Installation view of AD—WO’s and Buell Center’s 100 Links for the Chicago Architecture Biennial.
Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL. November 1, 2023–January 5, 2024. Photo by Tom Harris.
Join principal architects of AD-WO Emanuel Admassu and Jen Wood for a presentation of their recent projects. After the presentation, Admassu and Wood will join visual artist Dawit L. Petros in a conversation on how the entanglement of colonialism and migration connects Africa, Europe, and North America, and demands new forms of spatial imagination.
About the Speakers
AD—WO is an art and architecture practice based in New York City, and by extension, between Naarm/Melbourne and Addis Ababa. The practice examines how space is imaged and valued through art, design, and curatorial interventions.
Founded in 2015 by Jen Wood and Emanuel Admassu, AD—WO has exhibited at La Biennale di Venezia (2023), Art Omi (2023), Harvard GSD (2023), Museum of Modern Art in New York (2021), Architekturmuseum der TU München (2018), and the Studio Museum in Harlem (2017). They are exhibition designers and curatorial consultants of SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa (2023) at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery in New York, and design architects of Bole Rwanda (2024), a multifamily housing project that is currently under construction in Addis Ababa. AD—WO’s work is part of the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago and the High Museum of Art (Atlanta).
Dawit L. Petros is a visual artist, researcher and educator whose practice bridges the fields of art, design, architecture and history and interrogates the relationships between colonial histories and current events. Petros completed the Whitney Independent Study Program, an MFA in Visual Art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Tufts University; a BFA in Photography from Concordia University; and a BA in History from the University of Saskatchewan.
Recent exhibitions have been held at Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany; KØS Museum for Art in Public Space, Nørregade, Køge, Denmark; Ozangé Spanish Biennial of African Photography, Malaga, Spain; Oslo Kunstforening, Oslo, Norway; 13th Biennial of Havana, Matanzas; Huis Marseille Museum of Photography, Amsterdam, NL; and elsewhere. His works have been recognized with awards including a Terra Foundation Research fellow, a Fulbright fellowship and artist residencies including the Studio Museum in Harlem. Petros is an associate professor in the department of photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Please note that this is an in-person event that takes place at the museum.
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Closed captioning will be available for this program. For questions related to accessibility accommodations, please email access@artic.edu.
