UIC Gallery 400 40th anniversary

The artist says, “The work uses black lace fabric as a stamp for constructing the central space against the contrast of a bright background. The aim was a combination of absence and presence which relies on the empty holes created by the patterns. The netted construction of the remaining imprint uses decoration as a tool for leaving behind a form that is quite porous and granular.”

Sherwin Ovid is a visual artist born in Trinidad who earned his bachelor’s degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He was a Lincoln Fellow in 2013 at the University of Illinois Chicago where he received his MFA. Ovid’s work has been included in the UIC Gallery 400 exhibitions our duty to fight (2016) and Traduttore, Traditore (2017). He currently teaches as an assistant professor at Northwestern University and the UIC. His commercial endeavors include collaborations with Lee Daniel’s Netflix feature The Deliverance, Lena Waithe’s Showtime drama The Chi, and Jordan Peele’s Monkey Paw Studio remake of Candyman directed by Nia DaCosta. 

Ovid has collaborated with Demon Leg Gallery in New York and exhibited at the Chicago Cultural Center, Lubeznik Center for the Arts, UIS Visual Arts Gallery, 6018North, Randy Alexander Gallery, Goldfinch Gallery, UIC Gallery 400, Prison Neighborhood Arts Project, Humboldt Park Boathouse Gallery, University of Wisconsin, Cleve Carney Art Gallery, Julius Caesar, Haitian American Museum of Chicago and Iceberg Projects in Evanston. He was published in New American Painters in 2016 and 2021 as a noteworthy feature and in 2020 listed as one of New City Magazine’s breakout artists.