Join artist Mayumi Lake in conversation with Chicago curator and cultural producer Teresa Silva as they discuss Lake’s current installation at 21c Chicago, Unison.
Unison is Mayumi Lake’s ongoing series of immersive mixed-media installations, sculptures, and photographic collages. The central motif of this series is Housouge, an ancient Japanese imaginary flower believed to bloom in paradise, symbolizing the delicate border between life and death. These intricate floral patterns have been passed down through Asian history and are prominently featured in sacred spaces, embodying hope within the cyclical nature of life.
Mayumi Lake (b.Osaka) is an interdisciplinary artist and educator, whose work explores the ideas of time, memory, and floating between the real and imaginary. She incorporates photography, sculpture, sound, moving images, and installation to expand her narrative into more complex layers.
Mayumi has exhibited nationally and internationally at Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery, Asia Society, Art in General, Artists Space, New York; Chicago Artists Coalition, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; Lubeznik Center for the Art, Michigan City; Fotograpie Forum International, Frankfurt; Cornelius Pleser Galerie, Munich; Galleria PaciArte, Brescia; FOTOAMERICA, Santiago; Witzenhausen Gallery, Amsterdam; Setouchi Triennale, Takamatsu. She has published two monographs, “Poo-Chi” and “Ex Post Facto,” from Nazraeli Press. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Art Institute of Chicago, Asia Society, DCASE/City of Chicago, McCormick Place Art Collection/Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority (MPEA), Video Art World, Joy of Giving Something Foundation, and Facebook. Mayumi received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Teresa Silva is a writer, curator, and art administrator. She is the Chicago director of the national artist-run cooperative, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, and the Program Curator for the 2025 Center Program Biennial at the Hyde Park Art Center. In 2020, Silva curated Luis A. Sahagun: Both Eagle and Serpent, the artist’s first institutional solo exhibition, at the Chicago Cultural Center.
Other recently curated exhibitions were presented at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Mana Contemporary, and 6018North, with press featured in Art Papers, Bad at Sports, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader, Newcity Chicago, Sixty, and WBEZ 91.5. Silva has won wide praise for her art leadership, having served in 2020 as a Visual Arts Panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and on the Advisory Committee for the Chicago Monuments Project.
In 2019 and 2022, she was lauded by Newcity’s Art 50: Chicago’s Visual Vanguard for her influence and contributions to the city’s art and culture. Previously, Silva was the Director of Exhibitions and Residencies and, subsequently, the Executive and Artistic Director at the Chicago Artists Coalition, from 2014-2022.
This program is a part of EXPO ART WEEK, highlighting the vast cultural opportunities that Chicago offers during EXPO CHICAGO.
