“Fleurs de Macadam” at Chicago Artists Coalition

Like Queer Animals (Jessie Mott and Chantal Nadeau), installation view of “Fleurs de Macadam,” at Chicago Artists Coalition, 2024/Photo: Chuy Benitez

Both the springtime and its verdure
So mortified my heart
That I punished a flower
For the insolence of Nature.

—Charles Baudelaire, from the collection “Fleur Du Mal”

Queer Like Animals, an artist duo composed of visual artist Jessie Mott and queer scholar and writer Chantal Nadeau, opened their fourth exhibition, “Fleurs de Macadam,” on May 29 at the Chicago Artists Coalition. The exhibition’s title, a French phrase that refers to those who live and work on the streets or in the metaphorical cracks in the sidewalk of society, sets the tone for works that respond and relate to the theme in varying and often opposed ways.

Like Queer Animals (Jessie Mott and Chantal Nadeau), installation view of “Fleurs de Macadam,” at Chicago Artists Coalition, 2024/Photo: Chuy Benitez

In Mott’s paintings, flowers eat, are eaten or, in some cases perhaps, have been eaten by creatures with multiple eyes, nipples and heads. Chronological time yields to a dreamy simultaneity (which can be advanced even further with the use of augmented reality thanks to Victor A. Mateevitsi). Working in gouache, Mott renders these creatures of multiplicity in verdant greens and bright yellows and sets them against dark backgrounds, where the visible brush strokes and resultant layerings evoke thick, densely populated surroundings without foreclosing the possibility of viewing the darkness as an inscrutable void. “Versatility is my favorite thing about using gouache because it can be opaque when you want it to be and it can also be thinned like watercolor,” Mott says of the medium, “spreading/seeping/bleeding is a big part of the attraction. You’re always in a dance of being in control and out of control. There’s a bit of patience involved and—I don’t have a lot of patience—so things can get messier much faster than I intend them to. It’s not very forgiving. Once you’ve stained the paper, you have to go with it.”

Like Queer Animals (Jessie Mott and Chantal Nadeau), installation view of “Fleurs de Macadam,” at Chicago Artists Coalition, 2024/Photo: Chuy Benitez

Mott’s depictions of interpenetrating flora and fauna feel like viewing an innocent imagination set to the creation of new holes and ways to fill them. In the painting, “Morning Mist,” a cat-like face attached to an armless body arches forward, its two sets of breasts drop down toward its face, which gazes backward at itself and the viewer; meanwhile, a serpentine form emanates from its mouth, winding its way back up into the body only to reemerge in the foreground as a not-altogether-trustworthy flower sliding down the leg of the creature. In “Carnal Spell,” two flowers appear to be wilting, perhaps only feigning a languid repose? It is equally possible that they bend in an act of will, bend in order to pick something up, especially in the way that the flower of the foreground envelopes the head of a lanky deer-like creature completely obscuring it with its pink petals. Likewise, the deer-like body reaches its head upward, but its slack arms suggest a limpness evocative of both ease and death. The notes of pleasure playing against the possibility of the nearness of death, whether by violence or joy, confuse the mind with the same violent confusion of love in the springtime, overpowering, intoxicating and demanding. For Mott, the inspiration comes from the dreams and visions she’s had since her youth: “The inspiration is more about the feelings and emotions attached to the dream. The color palette. A recurring theme is about reclaiming power after being victimized or vulnerable.”

Like Queer Animals (Jessie Mott and Chantal Nadeau), installation view of “Fleurs de Macadam,” at Chicago Artists Coalition, 2024/Photo: Chuy Benitez

Mott’s paintings speak in a colorful visual language with ambiguous meanings, while Nadeau’s work uses a pared-down palette of red, white and black that addresses the viewer in a straightforward language. “These are my colors,” Nadeau tells me at the opening, “the colors of anarchy, the colors of war and violence and racism.” When I ask about the title of the exhibition, Nadeau makes a repelling gesture with her hands as if warding off an enemy that seeks to annihilate. “We are steel,” she says pointing to the back wall where her piece “Fucking Weeds” hangs. It is a large piece of cardboard painted white on the left and black on the right, which reads in part: “The macadam is our turf / you can sweep it at will /you can’t clean the cracks/ we are the cracks /that give life to your decay.”

In other works, Nadeau uses the evocative sensory language of smell and decay to create an experience that, even as it wards off the enemy, seems to court it and provoke it as well. Often short and ostensibly simple, her works speak in two languages at once: they can speak in the language of the view of the enemy and incorporate it, and they can take a defiant stance against it. When asked about the title of the show, Nadeau says: “For ‘Fleurs de Macadam,’ my words are flowers literally.” “Fleurs de Macadam” thus becomes a visual and conceptual exploration, where each piece invites viewers to confront and reinterpret notions of identity, power and resilience.

“Fleurs de Macadam” is curated by Vasia Rigou, on view at the Chicago Artists Coalition, 2130 West Fulton, through June 27.