NIGHTJAR: Samantha Fain
2024-05-15 18:00 - 21:00 (America/Indiana/Indianapolis) | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Doors at 6 pm, reading at 7 pm
Samantha (Sam) Fain is a Best-of-the-Net and Pushcart-nominated poet from Indiana. Her debut full-length collection, Are You There, releases April 25, 2024 with Bad Betty Press. She co-edited Kiss Your Darlings: A Taylor Swift Anthology with Olney Magazine in 2022. Sam’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Indianapolis Review, A Flame Called Indiana: An Anthology of Contemporary Hoosier Writing, SWWIM, Peach Mag, 8 Poems, and Non.Plus Lit. Sam loves her family and friends, bad jokes, pop culture, the em dash, and vinyl records, deeply and in no particular order.
Open mic prompt: Write a poem inspired by your favorite song, celebrity, internet meme, or tweet. (317 words max!)
Creative takes on the prompt are fine, but challenge yourself to write something new in response to the prompt!
NIGHTJAR creates an inclusive space for all by bringing together spoken-word performers and page-based poets writing in narrative, lyric, and experimental forms. Every third Wednesday, C.S. Carrier and Michelle Niemann host a reading and invite audience members to share their own poetic responses.
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Community Sound lab 1: Listening and Recording
2024-05-18 09:00 - 12:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Sound artists Rob Funkhouser and Landon Caldwell will start with a basic overview of intentional listening and field recording, and then lead participants on a sound walk through Garfield Park where everyone will get a chance to record sounds that they find to be interesting. For the second half of the workshop, there will be an opportunity for hands-on play with a modular synthesizer, as well as lessons on how to handle files, and prepare them to be used in your own personal projects.

We encourage people to come to either or both of these workshops. All ages and, all skill levels are welcome, this will be a family-friendly activity.

Elisa Harkins: Ekvnv (Land), the Sacred Mother from Which We Came
2024-07-12 18:00 - 2024-10-20 15:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
With this exhibit, Elisa Harkins looks at land in two different ways: a path toward healing due to the desecration of burial mounds in New Harmony, Indiana and how the Land Back movement addresses climate change. Harkins, a multi-disciplinary artist based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Tube Factory curator Shauta Marsh researched and worked on this exhibit for five years as part of Big Car Collaborative’s decade-long research project, Social Alchemy, that explores utopia and dystopia with an emphasis on the southern Indiana town of New Harmony that was twice the site of utopian experiments.
In the Main Gallery, Harkins draws attention to settler desecration of Indigenous mounds in the unmarked “Harmonist Cemetery” in New Harmony. When the Harmonists purchased the land in the early 1800s, they dug up the Indigenous burial mounds, collecting what they considered interesting items for their Cabinet of Curiosities. They then buried their dead over the native people’s remains. When the Harmonists sold the town to industrialist Robert Owen for his rationalist utopian attempt, the Harmonists took apart their church and used the brick to enclose the mounds with a wall. Today, the burial mounds are not acknowledged on signage for the cemetery.
Harkins brings light to this history and offers healing through the Spirit Houses. These are structures built that provide a protective shelter over the grave of their deceased relative. Harkins could not build them in the “Harmonist Cemetery.” So the photographic wall mural and Spirit Houses in the Main Gallery serve as a temporary monument to the native people buried there.
Through the 24 photographs on the wall surrounding the Spirit Houses,(also known as Grave Houses) Harkins tells the story of the mounds in New Harmony to demonstrate not only settler violence against Indigenous land and bodies but also the presence of multiple tribes at sacred burial sites across time. In examining multiple histories of mounds, Harkins interrogates whether Indigenous lands belong to one people alone, And her investigation prompts viewers to examine their own ties to land through time — in their lost ancestral cultures, as well as in contemporary society.
The Tear Dress on the north wall of the gallery is one Harkins wears in many photos and in her work in the video room. Cherokee women traditionally wore this dress in the Southeast in the early 1800s. Indian Removal began to take place during this time period in Indiana (land of the Indians). This is also around the time Harmonists sought to build a sort of religious utopia in the town they named New Harmony.
In the video room, Harkins shares a piece on the 200-year-old song,“Hesaketv Meset Likes or The One Who Gives us Breath.” Though the singing takes place in the present, Harkins seeks to move the audience through time, preserving culture by bringing this new knowledge of ourselves to the forefront.
Leading by example with her works, Harkins uses her Indigenous body as an extension of Ekvnv, the mother from which she came. This embodies critical reflection on deep human connections to ancestral lands across time and place. Her cultural references to ancient mounds with intersectional tribal histories — as well as contemporary tribally-specific structures such as Spirit Houses — probe the meanings of “Indigenous” identity and question whether individual tribal nations will participate in intersectional freedom for all Indigenous peoples.
In the Jeremy Efroymson Gallery, Elisa Harkins shares images, sound, and sculpture that invoke definitions of tribal sovereignty — centering land and its protection. Amid a contemporary Indigenous landscape in which tribal activities vary between cultural revitalization efforts and extractive practices at times complicit with capitalist structures, Harkins calls for land protection above all. This shows viewers that the return of Indigenous land protection practices, along with language and cultural revitalization, are inevitable outcomes on Turtle Island (some Indigenous American tribes refer to North America as Turtle Island).
Harkins often encounters tornado shelters for sale alongside the roads in Oklahoma. While dangerous tornadoes traditionally occur in the summer months, recent years have seen an alarming rise in winter tornadoes. By using the image of these Tornado Shelters, she aims to raise awareness about the increasing destruction and loss of life caused by climate change. The shelters, placed in the ground or Ekvnv, serve as a metaphor for the Muscogee origin story, symbolizing their emergence from the earth at the beginning of their civilization.
The light sculptures are in English, Cherokee, and Muscogee words:
ᎠᏴᏫᏯ ᎤᏤᎵᎪᎯ ᎦᏓ ᏤᏙᎢ
Este Cate Ekvnv Okharoces
You Are on Indian Land
The music playing in the Jeremy Efroymson Gallery, honors communities destroyed and lives lost through human created climate change. Harkins, in collaboration with Mark Kuykendall, composed this piece for the tornado shelter sculpture to serve as a poignant tribute to the lives lost, communities disrupted, and environmental imbalances exacerbated by human negligence.
“Land Back means all land back,” said Harkins, who sees Indigenous political projects such as language revitalization as, most of all, an empowering force for protecting Ekvnv (Land), the Sacred Mother from which we came. In Harkins’ works, she calls for definitions of tribal sovereignty which center land protection over individual political claims to place. She intervenes in narratives of singular or strongest connections of tribal claims to mounds in favor of historical narratives where tribal interrelations connect more peoples to more lands for the purpose of building solidarities of responsibility and care for Indigenous land.
In Ekvnv, Harkins calls for universal participation in and attention to the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous hands, inviting viewers to reckon with the power imbalances that continue between settler colonial structures and Indigenous historical worlds. To Harkins, sovereignty includes care for all–from health care to land protection that reaches worldwide, just as the Sacred Mother receives care from all.
The exhibition is made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Efroymson Family Fund, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and a printing partnership with Aurora PhotoCenter.

The artist wishes to thank:
Ian Byers-Gamber
Mark Kuykendall
Don Tiger
Brose Partington
About Harkins
Elisa Harkins is a Native American (Cherokee/Muscogee) artist, singer, electronic music composer, and curator based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her work is concerned with translation, language preservation, and Indigenous musicology. Harkins uses the Cherokee and Mvskoke languages, electronic music, sculpture, and the body as her tools. She is the first person to sing a contemporary song in the Cherokee language. Harkins received a BA from Columbia College, Chicago, and an MFA from CalArts. She has since continued her education at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She has exhibited her work at Crystal Bridges, documenta 14, The Hammer Museum, The Heard Museum, and MoMA.
In 2020, she created the Indigenous concert series 6 Moons and published a CD of Muscogee/Seminole Hymns. She is also the DJ of Mvhayv (ma-hi-ya) Radio, an Indigenous radio show on 99.1FM in Indianapolis, IN. Radio III / ᎦᏬᏂᏍᎩ ᏦᎢ (ga-wo-ni-s-gi tso-i) is a dance performance that features music and choreography by Harkins. With support from PICA and Western Front, songs from the performance have been collected into a double LP, which can be found on Harkins’ Bandcamp. Harkins resides on the Muscogee Reservation and is an enrolled member of the Muscogee Nation.
About Tube Factory artspace: Tube Factory is a contemporary art campus and community center. There are four galleries on the campus, two are commissioning galleries. Admission is free. It’s also home base for Big Car Collaborative’s work across Indianapolis and beyond. Tube Factory features rotating exhibits, interactive projects, community space, a reference library, an outdoor gathering space, and much more to find through exploring. Tube Factory is an independent, noncommercial, nonprofit public place. Big Car Collaborative brings art to people and people to art, sparking creativity in lives to support communities. As an artist-run nonprofit organization, we utilize tools of culture and creativity to build community and social cohesion — connecting people as a way to boost quality of life. We support our community by supporting artists.
Much of our work happens on a single block where we own or co-own more than 20 properties — including a long-term affordable housing program for artists and Tube Factory — a contemporary art museum with a cafe, studios, and community space. At our campus of adaptive reuse buildings and public greenspace, we host community and cultural programs to promote social connectivity, cooperation, and creativity.
We also facilitate people-focused placemaking and place keeping projects across the city and beyond through Spark. Tune in to our experimental, community-focused radio station, WQRT 99.1 FM — also streaming at wqrt.org.
About Social Alchemy:With this multifaceted, multiyear project, Indianapolis-based arts organization Big Car Collaborative — with our partners, the University of Southern Indiana, Historic New Harmony, the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art and others –– have created a series of radio shows, exhibits, and conversations exploring, learning, and sharing how utopia has informed places and pursuits over time.
Conceived by Big Car co-founders Shauta Marsh and Jim Walker and artist and philanthropist Jeremy Efroymson, Social Alchemy explores historical and contemporary examples of utopian experiments, fictional utopias and dystopias, and social and cooperative-living design projects (linking back to our affordable artist housing program on our block in Indianapolis). Through a variety of public programs — first made possible with support from Indiana Humanities and Efroymson Family Fund — it offers a deeper understanding of the relationship between the built environment and social good. We all grapple with divides in society and real-life examples of dystopia (shootings, mass incarceration, ecological degradation) and utopia (experiments such as co-living communities that make people demonstrably happier). This project is about exploring historical and contemporary real-world examples of utopian experiments and social design projects as well as theoretical and fictional utopias and dystopias. Our goal is for the impact of Social Alchemy to be a deeper understanding — via history, literature, and the philosophy of art, design, and architecture — of the relationship between the built environment and social good.
About Indiana and Tribal Land (from the Indiana.Gov website)
There are two tribes that have land in Indiana. However there are many other tribal members of other federally recognized tribes that live in Indiana, approximately, 25,000.
The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi receive a small portion of their land back from their removal in Indiana. The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi is a federally recognized tribe. It is one of 573 federally recognized tribes in the United States. The Bureau of Indian Affairs contacted Chairman John Warren to state that their tribe, Pokagon Band of Potawatomi had been approved on November 18, 2016 to receive 166 acres of land in trust in South Bend, Indiana. The tribe successfully put a few housing units and tribal government buildings to assist their tribal members living in Indiana. It also built a 175,000 square foot and 1,800 Class II gaming devices, four restaurants, a player’s lounge, a coffee shop, two bars, a retail outlet and approximately 4,500 parking spaces including an enclosed parking structure. For more information, visit: http://www.pokagon.com/government/indiana-land-restoration
The second tribe that has land in Indiana is the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. The tribe was given land to put a Cultural Extension Office for their tribal members living in Indiana to attend specific gatherings, ceremonies and education events at this office located in Fort Wayne, Indiana. For more information, visit: http://miamination.com/thpo
Please note that many other tribal members from other federally recognized tribes living in Indiana such as Apache, Cherokee, Navajo, Comanche, Lakota Sioux, etc.

Levitt VIBE Indianapolis Music Series Concert - September 1st
2024-09-01 12:00 - 15:00 | 2432 Conservatory Dr., 2432 Conservatory Dr, Indianapolis, Indiana, 46203
Big Car Collaborative, Arte Mexicano en Indiana, and our partners are excited to be part of a national program of the Los Angeles-based Levitt Foundation to bring FREE, family, friendly, live concerts to Garfield Park in Fall 2024 — and continuing in 2025 — as part of the new Levitt VIBE Indianapolis series! To learn more about the Levitt Foundation, head over to their website, levitt.org.

Where: The lawn behind the Garfield Park Art Center, on the near southside of Indianapolis. 2432 Conservatory Dr., Indianapolis, IN 46203. While there will be some provided seating at this outdoor event, we encourage visitors to bring blankets or other lawn seating for them to enjoy during the event.
What: The September 1st concert is the first of seven Sundays of free multi-genre outdoor concerts and creative community gatherings in September and October. These performances range from spoken word poetry, jazz, folk, soul, rap, Latin, electronic music, and much more! Each week a select food vendor or food truck will be located and available to attendees, but visitors are also encouraged to pack and picnic openly in the Levitt VIBE space.
Why: To bring additional liveliness to an underused area of our neighborhood park with free outdoor music experiences and neighborly, inclusive, fun, and creative social gatherings.
Who: Arte Mexicano en Indiana and Big Car are collaborating with our partners at the City of Indianapolis/Indy Parks, local and national musicians, local vendors, artists, and poets — with the Bean Creek and Garfield Park neighborhoods and the Friends of Garfield Park.
This week’s lineup:

Sylvia Thomas

El Mirambaso

The Roundups

Mina and the Wondrous Flying Machine

To get a taste of the music the Levitt VIBE Indianapolis series will be bringing to Garfield Park, take a listen to our playlist featuring artists in our 2024 series!: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6XpDgduwF5sqhhZELQ5ocf?si=e564db6fb8a64714

Thanks to Efroymson Family Fund, Citizens Energy Group, and the Levitt Foundation for their generous support of Levitt VIBE!

The Levitt VIBE City Name Music Series is supported in part by the Mortimer & Mimi Levitt Foundation, which partners with changemakers and nonprofits across the country to activate underused outdoor spaces, creating welcoming and inclusive destinations where the power of free, live music brings people together, fosters belonging, and invigorates community life. www.levitt.org

Levitt VIBE Indianapolis Music Series Concert - September 8th
2024-09-08 12:00 - 15:00 | 2432 Conservatory Dr., 2432 Conservatory Dr, Indianapolis, Indiana, 46203
Levitt VIBE Indianapolis Music Series Concert – September 8th

Big Car Collaborative, Arte Mexicano en Indiana, and our partners are excited to be part of a national program of the Los Angeles-based Levitt Foundation to bring FREE, family, friendly, live concerts to Garfield Park in Fall 2024 — and continuing in 2025 — as part of the new Levitt VIBE Indianapolis series! To learn more about the Levitt Foundation, head over to their website, levitt.org.

Where: The lawn behind the Garfield Park Art Center, on the near southside of Indianapolis. 2432 Conservatory Dr., Indianapolis, IN 46203. While there will be some provided seating at this outdoor event, we encourage visitors to bring blankets or other lawn seating for them to enjoy during the event.

What: The September 8th concert is the second of seven Sundays of free multi-genre outdoor concerts and creative community gatherings in September and October. These performances range from spoken word poetry, jazz, folk, soul, rap, Latin, electronic music, and much more! Each week a select food vendor or food truck will be located and available to attendees, but visitors are also encouraged to pack and picnic openly in the Levitt VIBE space.

Why: To bring additional liveliness to an underused area of our neighborhood park with free outdoor music experiences and neighborly, inclusive, fun, and creative social gatherings.

Who: Arte Mexicano en Indiana and Big Car are collaborating with our partners at the City of Indianapolis/Indy Parks, local and national musicians, local vendors, artists, and poets — with the Bean Creek and Garfield Park neighborhoods and the Friends of Garfield Park.

This week’s lineup:

Regan Shalome
Mffred
Mariachi Sol Jalisciense
Forgotten Tribe

To get a taste of the music the Levitt VIBE Indianapolis series will be bringing to Garfield Park, take a listen to our playlist featuring artists in our 2024 series!: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6XpDgduwF5sqhhZELQ5ocf?si=e564db6fb8a64714

Thanks to Efroymson Family Fund, Citizens Energy Group, and the Levitt Foundation for their generous support of Levitt VIBE!

The Levitt VIBE City Name Music Series is supported in part by the Mortimer & Mimi Levitt Foundation, which partners with changemakers and nonprofits across the country to activate underused outdoor spaces, creating welcoming and inclusive destinations where the power of free, live music brings people together, fosters belonging, and invigorates community life. www.levitt.org

Christen Baker: New! and Impervious to Natural Elements
2024-11-01 18:00 - 2024-12-20 15:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
New! and Impervious to Natural Elements is an exhibition and gallery activation of sculptural glass, photography, and motion-activated neon lights by artist, Christen Baker. This work explores the complex interplay between our internal and external worlds and examines the aesthetics and structural elements of built environments. Baker’s specific use of glass and light has deep ties to our desires, which fuels her interest in mapping the visceral, physical, digital, and ephemeral experiences of hyper-attention. These materials possess qualities of necessity, utility, optics, and opulence that resonate deeply with our psyches. This work arises from the collision of intuition and observation that Baker experiences daily, and is an evaluation of perception, development and disrepair. This intangible feeling is the foundation for her exploration of the economy of attention and desire, as it relates directly to the necessity for care in our current moment. With this work, Baker articulates the slippage that exists in built environments contributed by exponential growth, surveillance, digital technologies, streams of material use and waste, and the architecture of information hierarchies.
About the artist
Christen Baker is a multidisciplinary artist that explores the intersection of our internal and external worlds. With a BFA in Ceramics from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA in Glass from Tyler School of Art and Architecture, she merges technology and visual art across mediums like glass, neon, sculpture, 3D rendering and photography. Baker’s work delves into how attention and desire influence material use, space, and information hierarchies. She has completed residencies at Belger Arts in Kansas City MO, The International Ceramics Studio in Kecskemet, Hungary, The Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco, and received the Leroy Nieman Fellowship in Glass at Ox-Bow School of Art. Recently moved from Philadelphia, PA, she continues to explore the geographies of public spaces and objects, real and imagined, in Indianapolis, IN.
The exhibition is made possible by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Efroymson Family Fund.

Julie Xiao: A Journey
2024-11-01 18:00 - 2025-02-23 15:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Thirty-foot-long scrolls telling a story of self acceptance and belonging will fill the Main Gallery of Tube Factory artspace starting November 1. The “Jellyfish Person” is the central character in Indianapolis-based artist Julie Xiao’s large-scale ink and gouache works. In Xiao’s immersive exhibit, the audience will follow — and may identify with — Jellyfish’s pursuit of finding a place to feel welcomed at, to fit in, and to feel at home.
“I have always been interested in jellyfish because they are mesmerizing creatures,” Xiao said. “They adapt very easily to different environments in the water. They have their own defense mechanisms and are just really beautiful creatures. I was thinking about how many individuals have to adapt to their environments in order to fit in, through that idea the Jellyfish became this anthropomorphic traveler wandering through this natural —yet dystopic and dark — landscape.”
Jellyfish first emerged as a painting when Xiao was working on her BFA in Animation at Ball State University. It hung in her house for a while. Then, while applying to the MFA program at Herron School of Art and Design, Jellyfish reappeared. Xiao was thinking a lot about environmental issues and spiritual symbols in relation to her own journey moving from China to the United States as a child.
By making the character anthropomorphic, it allows for a wider range of interpretations and personal connections. When a character has human-like traits but also embodies other forms, it becomes a versatile symbol that can represent various experiences and identities.
“I was thinking, maybe, in this way, audiences can always interpret and have their own meanings. Or they can relate with the character more. It can embody everyone in a sense,” Xiao said. “Then all these other images emerged, like the orbs in the background. They’re similar to spiritual guides. Drawing from my roots, I think back on how ancestors are there to protect and guide you in life. I also think a lot about roots and trees. That’s why you see a lot of them in the works. Trees tell a lot of history. They are like living time capsules, holding a wealth of historical information within their rings and roots.”
The first large-scale scroll, The Keeper, was inspired by an apple tree from her childhood. And, it led Xiao to create scrolls ranging between 30 and 40 feet long by 4 feet wide. “I would wait for the bus every day under the tree,” says Xiao. “But then, one day, it was suddenly chopped down. I still pass by it sometimes because it’s near where my parents’ restaurant is. You can see it regrowing again. So, I was just thinking about that when I created this tree, it was a landmark in a sense. Trees are like little landmarks of places.”
Xiao creates the pieces on the scrolls by rolling them out a section at a time. And with the work being very detailed, it requires her to use her full body to paint back and forth on the 4-foot wide scroll. The newer pieces in the exhibit are the gouache paintings and the large scale tapestry. These continue her use of auspicious Chinese symbols such as gourds, chrysanthemums, beans, and lanterns.
“Much of my work is inspired by Japanese print and traditional Chinese painting and landscape work. Some works from China and Japan are very similar because they have inspired each other throughout history. A lot of the superstitions, mythologies, and symbolism in the work are from Chinese beliefs and symbols I’ve grown up with,” Xiao said.
Overall, Xiao hopes the audience will find hope, guidance, and optimism in her work — while also acknowledging the difficulty of moving through life and change.
“Everyone’s on this journey to find a place of acceptance. I think a lot of people can relate and identify with that,” Xiao said.“But this work is also a reflection of my life and experience as a multicultural person. I am tethered between two different worlds and identities but not fully embraced by either.”
Xiao’s body of work is meant to challenge and question our perceptions of identity and to consider how our experiences and environment influence who we are. With its unique imagery and symbolism, A Journey invites viewers to engage with the profound and often unconscious forces that shape understanding of ourselves and our place in the world.

About the artist: Julie Xiao received her Bachelor of Fine Art degree in Animation in 2019 from Ball State University (Muncie, Indiana) and a Master of Fine Art in Visual Art in 2023 from the Herron School of Art and Design (Indianapolis). As a multicultural artist, she has felt caught in a constant state of displacement and suspension. This has led her to ask several questions through her work like: How is our identity shaped? How do we embrace and accept the different fragments that contribute to our sense of “home” as it relates to our identity? Much of her research centers around how art can be a vehicle to explore our fragmented histories and contemplate where we come from, as well as where we are heading in an ever-changing and uncertain world. Through various visual elements, she explores the ways in which our sense of self is shaped by factors such as society, culture, and history. She works in multiple mediums: digital, oil, acrylic, watercolor, and gouache, but is best known for her use of ink on expansive paper scrolls that pay homage to the rich tradition of Chinese ink painting. Her work is in the Eskenazi Health Public Art Collection and various murals she has painted — such as Chilled Water Cycle, City of Carmel, and Scottsburg —can be found throughout Indiana.

The exhibition is made possible by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Efroymson Family Fund, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Wong Kit Yi: Inner Voice Transplant
2024-11-01 18:00 - 2025-02-23 15:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Inner Voice Transplant explores the links between subjects as disparate as ancient Egyptian practices of dream interpretation; jiāngshī (Chinese hopping vampires); and the first voice-box transplant, which took place at the Cleveland Clinic in 1998. These inquiries are connected through her signature video essay mode, which incorporates newly composed songs with karaoke-style running subtitles into associative, essayistic narratives. This novel format opens up the videos to viewers’ embodied interactions, something expanded further by her live presentation of a karaoke performance-lecture during FRONT 2022’s opening days, and then at Tate Modern in London as well as M+ Museum in Hong Kong.
The artist has also made a traveling kit that allows other art venues around the world to present a version of the project.
As the artist states, “Ancient temples were the precursors of hospitals, places where body and spirit were meant to be treated together. Modern medicine, however, appears to divorce the concept of treatment from care of the soul.” In her thoroughly interdisciplinary approach, the perceived separation between bodies of knowledge and types of experience are broken down and imagined anew. In the spaces between established genres, Wong considers the question of illness and the need for some to simply live with it rather than heal in the way we are often commanded to do.
About the Artist
Wong Kit Yi lives and works between New York and Hong Kong. Her works have been included in recent projects organized by M+ (Hong Kong, 2023); Tate Modern (London, 2023); FRONT Triennial (Cleveland, 2022); Tai Kwun Contemporary (Hong Kong, 2021); Public Art Fund (New York, 2020); Para Site (Hong Kong, 2019). She was a resident in the Chinati Foundation Artist in Residence program (Marfa, 2021) and received an MFA from Yale University. She has taught university courses about performance, video art, and new media and currently teaches at the School of Visual Arts (New York) in the MFA Fine Arts program. Even when not teaching, she can’t quit lecturing people and continues to do so in her signature karaoke-inspired lecture format. Wong is currently preparing for a new commission by the Lahore Biennial 03, as well as a co-commission by LIAF 2024 (which is the longest-running art biennial in Scandinavia) and The Kitchen (New York).
This exhibition is made possible by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation, Efroymson Family Fund, Institute of Museum and Library Services, and The Arts Council of Indianapolis and City of Indianapolis.

Supportive Story Time For All
2024-12-05 18:00 - 19:30 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Each Thursday we will have a reader with a pleasant voice read to you from a book that is positive, expands the imagination and is generally supportive. Bring a blanket, pillow, grab a glass of wine at our bar or bring your own water –whatever you need to unwind and set up in the Main Gallery of Tube Factory artspace.

This series is part of the exhibit Julie Xiao, “A Journey.” Events in the gallery during this show will center around healing and mediation.

The books were selected by Youth Services Librarian Amanda Waller. She is a Youth Services Librarian at a public library in the Chicago suburbs. She believes strongly in the importance of community care and support and has worked in violence prevention, environmental justice, and mutual aid work. Community is what will continue to uplift us and keep us whole!

Benjamin Berg: ░▓ I Can See the Pixels ▓░
2025-01-03 09:00 - 2025-02-23 15:00 | Efroymson Gallery, 1125 Cruft Street, Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Computers do whatever you tell them to, even if you tell them to make a mistake.

There are some seemingly bad ideas behind Benjamin Berg’s exhibition I Can See the Pixels. For starters, everything is created using the 1980s-era GIF image format, which is hated by today’s computer programmers for its limited color palette and inefficient storage. Also, the source images are small and low-resolution. Worst of all, he forces his computer to use colors that are totally wrong, nowhere close to the ones it needs. What’s wrong with this picture?

Berg isn’t interested in doing things the “correct” way. He’s more curious about what happens when you do them incorrectly. He tries to misuse technology just enough to make it misbehave,
but not so much that it breaks down entirely. Finding the right amount of wrong is a delicate balance.

This GIF-based work requires countless screenshots and hours of sifting through those screenshots, cropping and resizing them, looking for the best mistakes, the most interesting failures.

Sometimes they don’t fail hard enough the first time and so he sends them back through for a second pass. Often only a small area is good enough and he crops everything else away. Finally, he takes his favorite failures and blows them up big. The pixels, once tiny and hard to spot, are now on display for all to see.

I Can See the Pixels features prints and large-scale projections of animated GIFs, accompanied by ambient plunderphonic music playing from two sets of speakers.

For more information, to stream/download music, or purchase art prints, visit animalswithinanimals.com/bent

About the artist: Benjamin Berg is a multidisciplinary artist from Indianapolis. After making glitch music for several years, he started applying similar techniques to the visual arts in 2005, documenting his experiments on his blog. His writings from this period culminated in a series of highly influential and widely cited glitch art tutorials.

By making technologies misbehave, his work challenges the assumptions built into those technologies, assumptions which are often unstated and sometimes even unconscious.

He also releases music with his band Animals Within Animals, and solo under various names including stAllio! and Old Man Glitch.

NIGHTJAR: Alessandra Lynch
2025-01-15 18:30 - 20:30 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Alessandra Lynch will begin reading at 7pm.
After Lynch’s reading and a brief break, the open mic will begin. Open mic prompt: Write a poem at the intersection of the past and the future. Read a poem or short piece that is 317 words maximum, and challenge yourself to share new work!
About Alessandra Lynch:
Alessandra’s fifth book of poetry, Wish Ave, was published by Alice James Books in 2024. She is the author of four other poetry collections: Pretty Tripwire, Daylily Called It a Dangerous Moment (winner of the Balcones Prize, finalist for the LA Times Book Award and the UNT Rilke Prize, listed as a NY Times top ten poetry books of 2017), It was a terrible cloud at twilight, and Sails the Wind Left Behind. Her work has appeared in the American Poetry Review, The New England Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and other journals.
Alessandra has received residencies from MacDowell, Yaddo, the Lannan Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Vermont Studio Center. She has been the recipient of a Barbara Deming Award and a Creative Renewal Fellowship Award. She has also been a featured blogger for the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Books. Currently, Alessandra serves as Butler University’s poet in residence where she teaches in the undergraduate and MFA programs.
She has collaborated with musician Earl Townsend, composer Harriet Steinke, painter Richard Rosenblatt, and artist Carlos Rodriguez-Mendez.
NIGHTJAR creates an inclusive space for all by bringing together spoken-word performers and page-based poets writing in narrative, lyric, and experimental forms. Every third Wednesday, C.S. Carrier and Michelle Niemann host a reading and invite audience members to share their own poetic responses.

Integrated Sound Healing with Hoai-Huong
2025-01-25 14:00 - 15:00, 2025-02-22 14:00 - 15:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Bring your own mat or we might few you can borrow. During the session attendees lie on their backs in a relaxed position, listen and stay present with what they are experiencing with the sounds.
Sound Healing promotes relaxation, release of blockages, promotes healing and restores balance. The harmonic sound waves of the crystal sound bowls eases stress, tension, & emotional distress. These sounds place the brain in alpha & theta states while taking it out of the stress response (flight or fight). The crystal bowls are made of 99.99% quartz tuned to 432Hz. Trauma and stress can manifest in so many unique ways in each one of us and affect the very core of our being; inhibiting true joy to shine through. The interconnectedness between the mind, body spirit is significant and continues to be researched in the medical and spiritual communities.
Hoai-Huong has practiced as registered nurse since January of 2004 and achieved a Master of Science in Nursing Education in 2016. Her career focus has been in the areas of emergency/trauma, academia, & mental health/psych for the pediatric & adult population. “I recognized at an early age that I was destined to care for & serve others in a meaningful way,” says Huong. “To be vulnerable with you, I survived emotional, mental, & physically traumatic events & had to do deep work to heal. Sometimes I felt lost & struggled through therapy sessions, doctor’s visits, and medications which in my case, only masked what was deeper within me that I needed to address. My search to go deeper led me to Reiki and sound vibrational energy healing. I am beyond grateful that I have been able to shift from surviving to thriving.”
Capacity for this event is 50. We can not guarantee a spot.

Year of the Snake - Lunar New Year Celebration
2025-02-01 17:00 - 21:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Welcome the Year of the Snake with Big Car Collaborative and the Indianapolis Chinese Performing Arts’ Lunar New Year celebration! Join us on February 1st from 5 to 8:30 PM at the Tube Factory artspace in Garfield Park for a night filled with fun for the whole family!

Experience traditional dance performances by the Indianapolis Chinese Performing Arts from 6-7pm, as well as fireworks, and hands-on activities like cut paper art, lantern decorating, fan painting, and so much more! Plus, delicious food will be available for purchase by a local food truck!

The Indianapolis Chinese Performing Arts, Inc. (ICPAI) will perform traditional dances from 6-7pm.

Tickets are $10 and can be purchased HERE.

—

Lunar New Year is one of the most important celebrations of the year among East and Southeast Asian cultures, including Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean communities, among others. The New Year celebration is usually celebrated for multiple days—not just one day as in the Gregorian calendar’s New Year.

In 2025, Lunar New Year begins on January 29. China’s Lunar New Year is known as the Spring Festival or Chūnjié in Mandarin, while Koreans call it Seollal and Vietnamese refer to it as Tết.Tied to the lunar calendar, the holiday began as a time for feasting and to honor household and heavenly deities, as well as ancestors. The New Year typically begins with the first new moon that occurs between the end of January and spans the first 15 days of the first month of the lunar calendar—until the full moon arrives.

Slow Flow Yoga Series with Cory Cathcart
2025-02-02 17:00 - 18:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Celebrating Meditation & Healing for Creatives on Select Sundays: 5-6 p.m. ( also 2/9)
This series is part of the exhibit “Julie Xiao: A Journey,” events in the gallery during this show will center around healing and mediation. Cathcart will explore how movement and meditation benefit the artistic process through rest, mindful flow, and breath.
No experience necessary.
Bring a mat and water – All levels & bodies welcome.
This class is free, donations are welcome.

ASMR Live-Landon Caldwell
2025-02-07 19:00 - 20:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Join us in the Main Gallery for a live performance of ASMR with artist Landon Caldwell.
Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is a previously unstudied sensory phenomenon, in which individuals experience a tingling, static-like sensation across the scalp, back of the neck and at times further areas in response to specific triggering audio and visual stimuli. This sensation is widely reported to be accompanied by feelings of relaxation and well-being. The current study identifies several common triggers used to achieve ASMR, including whispering, personal attention, crisp sounds and slow movements. Data obtained also illustrates temporary improvements in symptoms of depression and chronic pain in those who engage in ASMR.
Landon Caldwell is a multi-disciplinary artist and composer based in Indianapolis. His work explores environment, family, and class, using sound, words, color, and other materials, presenting immersive environments that redirect attention to the present and reveal hidden layers of reality. Landon has toured extensively across the US, Canada, and Europe and regularly collaborates with artists and musicians in the Midwest and beyond, having served time in improvisational units like Eternal Husk, Crazy Doberman, and the Open Sex. With Mark Tester, he curates and runs Medium Sound, a focal point of adventurous music in Indianapolis. Since 2020, he has host free sound art programming, installations, and workshops through Sonic Potluck, a collaboration with Rob Funkhouser. His installation work has been exhibited at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, The Terminal Kyoto, the Indiana State Museum, and more.
This series is part of the exhibit Julie Xiao, “A Journey.” Events in the gallery during this show will center around healing and mediation.

ASMR Live- Rob Funkhouser
2025-02-13 18:30 - 20:00 | IN
Join us in the Main Gallery for a live performance of ASMR with artist Rob Funkhouser.
Doors are at 6:30pm, performance starts at 7pm.
Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is a previously unstudied sensory phenomenon, in which individuals experience a tingling, static-like sensation across the scalp, back of the neck and at times further areas in response to specific triggering audio and visual stimuli. This sensation is widely reported to be accompanied by feelings of relaxation and well-being. The current study identifies several common triggers used to achieve ASMR, including whispering, personal attention, crisp sounds and slow movements. Data obtained also illustrates temporary improvements in symptoms of depression and chronic pain in those who engage in ASMR.
Rob Funkhouser is a composer, performer, and instrument builder who can never quite sit still. His work is concerned with ideas of place, memory, and pattern and he is interested in interrogating the interstitial spaces between established genres. He holds an M.M. from Butler University in Music Composition, and most recently completed Peace of Mind, Speed of Thought for Classical Music Indy. He has released projects through various labels in three different countries, but finds his home turf on Auris Apothecary and Medium Sound. His current projects include an ongoing series of recordings and writing under the title Walking Music, building a new set of instruments in collaboration with artist Justin Cooper, and ongoing work on new performance tools for music and installations. In 2020, he began a long-term living residency with Big Car as part of their APLR program. He also serves as Education Manager for the Rhythm Discovery Center, where he runs public programming for schools and community members. He has collaborated with diverse groups including Forward Motion, Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, So Percussion, No Exit Theater, and Chicago-based director Ryan Gleason.
This series is part of the exhibit Julie Xiao, “A Journey.” Events in the gallery during this show will center around healing and mediation.

ASMR Live - Sesseka
2025-02-20 18:30 - 20:00 | IN
Join us in the gallery for a live performance of ASMR with artist Jessica Dunn, aka, Sesseka, who will lead an audiovisual meditation experience.

Doors 6:30pm.
Performance 7pm

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is a previously unstudied sensory phenomenon, in which individuals experience a tingling, static-like sensation across the scalp, back of the neck and at times further areas in response to specific triggering audio and visual stimuli. This sensation is widely reported to be accompanied by feelings of relaxation and well-being. The current study identifies several common triggers used to achieve ASMR, including whispering, personal attention, crisp sounds and slow movements. Data obtained also illustrates temporary improvements in symptoms of depression and chronic pain in those who engage in ASMR.
Jessica Dunn (sesseka) is a multimedia artist known for her immersive, dreamlike worlds combining video, sound, and physical installations. With a scientific curiosity, she finds inspiration by investigating the natural world as well as psychological realms of consciousness. Dunn graduated from Herron School of Art + Design with a double major in painting and sculpture. Caught between 2D and 3D practices, she found her calling in 4D art including experimental animation, performance, and experiential works. With a medium-agnostic mindset, Dunn utilizes a wide variety of materials allowing the concept to drive the process. Lately, Dunn has extended her practice into filmmaking including short documentaries and narrative animations. No matter the format, Dunn’s work invites the viewer to open their perception to explore new realms of reality.
This series is part of the exhibit Julie Xiao, “A Journey.” Events in the gallery during this show will center around healing and mediation.

Steven Yazzie and Nancy Baric: The Nearness of Distance
2025-03-07 18:00 - 2025-04-20 15:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Jeremy Efroymson Gallery
“My Child, I will feed you, give you good health, and I will give you strength and courage.”
“These are the opening words of Steven J. Yazzie’s 2015 video, Mountain Song, which appear scrawled across the inky blank screen in white letters. The work evokes that of an epic poem akin to Homer or Virgil, signifying a journey that lies before the one who watches and listens to it. Vacillating between testimonies from Indigenous community members and archival audio bytes of the Apollo 11 lunar landing in 1969, the piece creates a tension between power structures, sacred knowledges, and the struggle between living in balance with the natural world and the relentless march of colonial progress through the mechanism and machinations of capitalism – pushing humanity to reach new heights at the expense of the natural order and health of the world.
Yazzie focuses in on the devastating impacts that uranium and its mining have had not only on Indigenous communities, but on the environment writ large, linking uranium to Indigenous cosmologies and histories – referring to the chemical element as an invisible monster. The development of uranium extraction and its weaponization forced/es a wedge between traditional ways of living, replacing a way to live with a colonial sickness that poisons the land, pollutes the water, and creates a level of radioactivity within the consciousness. When Yazzie writes “My child, what I am dressed with is what you are dressed with. I am your home and mother and father,” in the fourth and final verse of his poem, he reminds us that what we do to the earth, to our mother, our father, we do unto ourselves. A caution that the monsters we awaken cannot be put back into slumber.
The idea of monsters and the monstrous continues in the 2021 film by Nancy Barić, Electric Water. The film creates a pastiche of memory, histories, and connection – looking at her own heritage and ancestral arrival to North America from the Adriatic Sea and the origin stories and cosmologies of the Haudenosaunee and their connection to Niagara Falls. Barić illuminates the power of water, in natural understandings, capitalistic understandings, and spiritual understandings. In tying her connection to place, Barić speaks of Nikola Tesla, whose shared country of origin as her families also creates a binding of herself and her genetic memory to the site of Niagara. Tesla’s invention and design of the first hydro-electric power plant at the Falls, which he envisioned for good and to provide power for free to the people, was corrupted by the long tentacles of capitalism. Capitalism and its reach exist like a mutant creature – distorting, corrupting, and poisoning what it touches.
In the film, Barić interviews Rick Hill, a member of the Haudenosaunee community – who grew up near the Falls. Hill shares portions of the Nation’s story of origin, talking about the Creator and his malevolent brother known as Flint. For every good thing the Creator brought into being, Flint would create a wicked counterpart, monsters. During a time of duel between the brothers, they threw and thrashed each other around cataclysmically shifting and shaping the landscape, which Hill believes is what molded the Falls in its current form. To counteract the monsters of his brother’s making, the Creator brought to life Thunder Beings, that with the clap and shock of their existence, drove the monsters back into the ground; Beings which left the Falls when tourism took over – heading west to the Rockies – returning to bring rain every season. The film illuminates the severed connection to culture through colonial abuses and extractive methodological approaches to ‘progress.’ Through the commercialization of the natural world, the spiritual connection is cut – fissured in ways that create barriers to the holy relation to place. Barić and Yazzie show the fissures that occur when the pollution, extraction, and forced control over the earth take over, urging a return to the stories and power of living in balance.”
–Eric Joyce
Steven Yazzie — Mountain Song (11 mins) Mountain Song is part of a series of video/film installation work exploring Diné/Navajo sacred mountains. Structured in four verses, the film explores indigenous knowledge, mystery, resource exploitation (uranium), and post-colonial reflections on community life. Conversations I recorded with elders, friends, and community members are set against the backdrop of a personal journey to a sacred Diné/Navajo mountain, Dibé Nitsaa, in southern Colorado, eventually ending at a mountain outside my backyard where I once lived in Phoenix, Arizona. Concurrently throughout the film, the radio chatter of the first humans landing on the Moon in 1969 (Apollo Mission) can be heard. The intersection of moon landing audio, indigenous stories, and aerial views of tribal territories echo memories of our shared histories while complicating the experience of the perpetual outsider with subjective indigeneity.
Nancy Baric — Electric Water (25 mins), an experimental documentary and a meditation on the poetics and politics of water, moving between my heritage from the Adriatic Sea and the Haudenosaunee perspective on Niagara Falls. While our connection to water is disrupted by pollution, dams, and the tourist’s gaze, there are stories and insights that lead back to water’s power and teachings.
Steven and I met and quickly realized there was a shared world view especially regarding our relationship to land and water. I feel that the two films speak to each and offer a great opportunity to provide a dialogue due to commonality from an Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspective and one of which also extends to the audience. The two films explore issues of representation, ecology and stewardship, and are examples of connection/disconnection due to colonialism. The films together also offer hope for a better future through mutual care.
Steven Yazzie — is a multidisciplinary artist working in painting, installation, video/film, and community collaborations. His work explores the complexities of post-colonial indigenous identity and an ever-evolving community relationship, with a fundamental view that land is the source of life, story, conflict, and healing.
Nancy Baric is Montreal-based artist and filmmaker working at the intersection of cinema and installation. Her practice explores the relationship between ecology, human perception, and intuitive procedures.

Jason Wesaw: Sovereign Spirits
2025-03-07 18:00 - 2025-08-25 19:30 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Potawatomi (Turtle Clan) artist Jason Wesaw’s exhibit consisting of sculpture, drawings, prints, and installation is linked to the beliefs of his culture related to land, specifically the ground where Tube Factory now sits. This land has been part of Potawatomi lands at different times in history before the United States existed. For this reason, Wesaw used earth and materials from Terri Sisson Park on the Tube Factory campus to create some of the works in this fully commissioned show.
Tube Factory’s chief curator, Shauta Marsh, looked to Wesaw because she felt his work offers a form of time travel — connecting us to a time before and to the present and ways to envision a future with shared connections and value tied to the land. And, in doing so, Wesaw brings people together today and across generations. “An overarching tenant of my practice is a commitment to examining relationships,” he said. “Relationships act as a guidepost for me, whether it’s connecting to family and community, to spirit and my observations in the natural world, or to materials: those which are considered modern art mediums, or found and harvested materials.”
Two pieces anchoring Wesaw’s Sovereign Spirits exhibit to the place where the Tube Factory sits are the tall flowing installations of shimmering satin and taffeta ribbon.
“They address the way that I interact with the underside of life, the places beneath the surface where spirit moves in subtle and powerful ways that only focused reflection and observation can reveal,” Wesaw said.
Wabshkya Sen or White Stone, is a piece about the help we receive through ceremonies that bring us healing and good health, both physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Bean Creek draws attention to the urban stream just outside the walls of the gallery, where we can be reminded that the cleansing, moving spirit of the water can often be found sharing its life force if we simply pause long enough to let our senses guide us to her flowing banks for a quiet moment.
Wesaw will also create an installation composed of black ash baskets or Gokpenagenek. A quintessential and ancient art form amongst the Potawatomi, black ash baskets are not merely functional or decorative objects, they weave together ancient cultural knowledge about the importance of maintaining relationships to the land and each other with a value system based upon reciprocity.
“These baskets are a reflection of our community’s ongoing presence on this Land and they remain a treasured art form practiced by the Potawatomi and many other Tribal Nations. Many of the baskets on view in this collection were made by ancestors of the Pokagon Potawatomi people of northern Indiana and southwest Michigan, with others having been made by their descendants who now carry on this beautiful, customary art form,” Wesaw said.
The intimate, small-scale oil pastel drawings that line the wall illustrate Wesaw’s process of observation and structure, ideas that often are fleshed out even further in his larger works. The textile pieces from his ongoing Blanket Series explore ideas around the transfer of knowledge that occurs between spirit, nature, and human beings, what he sees as a subtle, gentle ceremony of offerings and giveaways.
In the textile and ceramic works, lies an interest in the power of ornamentation, with materials like dyed deer tail and shiny, small objects drawing your gaze closer into the work. Collectively, the work in Sovereign Spirits shows a wide breadth of materials being used, but there is a united spiritual aesthetic of the pieces, regardless of the time, space and dimension in which they are constructed.
“In a quest for connection and common ground,” Wesaw said. “Where is it you look to find the source which helps you move with meaningful purpose, fulfillment, and Love? With Sovereign Spirits, I hope to take you on a journey where you can explore the power of Self, including the connections we have to the communities around us, the longing we feel to belong, and our desires to understand our place amongst all of creation. As we so casually ask for help or guidance from a higher power in difficult times throughout our lives – we must also understand that when spirit comes looking for something from us – that we need to be ready to give back without hesitation or fear; in essence, to have faith. The work in this exhibition recognizes the role of land, water, and skies as we seek a deeper, clearer understanding of Spirit and Self.”
The exhibition’s title, Sovereign Spirits, resonates with meaning across history. “Sovereign is a word most-often used to describe the undisputed authority of political entities, or to imply supreme power and autonomy. Indeed, this is a word that the Potawatomi — and all Tribal Nations — have become eerily familiar with in our centuries-long fights to maintain our traditional culture and inherent human rights, in a country founded on freedoms for all,” Wesaw said. “By stripping away themes centered around history or distinguishing labels like ‘Indian’ and ‘Native American’, what we may find as those layers are peeled back is a deep awareness of the natural world around and within us, and the connection we have to beings other than humans. In an increasingly fast-changing world where the land and people are being eaten up as a resource, there is a humble acknowledgement we can make in understanding the power of reciprocity and the place Spirit holds in the physical world we are living.”
About the Artist: Jason Wesaw works in an array of media including ceramics, textiles, works on paper, and traditional cultural pieces. His projects relate stories about the Potawatomi people’s ancient and evolving connection to the Land, the Sky, the Water, and Beyond. He balances being an artist with working in his Tribal community as a Peacemaker and participating in traditional cultural ceremonies across the Great Lakes. Wesaw is Potawatomi (Turtle Clan) and lives near the historic Pokagon Potawatomi settlement of Rush Lake in southwestern Michigan. His work is in the permanent collections of the Eiteljorg Museum, Grand Valley State University in Michigan, the University of Notre Dame, the Field Museum in Chicago, the Indiana State Museum, and many other regional institutions. He was recently a Mellon Artist-in-Residence at the Newberry Library for the ‘Indigenous Chicago’ exhibition and is a core artist in the current “Woven Being” group exhibition at The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University.
Learn more about Wesaw by visiting his Instagram account @jasonwesaw.
The exhibition is made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Efroymson Family Fund, the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
The show is part of a long term project, Social Alchemy, conceived by Big Car co-founders Shauta Marsh and Jim Walker and artist and philanthropist Jeremy Efroymson, explores historical and contemporary examples of utopian experiments, fictional utopias and dystopias, and social and cooperative-living design projects.
About Tube Factory artspace: Tube Factory is a contemporary art campus and community center. There are four galleries on the campus, two are commissioning galleries. Admission is free. It is also the home base for Big Car Collaborative’s work across Indianapolis and beyond. Tube Factory features rotating exhibits, interactive projects, community space, a reference library, an outdoor gathering space, and much more to find through exploring. Tube Factory is an independent, noncommercial, nonprofit public place.
Tube Factory is run by the 501(c)(3) arts nonprofit, Big Car Collaborative. As an artist-run nonprofit organization, we utilize tools of culture and creativity to build community and social cohesion — connecting people as a way to boost quality of life. We support our community by supporting artists.
Much of our work happens on a single block where we own or co-own more than 20 properties — including a long-term affordable housing program for artists and Tube Factory — a contemporary art museum with a cafe, studios, and community space. At our campus of adaptive reuse buildings and public greenspace, we host community and cultural programs to promote social connectivity, cooperation, and creativity.
We also facilitate people-focused placemaking and place keeping projects across the city and beyond through Spark. Tune in to our experimental, community-focused radio station, WQRT 99.1 FM — also streaming at wqrt.org. Learn more at BigCar.org and TubeFactory.org.
About Indiana and Tribal Land (from the Indiana State website):
There are two tribes that have land in Indiana.
The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi received a small portion of their land back from their removal in Indiana. The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi is a federally recognized tribe. It is one of 573 federally recognized tribes in the United States. The Bureau of Indian Affairs contacted Chairman John Warren to state that their tribe, Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, had been approved on November 18, 2016 to receive 166 acres of land in trust in South Bend, Indiana. The tribe successfully put a few housing units and tribal government buildings to assist their tribal members living in Indiana. It also built a 175,000 square foot and 1,800 Class II gaming devices, four restaurants, a player’s lounge, a coffee shop, two bars, a retail outlet and approximately 4,500 parking spaces including an enclosed parking structure.
The second tribe that has land in Indiana is the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. The tribe was given land to put a Cultural Extension Office for their tribal members living in Indiana to attend specific gatherings, ceremonies and education events at this office located in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
There are approximately 25,000 other tribal members who live in Indiana, from the Apache, Cherokee, Navajo, Comanche, Lakota Sioux, and other federally recognized tribes.
Information via: faqs.in.gov/hc/en-us/articles/360033547051-Are-there-any-Native-American-tribes-in-Indiana

Flore Laurentienne at Tube Factory artspace
2025-03-26 19:00 - 21:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Flore Laurentienne is performing at Tube Factory artspace on Wednesday, March, 26, 2025 from 7-9pm EST.
Tickets are $10 and can be purchased HERE via Eventbrite.
In addition, Indianapolis composer and instrumentalist Rob Funkhouser will open the concert.

Each performance is a chance to step into a world where music and nature intertwine—a rare and intimate experience.
Flore Laurentienne is an open window to the technicolor soundscapes of Mathieu David Gagnon – the Canadian composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist who shapes vast orchestral sound to interpret the rugged wilderness and waters of his native Québec. The namesake of an inventory documenting St. Lawrence Valley flora, Flore Laurentienne illumes the science and spirit of his surrounds through expansive string orchestrations melded with the textures and experimentation of early analogue synths.
Following the compass and critical acclaim of his Volume I debut, Flore Laurentienne returned in October 2022 with Volume II to resume his voyage into environment and emotion. Recorded with string and clarinet ensembles along with Gagnon’s signature modulation, Volume II explores forces of water as metaphorical markers to navigate passages of life and loss, . Reflecting the parallel tenors of nature and humankind, Volume II locates another estuary in Flore Laurentienne’s tides toward contemporary sonic romanticism.
In his approach to composition hued by leitmotif and constraint, Gagnon challenges himself to extract beauty from simplicity in homage to the changing faces of natural landscapes. The presence of familiarity and flux in Volume I is heightened through the vivid instrumentation of a fifteen-piece string orchestra, which Gagnon brings together with an array of 1960s and 70s synthesizers, including the Minimoog Model D, the EMS Synthi and combo organs – an innately ambitious project which forges the composer’s distinctive path in the expansion of classical music archetypes.
Flore Laurentienne was nominated in seven categories at the 2020 ADISQ in Québec, winning the ‘Arrangement of the Year’ and ‘Sound Recording and Mixing of the Year’. In 2020, Volume I was longlisted for the Polaris Music Prize and received four nominations at the Felix Awards for ‘Revelation of the Year’, ‘Songwriter of the Year’, ‘Critic’s Choice Album of the Year’ and ‘Instrumental Album of the Year’. In 2021, Flore Laurentienne was nominated for the** Juno Awards** ‘Instrumental Album of the Year’ in recognition for his contribution to Canadian music. In addition, Fleuve No. 1 opened the Chanel fashion show at Paris Fashion Week 2022.
Awards & Recognition
Nominated at the 2021 JUNOS Awards for Instrumental Album of the Year
Nominated on the 2020 Polaris Prize Short List for Volume 1
Winner at the 2020 ADISQ for Arrangement of the Yearfor Volume 1
Winner at the 2020 ADISQ for Sound Recording and Mixing of the Year for Volume 1
Nominated at the 2020 ADISQ for Best New Artist
Nominated at the 2020 ADISQ for Album of the Year – Critic’s Choice for Volume 1
Nominated at the 2020 ADISQ for Author or Composer of the Year for Volume 1
Nominated at the 2020 ADISQ for Revelation of the Year for Volume 1
Nominated at the 2020 ADISQ for Songwriter of the Year for Volume 1
Nominated at the 2020 ADISQ for Album of the Year – Instrumental for Volume 1

Rob Funkhouser is a composer, performer, and instrument builder who can never quite sit still. His work is concerned with ideas of place, memory, and pattern and he is interested in interrogating the interstitial spaces between established genres.

Current State 2025: Herron's Electronic Music Showcase
2025-04-27 11:00 - 15:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Featuring more than 20 performers, CURRENT STATE is a live concert event putting the talent of Herron School of Art and Design music students on display.

Students from Herron’s undergraduate music technology program will present original works drawn from a wide array of musical styles including electronic pop, house, hip-hop, noise, experimental, and beyond.

Herron’s music technology program is proud to partner with Big Car Collaborative, whose Tube Factory artspace will serve as a stage for this exciting afternoon of live music.

Open Bocce Play!
2025-04-27 12:00 - 15:00, 2025-05-04 12:00 - 15:00 | Terri Sisson Park, 1125 Cruft Street, Indianapolis
Grab some friends or neighbors and come by to enjoy Tube Factory’s Bocce court! The outdoor court is located to the left of 1207 Cruft Street, down Cruft past Tube Factory. Enjoy the weather, Terri Sisson Park, and our community with open bocce ball!

Ben Hall: Trunk Rattle Sound Bath
2025-05-02 18:00 - 2025-06-15 17:00 | IN
Trunk Rattle Sound Bath merges ongoing areas of Ben Hall’s research into polyrhythm (the simultaneous use of two or more contrasting rhythms), sonic immersion, and ancestral resonance through the lens of embodied listening. The title draws from the cultural experience of low-end frequencies booming from car trunks — windows shaking with no discernible rhythm, the body absorbing it all. “Vibrational frequencies are in everything,” Hall says. “Our bodies. We are observing by vibration even when we shut down. Our nervous system is still there, thrumming.”
With this new body of work, Hall focuses on not just what is played or heard, but what is felt, what is transferred through vibration, what buzzes and rattles in the body long after the source has passed. The body is a resonant shell for the vibrations that occur all around us. “The 17th-century Dutch physicist Christian Huygens observed the entrainment of pendulums,” Hall explains. “He noted in 1655 that if two pendulum clocks were placed near each other, they would synchronize. They wanted to be in rhythm with each other — but it was, and is, not instant. That move toward synchronization, toward harmony… The experience of rhythm, of immersion in sound, of allowing your body to be an entire resonating chamber is to allow that process to begin each time — and allow for the vibration to be you.”
Inspired by the mbira, a traditional African thumb piano with metal tines and built-in buzzers used in spiritual ceremonies to connect with ancestors, Hall draws a throughline from West African sonic cosmologies to Midwestern street corners. “Those buzzes are supposed to be the actual frequencies that cut through to the ancestors,” he says. “The consequence of the sound is what communicates with another world.” In this way, the sound bath is not a cleansing ritual in the New Age sense, but a full-bodied immersion in histories.
Hall makes the connection between the mbiras of tradition and the trunk rattle of modernity. “When you are at the red light next to the Buick,” Hall says, “you’ll notice that the rattling and buzzing is not consistent with the rhythm created by the bass frequencies coming from the vehicle. Often, it will seem that the rattling of your windows — a different distance, a different material from the sound maker — is not even related at times to the rhythm, as though the frequencies you’re hearing in the passing vehicle are somehow coincidental to the vibration in your home.”
Trunk Rattle Sound Bath invites visitors to consider rhythm not only as musical but as a way of knowing, of feeling, of remembering. “When a frequency, a sound (but also a rhythm, a repetition) occurs to us at a different frequency than the one we live in,” Hall says, “we are receiving energy. Frequency is just another way to say energy.” Whether through sound, image, or movement, Hall’s work opens a space for that energy to circulate — and for the body, buzzing like a loose antenna, to receive it. “Vibrational frequencies are in everything,” Hall declares.
About the artist: Ben Hall is an artist and composer based in/from Detroit, Michigan. He was profiled in Fred Moten’s 2017 book, Black and Blur and frequently works as a critic and essayist with a research focus on the visionary American composers Milford Graves and Bill Dixon. He formerly served as a senior research fellow at the Center for the Advancement of Public Action at Bennington College from 2018-2022. He has presented prints, drawings, film, sculpture and works for sound in numerous exhibitions including the solos Jives & Gambles at Essex Flowers in NYC and Slow An Alarm Until It’s A Tone at MOCAD (Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit). He is currently compiling material for the forthcoming publication, A Black Liberation Music Guide.
Curator: Landon Caldwell
Live performance: June 8, 12pm by Hall’s ensemble, Oceanic Beloved.
This exhibition is made possible by the Indy Arts Council and the City of Indianapolis, the Indiana Arts Commission, Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Fund, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and Efroymson Family Fund.

Sketch Club with India Hines
2025-05-07 15:00 - 17:00 | IN
If you love sketching and are looking for community, come hang out and draw with our longterm artist in residence, India Hines.
India Hines, a self-taught artist from Denver, CO, and raised in Indianapolis, IN, uses ink, watercolor, and oil paints to explore spirituality and the subconscious. Their intuitive process results in figurative faces and organic shapes that reflect a journey of growth, resilience, and love. India’s art is deeply meditative, rich with emotional depth, and narrates stories of overcoming adversity. Active in community projects and exhibitions, India believes in art’s power to unite and continues to push creative boundaries while exploring personal growth and self-discovery

Open Bocce Ball!
2025-05-11 12:00 - 15:00, 2025-05-18 12:00 - 15:00, 2025-05-25 12:00 - 15:00 | Terri Sisson Park, 1125 Cruft Street, Indianapolis

NIGHTJAR: Derek Mong
2025-05-21 18:30 - 20:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Derek Mong will begin reading at 7pm.
After Lynch’s reading and a brief break, the open mic will begin.
Open mic prompt: Write a poem about a beautiful catastrophe.
About Derek Mong:
Derek Mong is the author of When the Earth Flies into the Sun (October 2024), The Identity Thief (2018) and Other Romes (2011)—all from Saturnalia Books. A chapbook, The Ego and the Empiricist (2017), was a finalist for the Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Contest. His collaborative translation, The Joyous Science: Selected Poems of Maxim Amelin—completed with his wife, Anne O. Fisher—received the 2018 Cliff Becker Translation Prize.
A poet, essayist, and translator, Derek’s work appears widely: the Kenyon Review, Blackbird, At Length, Pleiades, Verse Daily, the Missouri Review, Two Lines, Poetry Northwest, and in the anthology, Writers Resist: Hoosier Writers Unite (2017). He has blogged for Kenyon Review Online, where he wrote a series of Leaves of Grass beer reviews, and written essay-reviews for Gettysburg Review. He is currently a Contributing Editor at Zócalo Public Square and, along with his wife, edits At Length, a literary journal devoted to long work.
New poems and essays have appeared in the Houston Chronicle, the LA Times, Zócalo Public Square, Free Inquiry, Always Crashing, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, and the Boston Globe. His latest long poem, “Midnight Arrhythmia,” was published in Action, Spectacle.
An Associate Professor and Chair of the English Department at Wabash College (Crawfordsville, Ind.), Derek holds degrees from Stanford University (M.A. Ph.D.), the University of Michigan (M.F.A.), and Denison University (B.A.). Born in Portland, Oregon and raised outside of Cleveland, Ohio, he currently lives in West Lafayette, Indiana with his wife and son.
@derek_mong
NIGHTJAR creates an inclusive space for all by bringing together spoken-word performers and page-based poets writing in narrative, lyric, and experimental forms. Every third Wednesday, C.S. Carrier and Michelle Niemann host a reading and invite audience members to share their own poetic responses.
