I am an artist, curator, organizer, teacher, anti-war activist, and Iraq War veteran living in Chicago. I work collaboratively in diverse spaces and media to create meaning out of personal and collective trauma, deconstruct and transform systems of oppression, and seek liberation. Working through an interdisciplinary practice rooted in drawing and printmaking, I develop projects that deconstruct militarism and related institutions of dehumanization. These projects often utilize popular research strategies, experiment with forms of direct democracy, and operate in solidarity with the people most impacted by structural violence.
I work with a variety of art and activist projects including: Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project, Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative, About Face: Veterans Against the War, and emerging Veteran Art Movement.
I have had the honor to show my work internationally at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, Maruki Gallery in Tokyo, Ashkal Alwan in Beirut, and the School of Visual Arts Museum in New York.
I have been humbled to receive a number of awards, grants, residencies, and fellowships from a variety of art institutions, including Ashkal Alwan, Blue Mountain Center, Lawrence Arts Center, Links Hall, The Kitchen, and Penland School of Craft. In 2019, I was awarded the Artists Award from the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, UK for the project Poetry Despite/Music Despite (Eternal War Requiem), in 2018 I received the Dialogues on the Experience of War National Endowment for the Humanities grant for my Research and Curating a Century of War and Survival class at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and in 2014, I received the Edes Prize for Emerging Artists for the ongoing Tea Project.
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Email: aarhughes [at] gmail.com