To exist is to possess an objective reality, an obligatory continuation of time spent on this earth by our ancestors. To live is to honor. As individuals proud to find sanctuary in the African Diaspora, histories of resistance and rebellion influence and construct every single decision we make. We are alive, and with our predecessors watching over us, togetherness and acceptance are key to survival. The pain of existence is as great an adversary as the world around one.

Is my hair free-flowing, or has the moon taken control of its movement? Has god planned my every minute thought, or are my ideologies my own? The absence of free will as a coping strategy haunts one’s view of creation. Predestination reattributes the individual’s successes to an external being, stripping one of their individuality. Spaces, conversations, and understandings seek to regain power in this struggle against the plane of eternity. For Black people to live in the now rejects Western religious philosophies and reworks the foundational African diasporic notions that precede us. Gagoh, Horpudottir, and Wright seek to form spaces with the intention of sharing experience, group healing, and cementing Black humanity as divine iconography. Through physical textures we display the humanity of the artworks, constructing parallels between body and medium. The artistic compositions of Thank you for today’s company shows daily black life, envisioning futures where we look down on our eventual descendants.

David Ese Gagoh: my practice leads with a focus on photography; while spanning across music production, film, and printmaking. I have developed a signature visual and sonic language that captures the world around me with honesty and transparency. I exhibit photographic frames saturated by rich, opalescent colors, sample distorted sonics, and rough-edged alternative printing methods. I create works that gaze back at the viewer, compositions that state the obvious or encourage deeper investigation. Artworks that amalgam symbolic imagery with conversational text.

My body of work addresses the documentation of one’s life as an artistic practice, emphasizing the differences and points of relation in human experience. Themes of religion, ritual, and relationships loom throughout the work, embodying the act of living in stripped portraits, intricately structured still lives, and oil-painted 35mm film prints. I continue to explore the construction of personal belief systems by individuals renouncing religious beliefs, prompting the audience to challenge their fundamental values.

Originally from South Carolina, John Wright is an up-and-coming artist now based in Chicago. He relocated at 18 to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), where he studied for a year and a semester.

John has been exposed to variants of media regarding visual art at an early age, starting off invested in drawing and has gradually expanded into a practicing painter, filmmaker, animator, and musician/ sound artist, using this gift as a self-analysis of input and output given from environments and a means of conversation for generational well being. The conversation of embracing the known and unknown while containing drive and power within is universal breathwork manifested through John’s production.

Viktoria Horpudottir: my work is a synthesis of everything I've seen and felt. This is technically considered as I balance representational with disguised figurative renderings. My paintings and prints reference moments with my family, friends, my own, and some simply unfamiliar observations. Since being young I have relied on visual cues for connection and understanding across cultural barriers. I’m obsessed with documentation of social life. Using a mixture of drawing from life, documentation, and memory I hope to show humanity within my artistry, as it creates hesitation and confidence in the legitimacy of the story I am keeping alive. I hone in on the moments of awe or contempt that bleed animate empathy into the still image.