With Each Incentive - 2019.
Bluhm Family Terrace, Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago, IL.
Concrete, Cinder Block, and Steel Rebar
Installation Views
Photos courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago

With Each Incentive is a sculptural installation with columns of cinder block and steel rebar in various stages of completion. It highlights a generative aspect of architecture in Latin America, where a building constantly expands to meet the changing needs of growing families and communities.

This pragmatic approach to construction, of being prepared to add on, presents a new framing of the city’s historic skyline, challenging viewers to imagine an indigenous future for Chicago. The work reimagines the Bluhm Family Terrace as a stage for Chicago’s architectural future and contemplates how the city might be transformed by the current wave of Indigenous American refugees from Mexico and Central and South America. The project is a symbolic gesture toward a desirable future that considers culturally defined, kinship-centric architecture.

With Each Incentive references an Indigenous American worldview of continual emerging, becoming, and manifesting. It is about making space—socially, culturally, and aesthetically—for refugees and for the intergenerational stewardship of family, culture, and community.