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Stockyard Institute is an ongoing civic and artistic practice founded in 1995 by Chicago artist Jim Duignan. Influenced and shaped by youth, radical teachers, and local activists, this continually growing network of collaborators instrumentalized the traditions of conceptual art and grassroots community organizing to collectively respond to the needs, questions, and hopes of those involved. A truly "lived practice," Duignan's projects emerge organically from early, formative experiences in Chicago's neighborhoods and alleys, public schools and parks, and his encounters with artists working outside of the mainstream. Operating on the margins of institutions, Stockyard Institute utilizes artistic processes to create utopian spaces of radical equality. This exhibition presents a retrospective look at Duignan’s practice through objects, ephemera, and documentation and brings together key collaborators, past and present, to imagine alternative futures for the city.
El Instituto Stockyard es una práctica cívica y artística fundada en 1995 por el artista de chicago Jim Duignan. Influida e informada por la juventud, por maestros radicales y activistas locales, esta red de colaboradores en continuo crecimiento instrumentalizó las tradiciones del arte conceptual y la comunidad de bases que se organiza colectivamente para responder a las necesidades, las preguntas y las esperanzas de los involucrados. Al ser una verdadera “práctica vivida”, los proyectos de Duignan surgen orgánicamente de experiencias formativas tempranas en los barrios y los callejones de Chicago, en sus escuelas públicas y sus parques, y de sus encuentros con artistas que trabajan fuera de la cultura dominante. Al operar en las márgenes de las instituciones, el Instituto Stockyard utiliza procesos artísticos para crear espacios utópicos de igualdad radical. Esta exposición presenta una mirada retrospectiva de la práctica de Duignan a través de objetos, coleccionables y documentación, y reúne a colaboradores esenciales —pasados y presentes— para imaginar futuros alternativos para la ciudad.
Created from local materials, the plants in each planter box pay tribute to the Chicago history and communities influencing Jim Duignan's creative practices. Michael Piazza Memorial (2006), planted with cacti, is an homage to Duignan's deceased collaborator, Michael Piazza (1955–2006), a sculptor and conceptual artist who often worked with marginalized communities in prisons and hospitals. Memorial to Louis Sullivan (2008) features ornamental cabbage as a reference to the architect Louis Sullivan's famous design flourishes found throughout Chicago's renowned architecture. Salve (2012), created as part of the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials project, contains aloe vera, a succulent known for its healing properties and power to soothe wounded skin. Duignan's planter boxes are reminiscent of the artist’s own Boy Scout woodworking projects, and his childhood memories of the homemade flower boxes attached to the chain-link fences that lined Chicago's yards and alleys.
At the core of Stockyard Institute is a radical rethinking of our traditional concept of education. Putting into practice community-based, egalitarian pedagogical strategies for teaching and learning inspired by activists and educators such as Jane Addams, John Dewey, and Paulo Freire, Stockyard Institute facilitates active collaboration with young people and those often excluded from institutional decision-making processes. Projects such as Pedagogical Factory (2007), Nomadic Studio (2010), Reimagining Abandoned Schools (2013–present), and PUBLIC SCHOOL (2017) range from developing art workshops and building community gardens, to compiling proposals by children recommending what to do with abandoned schools.
Visitors are encouraged to sit and browse the Stockyard Institute Archive.
Stockyard Institute has developed an array of zines, artists' books, and community-based print projects. Early self-published photo books from the 1990s were germinal for Duignan considering the city, his family history, and human relationships as artistic material. This more introspective and poetic aspect of Duignan's work continued with the journal project Anifadorka (1993–96) and his many collaborations with the artist group Temporary Services.
Other notable publications include the Austin Community History Book (2003), featuring photographs taken by young members of the local community, AREA Chicago: art, research, education, activism (2005–07) a journal Duignan founded with artist Daniel Tucker, and TransActions (2015–present), which investigates socially engaged art produced in conjunction with artist Fiona Whelan of the National College of Art & Design, Dublin.
Stockyard Institute views arts and educational institutions as artistic material and students as creative equals. Not content to critique such institutions, Duignan built a strategy for working against the grain within institutional parameters. To this end, Duignan founded the Secondary Education Visual Arts program at DePaul University, which results in the obtention of an Illinois Education Licensure via untraditional coursework such as Duignan’s class "Teacher as Artist."
Technical, Conceptual, and Relational are three concepts that form the basis of Stockyard Institute's pedagogical philosophy. For Duignan, the classroom is not separate from the artist's studio, but is a site for cultivating authentic relationships and exploring the problems, questions, and interests of his artist-students. By integrating the ways that art is produced with how it is taught, Stockyard Institute expands the field of artistic inquiry to make the creative process a shared, communal undertaking.
In 1997 in Chicago's Back of the Yards neighborhood, Stockyard Institute began using low-frequency radio broadcasts as a way for young people to more freely share their ideas and stories. Participants were able to present their thoughts with authenticity because of the anonymity of the broadcast. Using a low-watt transmitter whose frequencies run below the level at which federal regulations intervene, these broadcasts are audible within a mile radius of the mobile trailers and structures in which the radio equipment is often housed. Key collaborators include Davion Mathews and Jeff Kowalkowski, who have worked with Stockyard Institute for decades to create community sound projects and radio broadcasts in schools, art spaces, public parks, and beyond.
This radio station was built by Charlie Vinz of Adaptive Operations and will broadcast past and present Stockyard Institute radio projects.
Visit DPAM's website for radio program times.
Gang-Proof Suit (1995–2000) was the result of an experimental approach to art education where Duignan emboldened a group of sixth grade students from the San Miguel School in the Back of the Yards to pose authentic questions to themselves and each other. Over time, the group established a trust-based rapport, which made it possible for students to talk openly about the most worrisome issues in their lives. As a response to the gang violence that permeated their daily experiences, the students decided to research, design, and construct a suit of armor that would protect them as they travelled to and from school. The result was not only the creation of diagrams, sketches, and a to-scale suit of armor crafted from papier-mâché, chicken wire, and found objects, but more importantly, hours of candid conversation, ongoing collaboration, and the treatment of the students' concrete problems and questions as meriting attention and consideration in an academic environment.
Duignan graduated from Taft High School on Chicago's North Side in 1976. He was heavily influenced by his art teacher, Sam Wenet, and his time spent in the school's, then, recently constructed art building. Already an active Boy Scout and budding naturalist, Duignan began working with youth at the nearby Dunning Asylum as part of his Eagle Scout Project, which is meant to exemplify the Scout tenet "to help other people at all times." The collision of these formative experiences of public education, art, and community service foreshadow the work that Duignan would go on to create via Stockyard Institute in the decades to come. In the years since, Taft has built a Freshman Academy on the former Dunning lot and Duignan has proposed to install a sculpture, Taft H.S. Eagle (2021), at the site, both as a reference to the school's mascot and to mark the importance of this crucial location in his artistic practice.
Duignan's artistic inquiry and production extends to all aspects of life to form a seamless, uninterrupted action. Relationships, conversations, and memories are just as important as the studio or art objects. In order to better facilitate an understanding of Duignan's life-as-art, the artist has compiled an extensive collection of images, texts, and objects to give form and context to his lived practice. From family photographs and objects representative of the Chicago of Duignan's youth to school report cards, artifacts, and found objects, this wall is an ongoing diagram that gathers together the countless influences and threads woven together in the work of Duignan and Stockyard Institute.
Sites of learning and education are not limited to classrooms, but extend into the urban environment of Chicago. In particular, playground equipment fascinates Duignan, as the simple yet sculptural design of jungle gyms, seesaws, and swings are disappearing. In 2014, Duignan, with the help of architectural historian Jennifer Gray, updated A Plea for Playgrounds, a pamphlet originally circulated in 1905 encouraging the creation of more playgrounds, parks, and public spaces in Chicago. Seeing playgrounds as sites of democracy in action, Duignan and Gray argued that such spaces were essential to the health and vitality of city residents, particularly as public funding was increasingly cut. See Saw (2014) is a symbol of cooperation as users have to work collectively and harmoniously. By contrast, Chicago Swing (2016), made from a police barricade, emphasizes meditative moments of solitude where individuals can reflect while leveraging their own weight to set the swing in motion.
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Stockyard Institute: 25 Years of Art and Radical Pedagogy is organized by Julie Rodrigues Widholm, Director of the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, with Rachel L. S. Harper, Professional Lecturer for DePaul's Department of Teacher Education, and DPAM staff.
Generous support for this exhibition has been provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
