Whit Forrester joins The Chicago Project!

~ Hannah

CEG is thrilled to present our first 2018 addition to The Chicago Project, Whit Forrester!

Fig. 12 Musa acuminata Zebrina, Chicago, IL, 2016
Fig. 12 Musa acuminata “Zebrina”, Chicago, IL, 2016 © Whit Forrester

Forrester is based in Chicago, IL. They attended Oberlin College for undergrad and received an MFA in Photography from Columbia College. They have exhibited widely, in both national and international contexts, and have a range of aesthetic interests that include: practices of accumulation, manifestations of power, diaspora, noetic science, new materialisms, discourses around the transcendent and the material relationship between self and world.

Visit The Chicago Project website to see more of their work.

Fig. 47 Aloe vera, Louisville, KY, 2016
Fig. 47 Aloe vera, Louisville, KY, 2016 © Whit Forrester

Domesticating the Numinous
As principal actors in nature, plants energize the spaces of my research and work. Here, historical and contemporary aesthetic dimensions intersect with our assumed relationships to the natural world, and to what is known as the Divine or spiritual. At this juncture I primarily employ photographic processes alongside historical techniques of representation to place the work in conversation with art and colonial histories. Gold to represent light, light to represent the Divine, and a portraiture which exists at the edge of still life and iconography. The resulting works are intended to guide our responses as both viewers and participants in the larger world, taking cues from new materialism and the ongoing discourses that conjoin the metaphysical and quantum.

Fig. 72 Dracaena braunii, Chicago, IL, 2016
Fig. 72 Dracaena braunii, Chicago, IL, 2016 © Whit Forrester

Inside these aesthetic realms’ and metaphysical environment’s relationship to power, the natural world as the subject takes on multiple roles. It serves as a historical recipient, an active participant (equal in importance to our human physicality and spirituality), and ultimately a collaborative transformer for the social relationships that compose larger systems of economic and societal power. I am ultimately interested in the potential of houseplants to queer our perceptions of our environments through the capitulation that they are, in fact, living multidimensional prints of the divine themselves.

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The Chicago Project is an online gallery initiative by Catherine Edelman Gallery, devoted to new and established photographers in the Chicago area, who we feel deserve recognition. It is our hope to expose local talent to a wider audience and we plan on adding photographers as we find them. If you are interested in learning more about the Chicago Project or would like information on how to submit, click HERE.