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Opening October 18th, TOSSAROSE presents its fourth “petal” show: Coordinates of Extraction, a pop-up art exhibition featuring selected artists from the open call alongside existing collective artists. The show will feature video screenings, paintings, sculptures, and performance art/documentation followed by an experimental sound event to create an immersive audio-visual experience.

Bridgeport, Chicago, stands as a testament to the complexities of industrial legacy and cultural transformation. Once the heart of Chicago's meatpacking industry, the neighborhood's proximity to the Union Stock Yards positioned it as a pivotal site in the city's economic and social history. The area's industrial past is marked by labor struggles, immigrant communities, and the environmental challenges posed by industrialization. As industries declined, the neighborhood witnessed a shift towards gentrification, with rising property values and demographic changes reshaping its character. This evolution reflects broader national trends where economic forces and cultural narratives intersect, often sidelining the very communities that once defined the area's identity.


TOSSAROSE's commitment to transforming spaces into immersive art experiences finds resonance in Bridgeport's dynamic landscape. In our second “petal” show, Metempsychosis, we repurposed a former church, infusing it with contemporary art to honor its history while challenging its impending demolition. Similarly, Coordinates of Extraction seeks to activate Bridgeport's industrial remnants, using art to interrogate themes of labor, displacement, and the commodification of identity. By engaging with the neighborhood's layered history, the exhibition aims to foster a dialogue about the forces that shape spaces and the narratives that emerge within them.


Through Coordinates of Extraction, TOSSAROSE invites viewers to reflect on the intersections of history, identity, and place. This exhibition is about more than industrial histories. It is about who is allowed to be present. It is about labor, land, and the quiet forms of disappearance that happen every day. Many of the artists in the collective are second-generation immigrants or international voices. And with the open call, we aim to provide a stage for emerging artists in Chicago that are tackling these themes on a daily basis; to not be caught in an echochamber of a sterile institutional environment instead, being aware of the city’s history and communities. Many emerging artists, especially the international students, are navigating the complicated reality of being legally here, but never quite settled. Our works trace internal cartographies: personal, disjointed, often borderless.




The United States is a country built on the labor of the displaced, the enslaved and the migrant. The idea of extraction here goes far beyond material industry; it shapes the very experience of living and belonging. Each work in Coordinates of Extraction resists erasure by honestly portraying what it means to come to this country and engage with its culture and communities. Showing this work in Bridgeport, a neighborhood with a deep history of immigrant labor and ongoing gentrification becomes an act of reclamation. From the personal experiences, to once put as a collective, making a curated group experience. 

As a collective, TOSSAROSE is acutely aware of the tensions that arise when art occupies transitional spaces — especially in neighborhoods like Bridgeport, where histories of industrial labor, immigration, and working-class life are now being rewritten by development. While we repurpose spaces for temporary exhibitions, we do not romanticize the forces that allow these spaces to become available. Gentrification is not the backdrop to Coordinates of Extraction — it is one of the conditions we confront, both critically and uncomfortably, as artists and organizers.

Hence, similar to our previous attempts in reviving a space, the individual experiences as well as the influences on them from the collective see the new location of the show as something more than just an art exhibition. As we live and breathe in Chicago, the center of industrialization of America, we likewise are sewing and “reconstructing” the space as what it was before –a ground of factories, labors, and what it is now- an exhibition woven with the reflections of the contemporary artists’ interactions with such history. Yet as it is located within an equally historical neighborhood, we believe this transformation or the “reconstruction” of the spaces we choose marks themselves as our metaphorical “light towers” that brings awareness and recognition for both the outsiders and locals in the stratas of these histories. 




This show is a gesture of tension, not resolution. We offer it as a reflection of our complicity, our contradictions, and our commitment to holding space for voices that are too often displaced or devalued in the cultural economy. 

Featuring an opening night and a closing night, the show will run from October 18th to November 1st.

Check website for further information regarding the collective and preivous shows.