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Estimated publishing date: The end of September, 2024

A catalog produced to document and augment the exhibition Planting and Maintaining a Perennial Garden: Shrouds by Faheem Majeed presented at Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago in the summer of 2021. The exhibition included a commissioned installation that furthered Majeed’s investigation of culturally specific institutions by focusing on the history and memory of the South Side Community Art Center (SSCAC), the preeminent institution in Chicago dedicated to the city’s Black artists since 1940. A monumental charcoal rubbing of the SSCAC facade was the central focus of his first large-scale solo exhibition that also included his ongoing series of reused wooden planks repurposed from the SSCAC’s Margaret Burroughs Gallery entitled Planting and Maintaining a Perennial Garden.

An essay by Megha Ralapati explores the history and relevance of the South Side Community Art Center since its founding in 1940 to today as well as Majeed’s engagement with its history as curator and director of the Center and as an artist. Allison Peters Quinn addresses Majeed’s work as a humanist art practice that focuses on relationships forged through institutions and objects. Lori Waxman’s contribution considers one and a half decades of Majeed’s practice through three questions: Are rubbing and loving the same gesture? If trees are perennial plants, what does that make wood? Is performing a profession anathema to being a professional?

Authors and contributors: Essays by Allison Peters Quinn, Megha Ralapati, and Lori Waxman. Foreword by Kate Lorenz.