Current Art Gallery Exhibits

artspace144

Olivia Zubko

Sanctum

August 11 - September 12, 2025

Artist Talk and Reception: Wednesday, September 10

• 2:30 p.m. - Artist Talk in the MCC Conference Center, A213
• 3:30 p.m. - Reception in artspace144, A144e

Free and open to the public.

• Olivia’s Statement

  This body of work, thematically centered around the bathroom and other private or domestic environments, employs cast replicas of fixtures and found materials to create sculptures that evoke the viewer's personal memories and associations with these intimate spaces. The objects being reproduced and manipulated in the work are significant in their role in daily ritual. They are designed to be lived with and touched or utilized every day and, in a way, become extensions of the body. The work investigates the nuanced relationship between these objects and the human body, as well as the broader dynamic between the individual and the domestic sphere of private space and personal intimacy.

  Psychologically, the bathroom is a complex space, often imbued with visceral associations. It may evoke vivid recollections, such as childhood experiences of bubble baths, illness, or retreats for solitude during social gatherings, as well as discordances with body image, identity, and development. These associations, deeply rooted in personal experience, render the bathroom a significant site for daily rituals, personal intimacy, and "self-care." It occupies a paradoxical space that can be both familiar and distant, public and private, safe and unsafe, sterile and emotional. The viewer's interaction with this work is contingent on their own personal memories and individual narratives.

  The work also draws reference from the long and expansive history of depicting “bathers” in both art and mythology and examines the voyeuristic and often objectifying nature of the theme. Bathers, as a subject, have been celebrated and at times fetishized tropes throughout art history since ancient times. Whether in a tub, basin, or outdoor body of water, the humble bather has served as a muse above all the rest. This work conflates historical depictions with modern sentiments toward private space and personal intimacy and focuses on the negative space surrounding the bather while still invoking the sense of a body or its absence.

  The pieces often take form as compound objects, made up of both vague and familiar elements from the bathroom and domestic landscape. The merging and interaction of these elements enhance their resonance with the human form. Through gentle gestures in porcelain and stoneware, the sculptures seek to evoke that which is simultaneously strange, beautiful, and perhaps, awkward as the body itself.

• About Olivia Zubko

  Olivia Zubko, born in 1995, is a Chicago-based artist who works primarily in sculpture, utilizing ceramic, fibers, and found materials. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in sculpture in 2020 from Northern Illinois University. Her work has recently been exhibited at DeGroot Fine Art (Chicago, Illinois), LEFT FIELD (Los Osos, California), The Bridgeport Art Center (Chicago, Illinois), NADA House 2023 (New York, New York), NADA Miami 2023 (Miami, Florida), Cleaner Gallery + Projects (Chicago, Illinois), and Rockford University (Rockford, Illinois). Her work has also been featured in *Create! Magazine* and *Red Skate Mag*. She is a current fellow at The Arts Club of Chicago. For more information about Zubko, visit her website and her Instagram page.

Epping Gallery

Jennifer Teresa Villanueva

¿Quieres Salvar Al Mundo? Empieza por tu Familia / Do You Want To Save The World? Start with your Family

August 11 - September 12, 2025

• Villanueva’s Statement

  ¿Quieres Salvar Al Mundo? Empieza por tu Familia / Do You Want To Save The World? Start with your Family is an intimate portrait of my Mexican-American family’s resilience. Born to factory-working parents in Chicago, I grew up surrounded by quiet routines, emotional labor, and sacrifices that define our shared domestic life–from my father’s long shifts at the factory, to my mother’s tireless work week, to my grandmother’s care for us navigating chronic illness, to my brother balancing childhood and study sessions, and to our act of voting to uplift silenced voices. These images reflect how migration, labor, and caregiving shape our family’s pursuit of the American Dream and belonging in the U.S.

  The exhibition invites you to scan the textures and layers of generational trauma, domestic rituals, and stability reframed through our family. Documenting through the lens as a daughter and collaborator, the work transforms the domestic space into a site of trust, together challenging reductive stereotypes and uplift the often invisible acts of care that sustain immigrant households across generations and borders.

• About Jennifer Teresa Villanueva

  Jennifer Teresa Villanueva is a first-generation Mexican American artist who was born and raised in a working-class immigrant family in Chicago, Illinois, and is currently based in Brooklyn, New York. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2020) and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Texas at Austin (2023). Her work emphasizes vibrant color, intimate environmental portraits, and still-life compositions that document her immigrant family’s lived experiences with labor, caregiving, and survival in the United States.

  Villanueva’s artistic practice centers on vivid color palettes, environmental portraiture, and still life imagery that reflect her family’s narratives of work, care, and endurance in the United States. Grounded in collaboration and trust, she photographs from within—as both daughter and witness—redefining the photographer’s role as an integral part of the story. Her work explores themes of belonging, migration, and intergenerational resilience within immigrant communities.

  Villanueva is a 2025 Artist in the Marketplace Fellow at The Bronx Museum of the Arts and has participated in SOMA Summer in Mexico City as well as the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She is the recipient of several awards and fellowships, including the En Foco Photography Fellowship (2024), Aperture Creator Labs Photo Fund (2023), Elaine G. Weitzen Independent Study Program Fellowship (2023), Rauschenberg Artist Fund (2021), and the SPARK Grant from the Chicago Artist Coalition (2021).

  For more information about Villanueva, visit her website and her Instagram page.

For more information, to request pricing, or to be added to the mailing list for upcoming exhibitions, contact Trevor Power, Art Gallery Curator.