Karthik Pandian & Andros Zins-Browne: Atlas Unlimited (Acts V–VI)

Since 2011, visual artist Karthik Pandian and choreographer Andros Zins-Browne have explored the image of revolution in the wake of the Arab Spring. Through a series of interrelated works, Pandian and Zins-Browne have woven narratives of movement—figurative and literal, political and aesthetic, confessional and speculative—across moving image, theatre, and dance. Atlas Unlimited, the latest iteration of this ongoing project, combines sculpture and performance, tracing the flow of people, art, and artifacts across geographies and cultures in the past, present, and future. Taking place in succession across a series of international venues including Netwerk Aalst, Precarious Pavilions Antwerp, and the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, Atlas Unlimited changes and adapts to specific contexts as it moves, unfolding as “acts” at each location.

The Chicago iteration of the project, titled Atlas Unlimited (Acts V–VI), presents temporary architectures and sculptural fragments depicting artifacts, monuments, tents, and border walls that bring to mind a myriad of references from Tahrir Square and Palmyra to Myanmar and the US-Mexico border. Other objects on view draw directly from the artists’ research on Chicago, referencing the “Street in Cairo” attraction and other temporary exhibitions erected during the Columbian Exposition of 1893. These fragmentary sets are presented in a constant state of flux while a cast of “builders”—including a conservator, an actor, a scholar, and two painters—intermittently erect, maintain, and dismantle them.

Working in the gallery on Thursdays through the run of the show, each builder will activate the exhibition in distinct ways. One might work on conserving a broken sculpture while another paints a backdrop scene, and yet another lectures about the effects of displacement, settlement, and reconstruction, weaving together historical testimonies with fictionalized accounts. These narratives have emerged from a series of workshops and ongoing conversations between Pandian and Zins-Browne and their host of collaborators from around the world. Staged in the seams between truth and fiction, sculpture and performance, fragment and whole, Atlas Unlimited (Acts V–VI) enacts the itinerant realities of migration.

Atlas Unlimited (Acts V–VI) is realized in close collaboration with builders Anthony Adcock, Carris Adams, Jared Brown, Jane Foley, Sami Ismat, Mohammad Miah, Tasha Vorderstrasse, and the students in the Design Apprenticeship Program at Arts + Public Life, University of Chicago, taught by Sherry Diaz and led by Gabriel Moreno.

Karthik Pandian & Andros Zins-Browne: Atlas Unlimited (Acts V–VI) is presented by Logan Center Exhibitions and curated by Yesomi Umolu, Exhibitions Curator with Katja Rivera, Assistant Curator, and Alyssa Brubaker, Exhibitions Manager. This exhibition is made possible by support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Reva and David Logan Foundation, and friends of the Logan Center. Atlas Unlimited (Acts I–VI) is co-commissioned by Netwerk Aalst and Logan Center Exhibitions, University of Chicago and co-produced by Precarious Pavilions Antwerp and The Great Indoors. It is made possible with the support from The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

Follow the project on Instagram @atlasunltd @logancenterexhibitons #leavemealone

Related programing

Opening reception: Act V: Plaisance
Friday, February 1, 2019, 6–8pm, Logan Center Gallery
Please join us for a reception to celebrate the opening of Karthik Pandian & Andros Zins-Browne: Atlas Unlimited (Acts V–VI), which will introduce the cast of builders. For Act V: Plaisance, the artists invite the audience to meet the builders as they mount a contemporary Columbian exhibition.

In Response: Aruna D’Souza
Thursday, March 7, 2019, 6pm, Logan Center Terrace Seminar Room
Writer Aruna D’Souza presents a talk about Karthik Pandian and Andros Zins-Browne’s project Atlas Unlimited (Acts V–VI) at the Logan Center Gallery, contextualizing their work within artistic practices that engage questions of forced migration. 

Gallery Activations
Thursdays, 11am–7pm, Logan Center Gallery
Stop by the gallery as a team of builders erect, maintain, paint, and dismantle various components of the exhibition.

Closing reception: Act VI: Strike
Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 6–8pm, Logan Center Gallery
Join us for the closing reception of Atlas Unlimited (Acts V–VI), featuring the builders in acts of resistance, refusal, and dismantlement.

All events are free and open to the public.

About the artists

Karthik Pandian has held solo exhibitions at, amongst others, the Whitney Museum of American Art; Bétonsalon, Paris; Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis; and White Flag Projects, St. Louis. His work was featured in the inaugural Made in LA at the Hammer Museum and in La Triennale: Intense Proximity at the Palais de Tokyo as well as in group exhibitions such as Adventures of the Black Square: Abstract Art and Society 1915–2015 at Whitechapel Gallery; Film as Sculpture at Wiels Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels; and the 4th Marrakech Biennial, Higher Atlas. In 2016, he premiered his first stage performance, Atlas Revisited, a collaboration with choreographer Andros Zins-Browne, at EMPAC in Troy, NY. Pandian holds an MFA from Art Center College of Design and a BA from Brown University. He lives and works in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he teaches video, sculpture, and performance at Harvard University.

Andros Zins-Browne is an American choreographer who lives in Brussels. After receiving a degree in Art Semiotics from Brown University, he went on to study dance at PARTS in Brussels and in the fine arts department of the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. His work consists of live and hybrid environments at the intersection of installation, performance, and conceptual dance, exploring how images, movement, and matter interact until they begin to take on each other’s properties. Zins-Browne’s performances cross between stage and exhibition spaces including Centre Pompidou, Paris; ICA, London; HAU, Berlin; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; DeSingel, Antwerp; EMPAC, Troy, NY; Kaaitheater, Brussels; and the Impulse Festival, Düsseldorf where he received the Goethe Institute Award for The Host. His solo Already Unmade, a commission by The Boghossian Foundation, has recently been performed at the BOZAR Museum, Brussels; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City; and the Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai.

About Logan Center Exhibitions
Logan Center Exhibitions presents international contemporary art programming at the Logan Center Gallery and throughout the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago. Reflecting the spirit of inquiry at the university, Logan Center Exhibitions focuses on open, collaborative and process- based approaches to cultural production. Working closely with artists, students, scholars and community members, Logan Center Exhibitions presents innovative exhibitions by emerging and established artists; supports ambitious new commissions and research projects; disseminates knowledge through publications; and facilitates connections through talks and other public programs.