Sherwin Ovid

What is the Poesis of Dis-Possession? Cartographies of Spirit and Signal

Curated by Marissa H. Baker, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History 

Monday, January 12th - Thursday, February 19, 2026

ECCE Lecture: Wednesday, February 11, 6:00 - 7:00 p.m. in Brookens Auditorium 
Reception: A reception will immediately follow the lecture until 8:30 p.m. at the Visual Arts Gallery  

What is the Poesis of Dis-Possession? Cartographies of Spirit and Signal presents recent works by Sherwin Ovid that prompt the viewer to reconsider how the Caribbean has been historically imagined and represented as a region. Ovid layers forms and materials evocative of sea creatures, the invisible network of submarine internet cables, and coordinate systems of cartography to examine how the movement of people and digital signals might constitute new but invisible forms of relation across the Caribeean and its diaspora.

Sherwin Ovid is a visual artist who works with experimental processes and non-traditional materials to create unexpected images. Ovid is an Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Art, Theory, Practice department at Northwestern University. He holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute and an MFA from the University of Illinois Chicago where he was an Abraham Lincoln Fellow. Ovid’s work has been supported by numerous grants and awards, including the Helen Coburn Meier and Tim Meier Foundation Achievement Award, the Baker Faculty Research Grant at Northwestern University, Make a Wave Award from 3Arts, and as a Field Trip/Field Notes/Field Guide Fellow at the University of Chicago.

Rita Grendze

Belly

Monday, March 2nd - Thursday, April 9th, 2026

Reception: Thursday, March 5, 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. at the Visual Arts Gallery

Belly features an installation constructed from grocery bags collected during the pandemic, reassembled into oversized, sagging vessels that evoke empty stomachs and changing bodies. The work explores the tension between nourishment and scarcity and asks how hunger, whether physical, emotional, or existential, settles into the body over time.

Rita Grendze is a sculptor and installation artist whose work draws on gathered materials and the contextual meanings embedded in place. Raised between rural Rosenfeld, Manitoba, and suburban Lakewood, Ohio, she earned a BFA in Fiber from the Cleveland Institute of Art and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. As a Fulbright scholar, she spent a year in Latvia studying symbolism in folk costume—research that continues to inform her practice. Grendze has taught at institutions including the Maryland Institute College of Art, Jersey City University, and Waubonsee Community College. Since relocating to the Chicago area in 2001, she has contributed to community arts programs and arts organizations throughout the region. Her drawings, sculptures, and large-scale installations have been exhibited widely, including at the Latvian National Library, and are held in both private and public collections such as the National Museum of Applied Arts in Riga and the Schingoethe Center at Aurora University. She lives and works in Geneva, Illinois.

UIS Visual Arts Senior Student Exhibition

Monday, April 20th - Thursday, May 7th, 2026

Reception: Thursday, April 23, 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. at the Visual Arts Gallery

The UIS Visual Arts Gallery is pleased to present the annual Student Exhibition that will feature graduating seniors from the Visual Arts area at UIS.