THE WAY A BODY GLOWS: New Work by Jessie Mott (OPENING RECEPTION June 4)

THE WAY A BODY GLOWS: New Work by Chicago artist Jessie Mott
Join us on Thursday, June 4th from 6pm-8pm for the opening of The Way a Body Glows, a new exhibition by Jessie Mott, curated by Vasia Rigou.

Where: Chicago Athletic Association: 12 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60603
When: JUNE 4 from 6-8PM OPENING RECEPTION and Jessie’s New Work will be up THROUGHOUT the PRIDE Month of June!

https://www.hyattexperiences.com/unbound-collection/chiub#!/e/the-way-a-body-glows-opening-reception-19a084ad/

Celebrate the opening of Jessie Mott’s new art exhibition, The Way a Body Glows, which will be on view in our 2nd floor display cases June 2nd through July 31st. Join us for an opportunity to meet the artist and curator while enjoying complimentary refreshments at the North Fireplace in the Drawing Room.

About the Exhibition
Jessie Mott’s creatures rarely arrive as one thing. They slip between animal, spirit, portrait, apparition, and self. In The Way a Body Glows, Mott presents four large-scale drawings that bring these hybrid beings into a nocturnal world of washy skies, saturated color, and charged intimacy.

Intertwined forms, impossibly long limbs, an insect-like femme figure, and a close-up portrait of a dik-dik-inspired creature appear as proud, radiant presences. They are strange but tender, fantastical but familiar, fierce without losing their softness. In Mott’s hands, the body becomes a site of invention: stretched, winged, scaled, luminous, and defiantly alive.

These new works extend the artist’s long-standing interest in the unstable borders between human and animal, desire and vulnerability, power and play. Here, queerness is not treated as a theme to be decoded, but as a force of transformation—one that reshapes bodies, kinships, and ways of being seen. These beings do not ask permission to exist. They hold the room with color, humor, elegance, and unmistakable presence.

About the Artist and Curator
Jessie Mott is a visual artist based in Chicago. Using an array of media such as painting, drawing, and animation, she gives life to creatures that negotiate permeable boundaries. Mott’s work has been exhibited widely, most recently at Goldfinch Gallery in Chicago, and with Diane Christiansen at Hawthorn Contemporary in Milwaukee, WI; with queer scholar and writer Chantal Nadeau at the Epiphany Center for the Arts in Chicago; and collaborative animations with artist and writer Steve Reinke, including International Film Festival Rotterdam, VIDEOEX International Experimental Film & Video Festival in Zürich and the Whitney Biennial in New York City. Mott has also participated in numerous art residencies, group and solo shows throughout the United States and abroad. Mott received a B.S. from New York University and an MFA from the department of Art Theory & Practice at Northwestern University. She can be found online at jessiemott.com and on Instagram at @jessiemott.

Greek-born Vasia Rigou is writer, editor, and curator exploring visual art, culture, architecture, and design. She is the editor of Newcity, Chicago’s leading culture publication, and regularly contributes to Chicago Reader, Artnet News, and international magazines OnOffice and ICON. In her curatorial practice, she explores themes of identity, intimacy, and belonging with exhibitions at the Chicago Artists Coalition—where she was awarded the HATCH curatorial residency—the Swedish American Museum, the Design Museum of Chicago, the Chicago Athletic Association, the Museum of Danish America, and other venues. Her traveling exhibition Lay Of(f) the Land is on view at the Ostrobothnian Museum in Finland before heading to Sweden in spring 2026. Her work can be found at rigouvasia.com and on Instagram @vasiarigou.