Matt Siber

This image was made in the thick of the project. I had already done a lot of experimentation with assemblage and had developed a strong visual language to work with. I came across this group of chairs carefully crammed into a corner of this classroom. In-person schooling had returned and distancing measures meant that a lot of the school furniture needed to be pushed aside. I was working on Wednesdays, which were for remote learning. The chairs struck me in their uniformity of design. It’s far more common to find a mix of designs in a public school. The stack of uniform chairs obscures the world map behind it creating metaphorical relationships between the institutions of learning, the pandemic, globalism, and global/social awareness.

Matt Siber (b.1972) is a visual artist based in Chicago working in photography, digital imaging, installation and sculpture. With an MFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago, he has had solo exhibitions in Madrid, Berlin and Chicago among other venues. His first monograph, Idol Structures, was published by the DePaul Art Museum, Chicago in 2015 in conjunction with his solo exhibition. His artwork is part of many private and public permanent collections including The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, and The Bidwell Foundation. His work has been published internationally in such publications as ArtForum, Sculpture Magazine, Ain’t Bad, Aperture and EXIT Magazine. He has received grants from the David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg Arts Foundation, the Aaron Siskind Foundation and the Illinois Arts Council. Siber is Associate Professor, Adjunct in the Photography Department of The School of The Art Institute of Chicago.