I Used to Live in Chicago is a multidisciplinary exhibition exploring memory, displacement, and cultural resilience across Chicago’s historically black neighborhoods.
Curated by Anefertiti Bowman, the exhibition brings together leading contemporary artists Norman Teague, Max Sansing, and Steve Bravo, alongside elder Chicago artists Sura Dupart, Tyrue “Slang” Jones, and Patric McCoy. Together, their work forms a layered, intergenerational dialogue rooted in lived experience, cultural memory, and the evolving realities of the city.
Through furniture and object-based design, mural-scale painting, sculptural forms, and graphic storytelling, the exhibition examines what it means to belong to a city in constant transformation and who retains access to space, identity, and legacy amid redevelopment and erasure.
At its core, I Used to Live in Chicago is both a love letter and a retrospective. It holds the emotional weight of change while honoring the communities that have long defined the city’s cultural fabric. We invite viewers into a space of reminiscence and nostalgia, of pickles and peppermint, of front porch conversations that felt like ceremony, of a time when ease lived more readily in our bodies and belonging felt less fragile. It gestures toward a Chicago many remember not as perfect, but as deeply alive, rooted in connection, creativity, and possibility. A city where basslines from passing cars became a shared soundtrack, and community existed not just in proximity, but in practice, embodied and lived in real time.
A Collective Archive
Positioned at the intersection of art, design, and cultural storytelling, the exhibition highlights the richness of black creativity that lives across the 77 community areas and over 200 neighborhoods, from the Plaza to the Brickyard, an epicenter of life, migration, and creative production.
The inclusion of elder artists serves as a critical anchor, grounding the exhibition in lived testimony and ensuring that histories shaped across generations remain present within contemporary discourse.
About the Curator
Anefertiti Bowman is a curator, art administrator, and cultural strategist whose work centers on community, memory, and Black cultural production. With over a decade of experience across the arts, nonprofit, and institutional sectors, she is known for creating safe spaces that are both critically engaged and deeply human. Throughout her career, she has worked and collaborated with visionary artists and institutions including Kara Walker, Calida Rawles, Fred Moten, Shirin Neshat, The Getty, the California African American Museum, and LACMA. Her practice lives at the intersection of storytelling, public programming, and collective care, crafting experiences that invite reflection, honor lived experience and foster meaningful connection. Grounded in cultural stewardship and community-rooted engagement, Bowman’s work challenges traditional frameworks while cultivating environments where artists and community feel seen, held, and affirmed.
Norman Teague is a Chicago-based designer and educator whose work challenges gaps and omissions in design history by centering Black labor, craftsmanship, and cultural intelligence. His practice engages overlooked figures such as Chuck Harrison while making design visible and accessible through public installations and community-centered projects that resonate locally and globally. Teague curated Designer’s Choice: Jam Sessions at the Museum of Modern Art (2024–25), reimagining iconic objects through generative AI, Black craft, and cultural memory, and participated in Everlasting Plastics, the 2023 U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, where he transformed plastic waste into Afro-Futurist vessels inspired by African basketry. He is co-founder of blkHaUS studios and an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Chicago’s School of Design, holding an MFA from SAIC and a BA from Columbia College Chicago.
Max Sansing is a Chicago-based fine artist and one of the city’s most prolific and talented muralists with a career that spans over 25 years. His distinct aesthetic fuses the color-drenched dynamism of street art with the technical elegance of photorealism. Born and raised on the South Side by two artistic parents, Sansing discovered his passion and creative gift at an early age. During his youth he was involved with several graffiti crews and taught himself oil painting before completing formal training at the American Academy of Art. In addition to his studio practice, Sansing is frequently commissioned to create large-scale murals and experiential installations throughout the US and abroad. He is deeply committed to supporting his Chicago community and is involved with numerous youth programs that expand arts opportunities in underserved areas. His work has been featured in gallery shows and special events in Chicago, New York, and Miami, among others.
Steve Bravo is a Chicago-based artist and designer creating what he calls POPJECTS—power objects—character-driven sculptures cast in resin, hydrostone, gypsum, and metallic cold-cast finishes. Built through digital tools like ZBrush and Cinema 4D, his figures hold cultural memory in their form, drawing from hip hop, Afrofuturism, and the visual textures of Black everyday life.
This exhibition debuts Sore Winners, a character-driven universe Bravo has been building under the framework of Project | Champions. Its flagship figure, Hey Bobby, is a designer and obsessive creative who is brilliant, productive, and incapable of resting inside his own achievements. He is not a mascot. He is a condition—one Bravo recognizes in himself and in every creative person he admires.
For I Used to Live in Chicago, the restlessness at the core of this work maps onto something deeper: the refusal to accept that the city you built yourself inside has moved on without asking. Each piece is an act of holding on—to a visual culture, a sense of self, a version of Chicago that still lives in the body even when the built environment says otherwise.
Tyrue “Slang” Jones is a Chicago-based artist whose work spans over four decades, rooted in the foundations of Midwest graffiti and evolving into a multidisciplinary contemporary practice shaped by a foundation in animation, design, and visual storytelling. Recognized as a key figure in shaping the region’s visual language, he has developed a signature approach he defines as “figurative graffiti,” where fluid, rhythmic forms intersect with representational imagery. His work bridges graffiti, fine art, and design through a distinct and enduring visual language—at once familiar and newly realized, intuitive yet still unfolding.
Slang’s process is rooted in improvisation and rhythm, where line, movement, and intuition converge. Guided by a lifelong and expansive imagination, his work reflects both instinct and discipline, forming visual time capsules that hold the narratives of contemporary life.
His work is held in private collections internationally and includes public installations in Chicago, notably at the United Center. He has exhibited at the DuSable Museum of African American History and contributed to major institutional projects, including the inaugural Hip Hop exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry. His practice has also extended into live performance, collaborating with artists such as Chance the Rapper in nationally broadcast settings. Alongside his studio practice, he remains committed to mentorship and community engagement, continuing to influence new generations of artists.
Sura Dupart, a native of Chicago’s Bronzeville community, is a devoted husband and father of nine. His early exposure to art and music, thanks to his mother and sister, sparked his interest. Although he was offered a chance to join a beginner art program at the Art Institute in sixth grade, Sura declined. It wasn’t until 1963, at age 22, Sura began a spiritual journey, fully committing himself to art and music, becoming a percussionist in various groups involved in Chicago’s cultural events during the 1960s, a time when African music gained prominence in the Black community. Sura joined the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), studied at Malcolm X College and Chicago State, earning an Associate’s degree and a Bachelor’s in Fine Art. Though he began a Master’s program at Governors State, he prioritized family and discontinued his studies. For over 60 years, Sura has been creating art, developing his musical talents, and was a part of creating the “Sun Drummers,” a project that has performed nationally for decades and tremendously influenced the Chicago community.
“This was a spiritual journey that affected the Black community, in which we had a greater sense of pride and self-consciousness of ourselves relative to our ancestral history and culture.”
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