About this Event
About CHICAT and Gallery 1701
The Chicago Center for Arts & Technology (CHICAT) is an equity driven organization located just south and west of the Chicago Loop in the Illinois Medical District. In addition to offering arts and technology classes to youth and adults, CHICAT is home to Gallery 1701, a community-focused gallery that seeks to offer BIPOC artists and artists from other marginalized communities the opportunity to exhibit, gain exposure, and potentially sell their works. Centered around nationally recognized Affinity Months and culturally relevant themes, our exhibits are intended to celebrate, empower, and engage communities while fostering greater understanding among diverse people.
The Exhibition
We Were, We Are, is intended to be a community exhibition presented in recognition of Indigenous Peoples and Native American Heritage Month. The theme seeks to recognize the Indigenous nations and peoples of the Americas both in the past and today. We Were speaks to the present-day relevance of history, culture, and knowledge. We Are affirms contemporary Indigenous identity as alive, vibrant, and self-determined. Together, we hope these joint themes provide artists with space for full and authentic expression. For this reason, the theme is offered as an open proposition rather than a definition. Gallery 1701 understands that there is no single Indigenous identity, aesthetic, or experience. Artists are not expected to represent an entire Nation or community, explain their identity for an audience, disclose culturally sensitive knowledge, or focus on any specific theme. Instead, artists are invited to embrace, question, or reinterpret the theme through their own practices and relationships with themselves and to family, community, Nation, land, language, memory, and even future generations.
Event venue & nearby stays
Chicago Center for Arts & Technology, 1701 West 13th Street, Chicago, United States
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