Isabelle Frances McGuire’s Year Zero at The Renaissance Society, Chicago.

Isabelle McGuire has given us an America in tripartite form. Inside her show Year Zero at The Renaissance Society in Chicago, a life-sized recreation of Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace cabin, whose ‘real’ equivalent (Kentucky’s ‘Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park’) is itself a facsimile cabin, alongside two slightly undersized figures of Santa Claus and Jesus, who prostrate on wood-and-dirt-mound pedestals. These cultural figures’ apparent exhumation, however, feels almost entirely depoliticized, positing them in the press release as “‘revisiting the past, re-animating old models, or re-wilding familiar symbols”. This seems like a poetic way to say that you’re picking and choosing from a cultural consciousness that you know will be shared but defining it as active engagement. I am more inclined to feel that “re-wilding” is predominantly passive: a languorously ironic presentation of referents, successfully bolstered by confident and considered choices of material and scale. It does not share the high buzz that McGuire’s more directly funny work exudes - a child’s call of duty cosplay and animatronic baby Yoda at King’s Leap, SuperBaby2(Unmanned) {“The Child”, “Reborn”} (2023) spring to mind. But the eerier tone (the Lincoln house approximates the haunted house) provides visual dividends for a show of empty spaces and characters to be projected onto, even vampirised ones. I enjoy work that pokes at open-ended interpretation, and there are lots of threads to tug, but don’t tell us to look out for it in the accompanying text. Reticence works far better when simply shown, not didactically spelt out.

The Renaissance Society occupies the odd position of being Chicago’s closest approximation of the Kunsthalle format, geared toward commissioned work by living artists. TRS has shown Ghislaine Leung and Aria Dean - always leaning towards reasonably reticent content which balloons to gorge on its own context, for better or worse, under the guises of various forms of sculpture and new media practices, with a yearly-ish dense yet star-studded group show. This is fine and usually stands out in Chicago, not only due to its usually high quality, but by a relative dearth of that form of contemporaneity’ in other art spaces. Given the literal academic backdrop of the space (on the UChicago campus), all the vitrine installations in the hallway vaguely blended in with the incessant postering of doors and walls you see if you climbed the four flights up to the show. Supplementary material, choices for how you might approach the work in the main space, completely separated from the grist of the exhibition. It sucked because McGuire’s sole video in this, Frankenstein in the Underworld (2024) shown in a vitrine, was fucked-up and really good. It firmly illuminated a strain of body-mod which runs through the show. The two disinterred figures are qualified as “bodies printed from medical CT scans of anonymous women” in the accompanying text and fit nicely with McGuire’s previous relation to kitbashing (creating new models from an assortment of different parts) and video game culture.

The show poster, Depo Provera (2024) a work in itself, listed on the checklist - which I don’t think I’ve seen before - shows a staged photoshoot of McGuire injecting her mother’s behind. It was named after a dubiously effective hormonal birth control her mother had been taking while pregnant with McGuire. This oddly heart-warming personal history complicates the previous historical referents. But, when combined with the specificity of the CT scans and the exclusively male personae in the work, spins a discussion around the agencies of differently gendered bodies. Year Zero (alt-history, rebirth, cycles, sublimation, etc.) is a satisfying show, and at its base has a tonal consistency and specificity that I very much appreciate, even though that was exactly what I expected. More of this in Chicago, I think.

Alex Arauz on Seeing the World from Inside the Room

Interview by Hollywood Superstar
Photography by Alex Arauz

Hollywood Superstar Review sits down with Brooklyn- and London-based
photographer and curator Alex Arauz to talk about his work in domestic spaces,
moving image, curating, and his film festival. In this wide-ranging conversation, Arauz
reflects on identity, memory, and the quiet power of observation.

HSR: Alex, your work often explores home, intimacy, and memory.
Why do you keep coming back to domestic spaces?
AA: I think the home is where everything begins and ends. It’s not just a physical space – it’s
emotional, psychological, even spiritual. I grew up surrounded by people who expressed
themselves through objects and habits, not through grand gestures. The things we live with –
light, noise, clutter – they all carry identity. My photographs are ways of trying to see that
clearly, without judging it.

HSR: There’s a real stillness to your images. They’re not flashy; they
feel observed. Is that a deliberate contrast to the visual noise of
social media and fashion imagery?
AA: Definitely. I love images that take their time. We’re surrounded by pictures that move fast
and tell us how to feel, and I’ve never been interested in that. I like photography that breathes
– that invites you to notice something small. The quiet can be political too. Choosing not to
perform, not to over-explain, can be a form of resistance.

HSR: Your show at Waste Store in 2023 – I Wonder How Many
People in This City – was a really introspective take on urban life.
How did you approach that?
AA: Isabel Kang, who curated the show, was thinking about how people coexist in the same
city but live completely different experiences. I wanted to look at that through interiors – what

the city feels like from the inside. You don’t always need to show the skyline; sometimes it’s a
reflection in a mirror or the light on a floor that says more about urban life than a street
photograph ever could.

HSR: And then at Emalin in 2024, you presented OOBE – Out of
Body Experience. The title itself feels psychological.
AA: It was. The piece was shown in a space that looked like someone’s living room – a sofa, a
TV, a couple of speakers. It became a kind of dream loop about watching yourself from
outside. I was thinking about how screens shape our sense of self – how memory gets filtered
through technology. It’s not nostalgia, exactly, but a way of seeing how much mediation sits
between us and our experiences now.

HSR: You’ve also been involved behind the scenes as a curator at
Ginny on Frederick. How does curating relate to your photographic
work?
AA: For me, curating is another kind of storytelling. At Ginny on Frederick, it was about
helping build an environment where artists could show work that didn’t need to fit into
commercial expectations. I love small spaces – they let you be precise, and you can create
emotional connections between works. My own images often deal with those small, intimate
moments, so there’s a natural crossover.

HSR: You’re also a founding member of Waiting Room Film Festival.
How did that start?
AA: It started with a few friends who were frustrated that there weren’t enough platforms for
early or experimental moving-image work. We wanted to make something that didn’t feel like
a “festival” in the traditional sense – more like a conversation. We screened the first films of a
lot of artists who are now doing incredible things, like Josiane M.H. Pozi. Her early work was
this raw, poetic look at daily life – deeply personal. That’s the energy we wanted: honest and
unpolished.

HSR: You move between photography, moving image, and curating.
How do you balance all those roles?

AA: They’re all part of the same impulse – to pay attention. Whether I’m taking a picture or
helping someone else show their work, it’s about noticing the quiet things that define us. The
line between artist and organiser feels less important than the act of creating space, literally or
metaphorically, for people to be seen.

HSR: There’s a lot of talk about authenticity in art and fashion right
now. What does that word mean to you?
AA: Authenticity isn’t about being raw or confessional. It’s about honesty of attention. I think
people can feel when something’s been really looked at – when the artist has slowed down
enough to see what’s actually there. That’s what I try to do, whether it’s a photograph of a
curtain or a film about memory.

HSR: If you had to describe your practice in one sentence, what
would it be?
AA: I’d say it’s about learning to look again – at your surroundings, your history, yourself.

HSR: So what’s next for you?
AA: I’m developing a new body of work that extends some of these ideas into sound and
installation. I want to explore how memory exists not just visually but physically – in the way
spaces hold echoes or silence. And I’ll keep working with other artists through the festival and
smaller projects. Collaboration keeps the work alive for me.

HSR: Last question – if your work were a movie, what kind of movie
would it be?
AA: (laughs) Probably something slow, set mostly indoors, where not much happens – but by
the end, everything feels different.

Follow Alex Arauz on Instagram at @alexarauz and see more of his work at
alexarauz.com.