Curatorial Fellowship 2025/2026

Presence and Absence: The Space Between

2025/2026 Curatorial Fellowship Exhibition

"My parents died more than twenty years ago, yet they remain present in my life in quiet, enduring ways. My father’s love of language lives on in me; long before digital tools, he taught us to reach for a thesaurus, to linger over words and their meanings. I often think of him when I’m searching for the right phrase or dwelling on the weight a single word can carry.

At unexpected moments, I catch a fleeting reflection of my mother in the mirror—a familiar angle of the face, gone almost as soon as it appears. She was a fierce advocate for social justice, and I recognize her instincts in my own decisions, in the way I move through the world and respond to injustice.

For me, presence and absence are not opposites. They coexist. They shape how I remember, how I create, and how I understand loss as something that endures as much as it disappears."

-Indira Freitas Johnson

Presence and Absence: The Space Between explores the dual reality of death: the physical disappearance of those we love and the lasting emotional, spiritual, and cultural imprints they leave behind. The exhibition brings together works that balance fragility and endurance, pairing transient materials—such as earth and water—with more permanent elements like metal and stone. This contrast underscores the tension between impermanence and our deep human desire to hold on.

At its core, the exhibition is about connection. Through sculpture, painting, performance, and participatory installations, the works invite viewers to reflect on loss, memory, and the porous boundaries between life and death. Rather than treating death as an ending, the exhibition considers it as a force that links past, present, and future—shaping who we are and how we live.

A central question runs through the exhibition: what legacy do we leave behind? Not in terms of objects or achievements alone, but in how we touch the lives of others—how we make people feel, how we care for one another, and how we remain present even in our absence. The exhibition offers a contemplative space for visitors to sit with these questions and consider their own relationships to grief, remembrance, and the imagined afterlife.

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About Our Fellow

Indira Freitas Johnson’s distinctive identity is a synthesis of sculptor, cultural worker, peace activist and educator. Born in Mumbai, India, Johnson was influenced by an artist father, an ardent follower of Gandhi’s teachings and a social activist mother. This combination of art and activism has fueled her passion and commitment to make art part of everyday life, involve local voices and communities in the art process and cultivate peace as individual action.

After completing undergraduate work in India, Johnson received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Johnson is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including the Illinois Arts Council, Virginia Groot Foundation, Arts International Traveling Fellowship, Kohler Company, Arts and Industry Grant, PEW Charitable Trust, the Illinois Governor’s Award for the Arts and Chicago Magazine named her the 2013 Chicagoan of the Year. Exhibited nationally and internationally. Johnson’s work is represented in major collections including the Library of Congress, Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Haeinsa Temple, Hapcheon, South Korea, University of Illinois, Champaign, IL. Chicago Veteran’s Home, Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, WI. and the Chicago Transit Authority.

Upcoming Programming

CALL FOR ARTISTS

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Presence and Absence; The Space Between explores the dual reality of death: the physical disappearance of those we love and the lasting emotional, spiritual, and cultural imprints they leave behind. It explores how we encounter what is no longer fully visible—through memory, material, ritual, loss, and imagined continuities. The exhibition invites artists to consider absence not as emptiness, but as a charged space: one shaped by trace, residue, silence, and transformation.

We are interested in works that engage with questions such as:

How does absence make itself felt?
What does it mean to be present with what has disappeared, changed, or been erased?
How do bodies, objects, landscapes, and histories hold memory?
In what ways do materials themselves carry evidence of time, loss, care, or renewal?

Submissions may address themes of death, grief, inheritance, migration, environmental change, spiritual afterlives, or personal and collective remembrance- we welcome interpretations that are subtle, poetic, speculative, or materially driven rather than literal or narrative.

We invite submissions across media, including but not limited to sculpture, installation, mixed media, textiles, video, sound, photography, drawing, and works that engage with natural or found materials.

This exhibition seeks work that lingers—work that asks viewers to slow down, to notice what remains, and to reflect on the ways presence and absence coexist.

Meet the Curator - RSVP

Saturday, March 8, 2026, 1:30-4 pm

Join us for an exciting and thought-provoking afternoon of poetry, conversation, and creative exploration inspired by Presence and Absence: The Space Between. Indira Freitas Johnson will explain the premise of the exhibition. Acclaimed poet Cin Salach will share selections from her work and guide us in reflecting on a tender and universal question: how are the absent people in our lives still profoundly present? Through poetry and dialogue, we’ll begin to uncover the invisible threads that continue to bind us.

The gathering will flow into a hands-on workshop connected to the community installation Remember Me. At the heart of the exhibition is a powerful inquiry: What legacy do we leave behind? Not simply through objects or accomplishments, but through the ways we touch others’ lives—how we care, how we listen, how we make someone feel seen, and how we linger in memory long after we’re gone.

Come ready to reflect, to create, and to connect. Light snacks and drinks will be served, adding warmth and ease to the afternoon.

This is the first community event for Fellow Indira Freitas Johnson, offering a meaningful glimpse into the themes that will shape her final exhibition. We hope you’ll be part of this beginning.