Artist to speak at Antioch

Zachary Cahill to present talk and workshop at Antioch College

Antioch College will present The Orphanage Project 2012, a multimedia exhibition by artist Zachary Cahill, from March 2 through May 18 in Herndon Gallery, South Hall. Gallery hours are 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.

An opening reception with artist talk begins at 6 p.m. Friday, March 2, and an artist workshop follows from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, March 3.

The Orphanage Project 2012 includes drawings, sculptures, and installation. Through the mythic figure of the orphan and symbolism of the bear, Cahill meditates on the role of the artist and the citizen as they struggle to find their place within the demands of the capitalist market and the contemporary political landscape.

In a 2010 interview in Chicago, Cahill claims that the basic idea of his art project is to use orphans as a means to stage a polemic against human capital. “There are other figures I look to, of course, but the orphan strikes me as peculiar and exceptional,” he explains. “Occupying the central role in the popular imagination, the orphan becomes a cipher for collective desire and aspiration and is thus a vehicle par excellence for ideology.”

Cahill is an interdisciplinary artist whose work has been exhibited at the Center for Art and Media Technology in Karlsruhe, Germany (ZKM); Aarhus Kunstbygning in Aarhus, Denmark; DeVos Museum of Art, Marquette, MI; and threewalls, Chicago, amongst other. His writings have appeared in the Journal of Visual Culture, RETHINKING MARXISM, Proximity Magazine, and Artforum.com. Currently, Cahill is a lecturer in the department of visual arts at the University of Chicago.

For more information, or to reserve a seat for the artist workshop, contact Dennie Eagleson, creative director for the Herndon Gallery, at deagleson@antiochcollege.org or 937-768-6462.