Litany Exhibition Opening

South Side Community Art Center (SSCAC), in partnership with Blanc, invites you to the Opening Reception of litany, a group exhibition featuring the work of Candace Hunter, Rhonda Wheatley, Erika Allen, Cydney Lewis, and Sonja Henderson. Curated by SSCAC Public Programs and Engagement Manager jada-amina, litany expands upon a thematic foundation initiated by art historian Bethany Hill, PhD. litany is an invitation toward Black feminist possibility, liberation in all its forms, and the making of new worlds. A sequence of prayer, a devotion to remembrance, sustainability, and the sacred labor of self and collective care. An answer to a call, present to those who are listening. Anchored in the understanding that land is both geography and body, structure and memory, the exhibition features sculpture, installation, video, and works on paper that reflect material practices of divination and return. Artists work with stone, wood, fabric, metal, and salvaged objects—gesture as lineage and listening. Sankofa moves through litany as a force of return—kinetic, embodied, and sovereign. It exalts what is often rendered intangible: the will to remember, recover, and revere what capitalism overlooks. Throughout the exhibition, materials are transformed through reverence and ritual. A sculptural well speaks to the crisis of water access and the weight of women’s histories. A Black Madonna emerges from melted plastic, transfigured into sacred form. Plants root in speculative soil beneath digital water, forming an ecology of care where decay and renewal coexist. An nkisi is wrapped and adorned, carrying the divine alongside the discarded. Other figures—grounded, watchful—appear equipped not only to endure but to rebuild. Fragments salvaged from SSCAC’s recently demolished coach house further root litany in place and memory. Once a site of Black artistic production, the space yielded bricks, wood, a mural fragment, and a broken ceramic vessel. Now embedded into the exhibition, these materials are not relics, but memory made material—foundation and offering. litany emerges from a lineage of Black feminist praxis, where material practices become methodology and remembrance is a means toward transformation. The artists shape a space of speculative assembly, conjuring futures through care, memory, and reclamation. Initiated by Bethany Hill, PhD candidate, and expanded under the curation of jada-amina, the exhibition moves in dialogue with Black artistic, literary, and ecological movements—carrying forward their calls for liberation, worldbuilding, and collective repair. - litany marks the first collaboration between the South Side Community Arts Center and Blanc Gallery, two of Chicago’s most influential black arts institutions.  In addition to hosting the exhibition in Bronzeville, we are honored to be bringing litany to Chicago’s 2025 Expo Arts show. Blanc is an accessible space. The Opening Recption will be a family friendly event, so please feel free to bring all the generations of your family along with you. More Info below.