DOCVA, Milan (2008). Other group exhibitions include: Tatjana Pieters, Gent (2017); David Roberts Art Foundation, London (2015); Contour 7 - A Moving Image Biennale, Mechelen (2015); Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid (2015); Whitechapel Gallery, London; De Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam; Nottingham Contemporary; Fiorucci Art Trust; SongEun Foundation, Seoul (all in 2014); MUSAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, León (2013); and the Nomas Foundation, Rome (2011). International residencies include: International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), New York (2017); Art Omi, Ghent, New York (2016) and Wiels, Brussels (2014).

Marcia Hafif (1929–2018) graduated from Pomona College in 1951 before traveling to Italy in 1961. Initially intending to spend a year in Florence, she settled in Rome where she lived and worked for the next eight years. Returning to California in 1969, and leaving painting for a time to experiment with film, photography and sound installation, she completed an MFA degree at the University of California at Irvine. In 1971, Hafif moved to New York City to search out a return to painting at a time when the validity of painting was in doubt. In the ensuing years, she developed series of paintings that would become the basis of what came to be called The Inventory: 1974, Mass Tone Paintings; 1975, Wall Paintings; 1976, Pencil Drawings; 1978, Neutral Mix Paintings; 1979, Broken Color Paintings presented at The Clocktower with Alanna Heiss; and 1981, Black Paintings. Hafif’s work has been exhibited extensively in museums worldwide including MoMA PS 1, 1990; Haus für Konstruktive und Konkrete Kunst, Zurich, 1995; FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon, 2000; MAMCO, Geneva, 2001; Laguna Art Museum, 2015; Kunsthaus Baselland, Switzerland, 2017; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland, 2017; Lenbachhaus, Munich, 2018; Pomona College Museum, Claremont, California, USA, 2018; and MAMCO (Musée d’art modern et contemporain), Genève, 2019.

Mark Harris, Professor of Art, University of Cincinnati, USA, holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Goldsmiths College, University of London. He researches how language, imagery, and music reveal everyday experience as remarkable. His artwork and writing concern communes, avant-garde groups, and musician communities, including Caribbean singers and UK punk bands. Selected art initiatives include 木timbreland木, Cincinnati, 2020; Facts ‘n’ Figures, Kunstraum am Schauplatz, Vienna, 2020; Camp Street Corner, Wave Pool, Cincinnati, 2020; Flugblätter, Düsseldorf/Germany, Dordrecht/Holland, Maebashi/Japan, Loitz/Germany, 2017-2020; Songs the Plants Taught Us, Anytime Dept., Cincinnati, 2019; Words, Converso, Milan, 2019; Plastilene, fluc, Vienna, 2018; Sparrow Come Back Home, ICA London, 2016-17. Selected publications include ‘Caribbean paradigms of noise and silence’, Small Axe, 2021; ‘Kamau Brathwaite’s typographic derangements’, Manifold, 2021; ‘Music to Die To’, Divergence Press, 2019; ‘Turntable Materialities,’ Seismograf, Denmark, 2017; “Intoxicating Painting,” JCP, 2017; ‘The Materiality of Water,’ Aesthetic Investigations, 2015.

Kelly Lloyd is a multidisciplinary artist who focuses on issues of representation and knowledge production, and prioritises public-facing collaborative research. Lloyd received a dual M.F.A. in Painting and M.A. in Visual & Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015, and earned a B.A. from Oberlin College in 2008. Lloyd has recently held solo exhibitions at the Royal Academy Schools (London), Crybaby (Berlin), Bill’s Auto (Chicago), Demo Room (Aarhus), and Dirty House (London) for which she won the Art Licks Workweek Prize. Lloyd was the Starr Fellow at the Royal Academy Schools during the 2018/19 school year, and is currently studying at The University of Oxford's Ruskin School of Art and Wadham College for her DPhil in Practice-Led Fine Art.

André Marin is a Chicago-based artist and writer who develops intersecting inquiries into the production of meaning through spatial poetics, light, sculptural vocabularies, and self portraiture. Marin pursues projects by which he may navigate conditions of the ephemeral, the provisional, and the temporary, all while pressuring a priori assumptions around discrete, bounded ontologies. Handmade papers, found materials, experimental photographic techniques, essays, and manifestos are among the tools by which Marin describes queer life at the intersections of sex, music, kinship, and the technologies of advanced capital. He holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Eliza Myrie received her MFA from Northwestern University and was a participant at The Skowhegan School and The Whitney Independent Study Program. Myrie is a co-founder of The Black Artists Retreat [B.A.R.]. Exhibitions include Arts Club Chicago; Gallery 400; Vox Populi; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; New Museum of Contemporary Art. Myrie’s work explores site and labor through generational inheritance, gender, and authorship. As a sculptor and printmaker, dimension, volume, and examination of how representation and subjectivity are lost/gained via physical and conceptual processes are central to her work. Eliza Myrie is the recipient of the 2020 LeRoy Neiman and Janet Byrne Neiman Artadia Award.

Nat Pyper is an alphabet artist. They make fonts, write sci-fi, create wearables for videos and performances, and research queer publishing histories. Their work has been shown at Chicago Artists Coalition, Chuquimarca Projects, and Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, Printed Matter in New York City, and Vox Populi in Philadelphia. Their writing has been published by Are.na, Draw Down Books, GenderFail, Inga Books, Library Stack, Martian Press, and the Walker Art Center. They received their MFA from the Yale School of Art. They are currently a 2021-22 HATCH Artist Resident at the Chicago Artists Coalition.

Zachary Rawe is a painter and occasional Adjunct Professor based in Philadelphia, PA. His practice treats painting as a field of wet inquiry where differing aesthetic and academic regimes can be clumped together with the hope to court messy dialogues and strange bedfellows. These five specific works stage a mingling of language informed by the late Lauren Berlant with aesthetic cues borrowed from Mike Cloud's 2014 painting Dialogue of Growth. Rawe's writing has appeared in Title Magazine, Temporary Art Review, and at Thomas Erben Gallery, NY. Rawe's work has been displayed in Cincinnati, OH, Chicago, IL and Philadelphia, PA.

Christina Zion is an artist, singer and performer based in Chicago, IL. She has been a member of the Arts of Life studio since 2003 and is featured on the Arts of Life Band’s 2017 album Kinda Weirdy. Zion’s approach to drawing is heavily informed by comics and graphic novels, where text and image work in the service of her storytelling. Ever-evolving and growing in its complexity, Zion’s artwork is a story unfolding a chapter at a time. She cites pop and rock music, television, and pop culture as influences for her practice, as can be seen in the works included in Speculative Magenta Hauntology, which incorporate lyrics from Taylor Swift songs. Zion’s work has been previously exhibited at Circle Contemporary Gallery and Heaven Gallery.

Speculative Magenta Hauntology, Installation View

Speculative Magenta Hauntology, Installation View

Speculative Magenta Hauntology, Installation View

Christina Zion, Untitled, 2016, Graphite and marker on paper with UV acrylic, bookbinders tape, and glitter, Set of 5, 12h x 9w in., each

Christina Zion, Untitled, 2016, Graphite and marker on paper with UV acrylic, bookbinders tape, and glitter, Set of 5, 12h x 9w in., each

Nat Pyper, Confusion String, 2021, Cut vinyl, Women's Car Repair Collective.otf, words by Kathy Acker, Cherrie Moraga, Audre Lorde, Andrea Long Chu, Jenny Holzer, Clarice Lispector, Jane Rendell, Gertrude Stein, Héléne Cixous, Adrienne Rich, and Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Dimensions Variable

Speculative Magenta Hauntology, Installation View

Mark Harris, Club Socialiste, 2017, Watercolor on paper, 19h x 26w in.

Mark Harris, Paroles d'un Mort, 2017, Watercolor on paper, 20h x 30w in.

Mark Harris, Avis au Peuplet, 2017, Watercolor on paper, 20h x 30w in.

Mark Harris, Aux Choses Nouvelles, 2017, Watercolor on paper, 20h x 30w in.

Speculative Magenta Hauntology, Installation View

Zachary Rawe, rebegin speculative magenta hauntology (dialogue of growth after M. Cloud and L. Berlant: damp invasive, 2021, Oil on panel, 20h x 20w x 1 3/8d in.

Zachary Rawe, rebegin speculative magenta hauntology (dialogue of growth after M. Cloud and L. Berlant: defeated fences, 2021, Oil on panel, 20h x 20w x 1 3/8d in.

Zachary Rawe, rebegin speculative magenta hauntology (dialogue of growth after M. Cloud and L. Berlant: trash choices, 2021, Oil on panel, 20h x 20w x 1 3/8d in.

Zachary Rawe, rebegin speculative magenta hauntology (dialogue of growth after M. Cloud and L. Berlant: humid funerary, 2021, Oil on panel, 20h x 20w x 1 3/8d in.

Nat Pyper, Confusion String, 2021, Detail Image

Kelly Lloyd, IS THERE ANYTHING YOU THOUGHT WE WOULD TALK ABOUT THAT WE HAVEN'T TALKED ABOUT, 2021, Wall text

Marcia Hafif, from the day a woman..., 2013/2021, Latex and oil stick on wall, Dimensions Variable

Marcia Hafif, from the day a woman..., 2013/2021, Detail Image

Speculative Magenta Hauntology, Installation View

Judith Brotman, From the on-going series: "1001 Nights (more or less), 2020-2021, Index cards, various papers, spray paint, oil crayons, assorted texts read by me over the past 5 decades, musical score, upholstery thread, sewing thread, lipstick, paper plate, beads, sequins, glass pearls, fabric, rick rack trim gifted to me by Nancy G., shiny ribbon gifted to me by Claire A., images from books gifted to me by Michael T., eraser, vinyl letter, confetti circles, foam hair roller, Dimensions Variable

Judith Brotman, From the on-going series: "1001 Nights (more or less), 2021, Detail Image

Judith Brotman, From the on-going series: "1001 Nights (more or less), 2021, Detail Image

Judith Brotman, From the on-going series: "1001 Nights (more or less), 2021, Detail Image

Judith Brotman, From the on-going series: "1001 Nights (more or less), 2021, Detail Image

Judith Brotman, From the on-going series: "1001 Nights (more or less), 2021, Detail Image

Judith Brotman, From the on-going series: "1001 Nights (more or less), 2021, Detail Image

Judith Brotman, From the on-going series: "1001 Nights (more or less), 2021, Detail Image

Judith Brotman, From the on-going series: "1001 Nights (more or less), 2021, Detail Image

Judith Brotman, From the on-going series: "1001 Nights (more or less), 2021, Detail Image

Judith Brotman, From the on-going series: "1001 Nights (more or less), 2021, Detail Image

Judith Brotman, From the on-going series: "1001 Nights (more or less), 2021, Detail Image

Speculative Magenta Hauntology, Installation View

André Marin, "These Days" - Nico, 2021, Torn receipts, checks, cards, used paper towels, pelotas, arancini, gift wrapping, tissue paper, job sheets, a fly, red weddings, leaves, ticket, insurance, crash, time travel, grandmothers, pain, soul-ache, envelopes, meals, jars and hangers, judith brotman pins, notes, lists, passing thoughts, fortunes, western skies and godrays, rainbows, neon, seafoam, slowness, tenderness, old drawings, former writings, pink string, sponges and mildew, rusted bocci balls, a bathtub, a stone, pubes, wounds, growths, ghosts, Dimensions Variable

André Marin, "Storms" - Stevie Nicks, 2021, Torn receipts, checks, cards, used paper towels, pelotas, arancini, gift wrapping, tissue paper, job sheets, a fly, red weddings, leaves, ticket, insurance, crash, time travel, grandmothers, pain, soul-ache, envelopes, meals, jars and hangers, judith brotman pins, notes, lists, passing thoughts, fortunes, western skies and godrays, rainbows, neon, seafoam, slowness, tenderness, old drawings, former writings, pink string, sponges and mildew, rusted bocci balls, a bathtub, a stone, pubes, wounds, growths, ghosts, Dimensions Variable

André Marin, "Nobody Sees Me Like You Do" - Yoko Ono, 2021, Torn receipts, checks, cards, used paper towels, pelotas, arancini, gift wrapping, tissue paper, job sheets, a fly, red weddings, leaves, ticket, insurance, crash, time travel, grandmothers, pain, soul-ache, envelopes, meals, jars and hangers, judith brotman pins, notes, lists, passing thoughts, fortunes, western skies and godrays, rainbows, neon, seafoam, slowness, tenderness, old drawings, former writings, pink string, sponges and mildew, rusted bocci balls, a bathtub, a stone, pubes, wounds, growths, ghosts, Dimensions Variable

André Marin, "Like A River Runs" - Sia, 2021, Torn receipts, checks, cards, used paper towels, pelotas, arancini, gift wrapping, tissue paper, job sheets, a fly, red weddings, leaves, ticket, insurance, crash, time travel, grandmothers, pain, soul-ache, envelopes, meals, jars and hangers, judith brotman pins, notes, lists, passing thoughts, fortunes, western skies and godrays, rainbows, neon, seafoam, slowness, tenderness, old drawings, former writings, pink string, sponges and mildew, rusted bocci balls, a bathtub, a stone, pubes, wounds, growths, ghosts, Dimensions Variable

André Marin, "Psychic City" - YACHT, 2021, Torn receipts, checks, cards, used paper towels, pelotas, arancini, gift wrapping, tissue paper, job sheets, a fly, red weddings, leaves, ticket, insurance, crash, time travel, grandmothers, pain, soul-ache, envelopes, meals, jars and hangers, judith brotman pins, notes, lists, passing thoughts, fortunes, western skies and godrays, rainbows, neon, seafoam, slowness, tenderness, old drawings, former writings, pink string, sponges and mildew, rusted bocci balls, a bathtub, a stone, pubes, wounds, growths, ghosts, Dimensions Variable

Speculative Magenta Hauntology, Installation View

Eliza Myrie, WAN DEAD, 2018, Rubber, pipe, wire, wool, fabric, newspaper, door stop, 18h x 34w x 48d in.

Chiara Fumai, Annie Jones reads Valerie Solanas, 2013, Inkjet print, 31 1/2h x 47 3/8w in.