Leonard Nadel, “Braceros walking in line.”
National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
A Matter of the Invisible, an exhibition at NON STNDRD will be up through November 21st 2025. Curated by Pia Singh, the show will feature work by Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford and Leticia Pardo. Each artist will take over a concrete sand-casting bunker of NON STNDRD at the National Building Arts Center (NBAC), formerly the campus of the Sterling Steel Casting factory and currently a regional repository for modernist architectural objects at the NBAC. Engaging NBAC’s archive and collection, Hulsebos-Spofford and Pardo explore an inventory of parts, tethering the long histories of architectural relics and regional labor movements to present-day concerns of daily-wage laborers and migrant workers. Struck by building fragments cut off from circulation and defunct industrial machinery, the hauntology of NON STNDRD’s site led artists to re-inscribe the laboring body on site through architectural and sculptural intervention.
A Matter of the Invisible asks what might happen if labor communities were given the same autonomy given to bodies engaged in building industrial capital or training A.I.? In an era of the mechanization of the mind, how does the site at NON STNDRD and NBAC render visible the predominance of human intelligence over machine intelligence as a social and cultural necessity?
Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford is an interdisciplinary artist and Associate Professor of Visual Art at Indiana University Northwest. He is also a co-director and co-founder of the collective, Floating Museum, based in Chicago. His work has been shown at the Art Institute of Chicago, Malmo Konstmuseum, Chicago Cultural Center, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, American Academy of Arts and Letters, Palais de Tokyo Hors les Murs, the DuSable Black History Museum, and the Hyde Park Art Center, among other spaces. He has held fellowships from the Sculpture Space, the Illinois Arts Council, the MacDowell Colony, the Vermont Studio Center, the Brown Foundation Program at the Dora Maar House, and the Skowhegan School of Sculpture and Painting. His work has been supported by grants from the Mellon Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Harpo Foundation, the Propeller Fund, the Chauncey and Marion Deering McCormick Foundation, the Field Foundation, Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, The Stephanie Field Harris Charitable Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, an Indiana University New Frontiers Grant, and a Fulbright Fellowship in Sicily, among others. Reviews and coverage of his work have been included in outlets like the New York Times, Sculpture Magazine, Newcity, Hyperallergic, Artforum, CBS News, NPR, the Chicago Sun Times, USA Today, Dezeen, and the Chicago Tribune. He recently served as artistic director of the 5th edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial.
Leticia Pardo is an artist and architect from Mexico City, based in Chicago. Her practice operates at the intersection of architecture, research, and art, with a particular focus on themes of placemaking, migration, and political boundaries within the built environment. Her creative work often begins with acts of documentation, unfolding into sculptural and spatial investigations through casting, architectural drawing, photography, printmaking, and other media. Through these material investigations, she engages specific sites, unfolding personal and political dimensions within the architectures that shape social life—from the domestic to the territorial scale. Her work has been shown at the São Paulo Architecture Biennial, the Chicago Architecture Biennial, MAS Context, Hyde Park Art Center, FotoMuseo Cuatro Caminos in Mexico City, among others. She has participated in residencies such as Art Omi (NY), Pocoapoco (Oaxaca), KinoSaito (NY) and Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago). She is currently an Assistant Professor in the J. Irwin Miller Architecture Program at Indiana University Bloomington.
Pia Singh is an independent curator and writer born in Bombay, based in Chicago, IL. Initially working as the Associate Director of Volte Gallery (DXB), Singh has mounted significant exhibitions by Bharti Kher, Ranbir Kaleka, Sheba Chhachhi, and William Kentridge. Relocating to Chicago in 2014, she pursued her Masters in Arts Administration and Cultural Policy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Pursuing research on community-engaged arts practice, Singh went on to serve the interim Director of Eye on India and the National Into-American Museum, Chicago. By 2019, she returned to the curatorial, supporting a wide range of experimental practices that center ideas of ‘otherness’. Singh has mounted transdisciplinary exhibitions with institutional galleries, regional museums, commercial galleries, and artist-run spaces. Over the past five years, she has been writing for regional and national publications, exploring how language can be wielded to situate oneself amidst the immigrant experience. Singh continues to work as a full-time critic and writer for Sixty Inches from Center, Chicago Reader, NewCity, Brooklyn Rail, Tussle Magazine, Hyperallergic, Cultured Magazine, Frieze, and ArtIndia, alongside regional publications.
For inquiries, please email contact@stndrd.org.