Next Window Please: Teen Exhibition 2021
Every year at the Hyde Park Art Center, six professional artists mentor over 150 student artists to develop their artistic voices over the course of 30 weeks. During the 2019-2020 year, the young artists experienced the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and the powerful wave of organized protests for racial justice that resulted from the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, among many others. Several photographs in the exhibition, produced by young artists in the Advanced Photography course led by artist Jonathan Castillo, document the days between March and May of 2020 from the perspective of young Chicago artists, whose voices demand to be heard. The photographs include intimate captures of birthday celebrations during quarantine without large parties but filled with loving gestures, upside down cars and boarded up businesses that document the aftermath of a Spring and Summer of protests in Chicago, and important reflections of what it means to be a young Black American today.