Big Car

Sketch Club with India Hines
2025-05-07 15:00 - 17:00 (America/Indiana/Indianapolis) | 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

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.

Will Higgins: Museum of Fabulosity
2025-06-06 18:00 - 2025-09-21 15:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
June 6 through Sept. 21 | Guichelaar Gallery at the Tube Factory artspace campus | 1135 Cruft St.
“It’s widely held that Indianapolis is a boring place with a dull, vanilla past.
That notion is wrong.
Yes, the city is a “good place to raise a family” and yes, it’s a “sports capital.”
But it’s also freaky.
People don’t realize this because staid, well-meaning chamber-of-commerce types have swept the weird bits of Indianapolis’ history, the truly interesting and truly human stories, under the rug.
Finally, along comes the Museum of Fabulosity to look under the rug.
Included in this pop-up museum, made to resemble a small-town history museum, are 16 amazing stories, many so strange they may seem made-up. But they are not made up. They are all absolutely true. They are paired with amazing photographs and also fabulous objects that approximate long lost Indy icons — boxing gloves worn by Lou Thomas the night he killed Arne Andersson; the chair Cannonball Adderly tipped back in the night he discovered Wes Montgomery; James Snow’s Panama hat; Jinx Dawson’s skull; Max Emmerich’s spikes…”

— Will Higgins

SOMA
2025-09-05 18:00 - 2025-10-19 15:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Main Gallery
This exhibition explores the supernatural and ethereal states of somatic responses. Inspired by Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, where soma was a fictional drug used to pacify civilians in a state of existential bliss and disassociation. Exploring the socialized perceptions of figures occupying space, Soma takes on confronting perceived utopia and dysmorphia in this exhibition.
In the works, moments of adolescent innocence are paired with surrealist and folkloric expressions of figuration. Satirically, this speaks to resisting and transcending moments that are out of alignment as people grow; without physically being dismissed.
Featured artists:
Jo Archuleta (Kansas City, Missouri)
Tommy Lomeli (Helena, Montana)
Katherine Looney (Kansas City, Missouri)
October Sharify (Chicago)
Isaac Tapia (Kansas City, Missouri)
Cesar Velez (Kansas City, Missouri)
Guest Curator: Yashi Davalos
Davalos is an Afro-Puerto Rican-Mexican, Atlanta Native, based in New Orleans. Her practice began in the Americana Deep South. She attended HBCU, Savannah State University, where she studied Vocal Performance. Yashi’s curatorial research centers socio-cultural epistemology, the south and the global south, through an interdisciplinary arts praxis.
Davalos was the 2023-2025 curatorial fellow and interim grants and awards coordinator at The Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City, Missouri. She was previously a member of collective run gallery The Front New Orleans. Davalos has designed and facilitated programming in collaboration with various institutions including Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Prospect New Orleans, Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, UMKC Music Conservatory, and MDW Artist Coalition. Her art has been exhibited throughout New Orleans, ATL, KCMO, and at MECA Art Fair in the Dominican Republic. Yashi’s writing has been published via Sixty Inches From Center, Burnaway, and Intervenxions at Latinx Project NYU.
Artist Bios:
Jo Archuleta (b. Taos, New Mexico 2000) is an artist living and working in Kansas City, Missouri. Her work explores the complexity of identity and mythology of womanhood found within leisure, desire, pleasure and the specificity as a state of being. By acknowledging rules within the landscape of femininity, gender roles and their societal expectations. Archuleta has found that there are multiple approaches to transgressive and transformative definitions of these identities. Her specific approach to this critique has been to use humor, jokes, and satire. Archuleta is interested in exploring how the figure is perceived and how she sees herself, a constant battle between self-awareness and self sabotage. The figures seduce and confront complexities within the vapidness of beauty, vanity, and ego while also using self-consciousness as repulsion. The women in her work wear masks, perform softness, weakness, shallowness, and confidence; all while cowering within their own insecurities.
Tommy Lomeli (b.1993) is an emerging ceramic artist born in Stockton, California. Lomeli holds a BA from CSU Sacramento and an MFA from the University of Kansas. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the International Sculpture Center’s 2024 Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture award, and first place at NCECA’s 2023 National Juried Student Exhibition. He was a 2024 Charlotte Street Foundation Artist in Residence. He is currently a 2025 Taunt Fellow at the Archie Bray Foundation.
Katherine Looney (b.1989 (she/her)) is a Black and Native American visual artist living in Kansas City, Missouri. She usually works with oil paints when creating colorful portraits. Many of her works are based on photos she has taken of her friends and family. She was a part of Charlotte Street Foundation’s 2023 Artist INC cohort. She was also a 2024 recipient of Charlotte Street Foundation’s Artboards Award. Katherine has a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
October Sharify (b.1999) is an oil painter based in Chicago, Illinois. Their longtime interest in history and theology blends in their work with feminine aesthetics and spiritual imagery. October has a developmental disability and believes that this is both a detriment to their work and integral to their process. October has an African American and Persian cultural background, and often turns to the visual language of their respective cultures’ past for inspiration. “I enjoy working with a limited palette, and I mix my own custom colors to use consistently across my work. Blue to me is a very atmospheric color and my favorite time of day has always been twilight. World-building and paintings that evoke a feeling are very important to me and this exists in every piece that I make.”
Isaac Tapia was born in Mexico, where he lived until moving to the U.S. when he was nine. Isaac focuses on portraits that elevate important, yet often underrepresented, members of his community and celebrate the complex narratives of contemporary migration. He blends photography, audio interviews, and traditional oil portraiture techniques to convey rich, multilayered stories and create opportunities for identification and connection. Isaac’s paintings have been exhibited throughout Kansas City — including at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art — and his work has traveled in shows across the Midwest with the Mexican Consulate and La Onda and the M.A.S.A. Collective. He had a residency and exhibition at Casa Lu Sur en Mexico City in December of 2024. Isaac is a founding member of the M.A.S.A. Collective, and is one of the resident artists at the Charlotte Street Foundation. He is also one-half of the mural duo IT-RA Icons, which has painted murals across the country.
Cesar Velez is a self-taught painter and first-generation immigrant from Mexico based in Kansas City, Missouri. Velez’s work draws from his personal experience growing up in the South and Midwest United States as an undocumented immigrant (now DACA Recipient) living amongst American peers.
This exhibition is made possible thanks to the support of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Efroymson Family Fund.
IMAGE: Big Fish, Cesar Velez, oil on canvas, 24×30, 2022

Keren Cytter: Rose Garden
2025-09-05 18:00 - 2025-11-02 15:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Video Gallery
Cytter’s short 2014 film explores the unsettling duality of American culture’s ideals regarding being protectors of life and harbingers of death. This title is a reference to both the 1964 Joanne Greenburg book I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, which deals with mental illness and the 1971-84 Marine Corp recruitment campaign “We Don’t Promise You A Rose Garden.” These references are meant to clue the viewer in that the seemingly ordinary setting hides a distorted reality. As the tension builds, multiple guns and disjointed conversations between characters escalate the sense that the calm is about to be shattered. A chaotic shooting spree unfolds against the backdrop of normal daily life. The chilling final scene serves as a grim conclusion addressing violence and its pervasive presence within American culture.
Run time: 8 minutes and 55 seconds
Please note: This work contains adult themes and gun violence that some may find triggering.
About the artist
Keren Cytter (b. 1977) creates films, performances, drawings and photographs on topics of social alienation, language representation, and the function of individuals in predetermined cultural systems through experimental modes of storytelling and human perception. Mostly characterised by a non-linear, cyclical logic Cytter’s films consist of multiple layers of images; conversation; monologue, and narration systematically composed to undermine linguistic conventions and traditional interpretation schemata. Recalling amateur home movies and video diaries, these montages of impressions, memories, and imaginings are poetic and self-referential in composition. The artist creates intensified scenes drawn from everyday life in which the overwhelmingly artificial nature of the situations portrayed is echoed by the very means of their production.
Cytter was awarded the Joseph Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2021), Absolut Art Award, Stockholm (2009), Ars Viva Prize, Kulturkreis der Deutschen Wirtschaft, Berlin (2008) and the Bâloise Art Prize at Art Basel (2006).
Recent solo exhibitions include Hot Lava Night, Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany (2023); Double Standard, LLS Paleis, Antwerp, Belgium (2023). Cytter’s work was showcased in a major survey exhibition at the Ludwig Forum Aachen (2022), featuring: films, soap operas, plays, sculptures, drawings, novels, zines, life coaching guides, children’s books and a festival. Cytter’s videos were shown in solo exhibitions at Winterthur Kunstmuseum, Winterthur (2020); Centre for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv (2019); Museion Bolzano, Bolzano (2019), Künstlerhaus – Halle für Kunst & Medien, Graz (2016); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2015), Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2014); State of Concept, Athens (2014), Tate Modern, London (2012), Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2011); München Kunstverein (2011); Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel (2010); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2010); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2010); X Initiative, New York (2009); Le Plateau Paris, Paris (2009), Witte de With, Rotterdam (2008), MUMOK Vienna, Vienna (2007); Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt (2005); Kunsthalle Zurich, Zurich (2005) and Kunst-Werke Berlin, Berlin (2006).
Keren Cytter’s work has been shown in numerous group exhibitions such as MOMENTUM 10, Momentum Biennial, Moss (2019); Masculinity, Düsseldorf Kunstverein, Düsseldorf (2019); SUR/FACE: Mirrors, Museum Angewandtekunst, Frankfurt, (2017); Instructions for Happiness, 21er Haus, Vienna, State (in) Concepts, KADIST, Paris (2017), Vision on Vision- Lemaitre video collection, SEMA Museum, Seoul (2017); Busan Biennial, Busan (2016); Creating Realities – Encounters Between Art and Cinema, Pinakothek der Moderne and Museum Brandhorst, Munich (2015); Political Populism, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2015); John Bock, Keren Cytter, Paul Pfeiffer, Gillian Wearing and Akram Zaatari, Regen Projects, Los Angeles (2013); Expanded Cinema, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow (2011); Videonale 13, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn (2011); Found in Translation, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2011); Morality, Witte de With, Rotterdam, Revolution, van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven (2010); Scenväxlingar / Scene Shifts, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2010); 8th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, Future Generation Art Prize: 20 Shortlisted Artists, PinchukArtCentre Kiev (2010); Time Out of Joint: Recall and Evocation in Recent Art, Whitney Museum, New York (2009); The Generational: Younger Than Jesus, New Museum, New York (2009); Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2009); Fare Mondi 53rd International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, (2009); VideoZone: Video Biennale, Tel Aviv (2008); Shifting Identities, Kunsthaus Zurich, Zurich (2008); Yokohama Triennial, Yokohama, (2008); Torino Triennale, Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, Rivoli (2008); Television Delivers People, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2008); The Second Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2007); The first Hertzelia Biennial, Hertzelia (2007); The 9th Lyon Biennial, Lyon (2007); All Hawaii Entrees/Lunar Reggae, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2006).
Her films have been screened in numerous film festivals such as The Wrong Movie, Berlinale, Berlin, Germany (2024); Villae film festival, Villa d’Este, Tivoli, Bolzano Film Festival, Bolzano (both in 2019); European Media Arts Festival, Osnabruck (2018); A Retrospective at Bergamo Film Festival, Bergamo (2016); Rotterdam Film Festival, Rotterdam and KunstFilmBiennale Köln, Cologne (both in 2009); Berlin International Film Festival, Expended Forum, Berlin (2008); Berlin International Film Festival, Expended Forum, Berlin and Glasgow Film Festival, Glasgow (both in 2007).
This exhibition is made possible thanks to the support of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

JON MUELLER + TOM LECKY: ALL COLORS PRESENT
2025-10-06 19:00 - 21:30 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Tickets are $7 and can be purchased at the door
A sound and visual meditation
Jon Mueller’s singular performance idiom is an awe-inspiring display of elegant athleticism, preternatural focus, brute restraint, and ecstatic, monastic reverie. Paired with Tom Lecky’s photographs, it becomes a deliberate focus on form, shape and detail. It requires and demands a state of inner quietude from witnesses. Yet, from this seemingly metronomic exercise blossoms every possible tint and hue of infinite spectral sound.

​​An apt reference point resides within the broad, decades-spanning catalog of Table of the Elements. Like Tony Conrad’s surging Outside the Dream Syndicate, the aural and conceptual headwinds are real, but the perceived affronts of provocation are not. These works are not endurance challenges, nor are they threadbare minimalist upholstery. They are not obstacles. They are invitations. Within their simplicity and formalism await a sympathetic repose, a comfort. These are gestures of generosity.

Mueller studied jazz drumming with Hal Russell at Columbia College in Chicago, and singing with La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela at the Kirana Center for Indian Classical Music in New York. A prolific performer, he tours extensively and has appeared at festivals and venues throughout the United States, Canada, England, Europe and Japan.

In addition to his solo work, Mueller has collaborated and performed with groups such as Mind Over Mirrors, Volcano Choir, Collections of Colonies of Bees, and Pele. He has also worked with artists including Olivia Block, Aaron Turner, Faith Coloccia, Dawn Springer, Chris Hefner, Jason Kahn, Hal Rammel, Asmus Tietchens, Z’EV, Rhys Chatham, Jarboe, James Plotkin, Duane Pitre, and Raymond Dijkstra. He has released music on renowned labels such as Table of the Elements, Type Recordings, Important Records, Taiga Records, SIGE Records, and American Dreams.
www.rhythmplex.com IG: @jonmueller

Tom Lecky has worked in photography, music (as Hallock Hill), the book arts, prose and poetry writing, and literary criticism. His creative work concentrates on memory, place, and environment, the work of the imagination, perception, and the intersections of abstraction and representation. He often interweaves appropriated texts and images with his own, evoking a conversation with the history of book design and illustration.

These creative pursuits are linked to Tom’s career as an internationally recognized expert in the field of rare and antiquarian books and manuscripts. He has worked in the auction world – notably in a 17-year run as a specialist and Head of Christie’s New York Books and Manuscripts Department – and as an advisor to collectors and institutions. He is the owner of Riverrun Books, and the founder of the rare book and manuscript appraisal and advisory firm Lecky Art Group. www.tomlecky.com
IG: @tom.lecky

www . RachelOrmont . com Film Screening
2026-03-12 20:00 - 22:30 | Contempory Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St, Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Join us at CAMi for a special free screening of Peter Vack’s film www.RachelOrmont.com on Thursday, March 12 from 8 to 10:30 p.m.
The film is an unflinching psychedelic techno-satire about a woman who unknowingly grows up in captivity working for an advertising agency, starring Betsey Brown (Assholes, The Sweet East), Dasha Nekrasova (Succession, The Beast, Materialists), and Chloe Cherry (Euphoria).
“Boasting a daring lead performance and a wicked sense of humor, this satirical sci-fi comedy delves into themes of performance, digital existence, consumer culture, and contemporary sexuality, offering a provocative and unsettling reflection of our hyper-connected society.” — BLEEDING EDGE
“A filthy and absurd midnight movie determined to fry brains and flip stomachs; a film so terminally online that even the milder scenes would, as the kids say, “kill a Victorian child.” — Pop Matters

Content Warning: This film contains graphic sexual content and nudity. This screening is 21+ only.

Run Time: 120 min.
