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Theresa, South Shore High School
Theresa, South Shore High School
Theresa, South Shore High School

Theresa, South Shore High School

Maker (American, b. 1953)
Date2003
MediumChromogenic print and audio recording
Dimensions40 x 50 in. (101.6 x 127 cm)
Framed: 41 1/8 × 51 1/8 × 2 1/8 in. (104.5 × 129.9 × 5.4 cm)
Credit LineCommission
Object number2003.53
Object TypeTime-Based Media
On View
Not on view
In 2002–03 Chicago-based artist Dawoud Bey created a series of photographic portraits of South Side teenagers. Experimental and collaborative in many aspects, Bey’s The Chicago Project was realized through a residency hosted by the Smart Museum of Art, and planned in close collaboration with radio producers Dan Collison and Elizabeth Meister. With Smart Museum staff, they coordinated a series of workshops and discussions with a selected group of students from Kenwood Academy High School, South Shore Small School of the Arts and Small School of Entrepreneurship, and the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools—students who, due both to the nature of high school and to racial and economic segregation, may not have otherwise met.

During these sessions, students explored how our backgrounds shape our sense of self, what versions of ourselves we project to the world, and how others respond to those self-presentations. The group worked collaboratively to design the installation of Group Portrait (on view in the Smart’s Bernstein Gallery April 5–June 15, 2003), which presented a selection of photographic portraits from the Smart’s collection, paired with students’ (sometimes conflicting) personal responses to these works, written and drawn on the gallery walls. Bey concurrently began photographing the students, and working with Collison and Meister to compile audio interviews with them. The portraits and interviews were then presented together in Dawoud Bey: The Chicago Project (April 24–June 22, 2003).

Then a student at South Shore High School, Theresa was one of the participants in this project. Strikingly self-possessed, she explained in an interview with Bey: “A lot of people ask me, ask me how old I am and they will sometimes, they will say 10. And I’m like, I’m not 10, I’m 15! And… it doesn’t hurt or anything, it just… I feel that God is giving it to me, for a reason. Maybe he, he doesn’t want me to look my exact age. Maybe he wants me to be unique and different from other people.”
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