MCBA Outlook Gallery
March 26–July 9, 2022
Free and open to the public
VIEWABLE FROM THE STREET (and from inside the shop on saturdays)
Cynthia Weiss creates large paper and Tyvek installations using negative and positive space, and light and shadow, to explore themes of absence and presence. She works from field notes, drawings, and research on ecosystems at risk. In her Outlook Gallery installation, Cynthia celebrates the Mississippi River flyway. She speaks to issues of environmental mismatch and adaptive climate practices like silviculture needed to sustain our forests and rivers. The process of mismatch and mistiming happens when animals and birds return to their annual breeding grounds to find that the food sources they habitually rely on have been disastrously altered by the warming climate. This installation is both ode and elegy to the natural world—a call to nurture, repair, and reimagine mutual aid in our cultural and natural sanctuaries.
Cynthia Weiss (she/her) is a studio artist, public artist, and arts educator in Chicago. She has directed public art projects throughout the city, transforming neglected spaces into large-scale mosaic landmarks. She has directed arts education programs at Marwen, a youth arts organization, and at Columbia College Chicago. Her work has been exhibited at Hyde Park Art Center, Uptown Art Center, Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, and Woman Made Gallery, among other spaces. She has been awarded residencies at Ragdale and the School of the Art Institute’s Oxbow Program. She holds an MFA in Painting from the University of Illinois at Chicago and is a member of the Chicago Public Art Group. During these pandemic times, Cynthia has organized artists throughout the city to create installations that give voice to their own community’s needs, hopes and desires.