Chicago-based artist Kate McQuillen’s exhibit, titled “No Such Agency,” will open in Durand’s Albright and Sonnenschein Galleries on February 27. In this large-scale installation-based project, McQuillen looks at the impenetrable nature of the NSA through visual metaphors of light as knowledge and data as environment. She includes students in the making and installation of this exhibition.
No Such Agency/Never Say Anything: U.S. military slang for the NSA succinctly sums up our relationship with this unknowable agency. Invisible, covert, and highly classified, the operations of the National Security Agency are up to us to imagine. Are we living in 1984 or are we defeating terrorism in the dark of night? We may never know.
McQuillen will deliver an artist talk at 4:00 p.m. and the opening reception will begin at 7:30 p.m.
Find out what's happening in Lake Forest-Lake Bluffwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
The artist explores the desire to be free from the NSA’s reach through depictions of the female form inspired by Libertas, the ancient Greek and Roman goddess of liberty. Touching on the impact of Wikileaks and Edward Snowden, this project will depict a collision of Big Data and the ultimate whistleblower, Libertas.
Kate McQuillen is a Chicago-based artist working primarily in printmaking and installation, and is represented in Canada by O’Born Contemporary. She has shown in Toronto, Chicago, Montreal, and Boston, and has works in public and private collections in Europe and North America. Writings about her work have been included in such news outlets as The Chicago Reader, Time Out Chicago and Rabble.ca, and in publications by Columbia College Chicago and Rutgers University.
