Threewalls
Our Purpose
An evolving, Black-led nonprofit organization that unapologetically celebrates Blackness, intersectionality, and exists through Black feminist practices, Threewalls fosters contemporary art practices that respond to lived experiences, encouraging connections beyond art.
Breaking Bread Summer 2017 – Photo By: Milo Bosh

Jorge Félix
Jorge Félix is an Afro-Boricua multidisciplinary artist, and curator based in Chicago. He became known in the city for his ‘Body Construction’ painting installations where he molded the canvas to create reliefs, sculptures, and installations. From an early age, Félix’s grandfather instills a passion for community organizing, and in Chicago, he found that the research of food culture could become a tool to ease community in conversations. Félix’s Sofrito Conversations welcome community leaders, elected officials, artists, and neighbors to make old fashion recipes of ‘sofrito’ at a round table while facilitating a storytelling conversation about cooking traditions. There Félix highlights a dialogue that celebrates cultural differences and commonalities among participants to create bonds among participants. Félix focuses his work on the Hermosa neighborhood where he is a 22-year resident but also addresses issues relevant to the northwest community of Chicago. Félix, a biracial gay man born in Puerto Rico, is particularly invested in addressing the racial divide between Latin@s and African Americans in northwest Chicago. Félix earned a Master of Fine Arts in painting and history from Bowling Green State University and a Master of Arts in Arts Administration from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
A.Martinez
A.Martinez (she/her) is a poet, visual artist, mother, and organizer living in Chicago. Her work explores family, rituals, nature, and the body. Alyssa’s social practice involves participatory community gatherings including those for mothers in the arts. She also works as an arts administrator for music performance organizations.
Image description: A.Martinez, a mother with light brown skin and a short curly dark brown afro in a white short sleeved linen dress stands facing to the right in front of a white bed sheet backdrop. Her five year old, Asher, with light brown skin and upper back length curly dark brown hair with no shirt and light gray sweatpants stands behind her back and wraps his arms around her neck, where they hold hands in front of her chest. Their faces touch at the cheekbone. They both have their heads turned to look directly into the camera with pleasant semi-smiling faces, their skin glowing from the late afternoon June sunlight.
Photo by Chelsea Alexandra.
Abena Motaboli
Abena Motaboli is a Basotho – Ghanian Interdisciplinary artist, educator, and writer based in Chicago. She grew up in Lesotho, Southern Africa before moving to the U.S where she obtained her bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts at Columbia College Chicago. Her practice is interdisciplinary, experimental, and deeply rooted in a love of land, nature, and storytelling through the plants.
Image description: Abena Motaboli stands in a wheat field in front of a lake wearing a yellow sweater and black pants. She smiles looking directly at the viewer with one hand outstretched touching the plants next to her. Photo was taken by Kristie Kahns for Sixty Inches From the Center.
AJ McClenon with Angel Bat Dawid
AJ was born and raised in “D.C. proper,” and is currently based in Chicago using performance practices, sound, video, movement, theatre and writing to share experiences living in a Black body. AJ holds a Masters in Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received a Bachelor of Arts with a minor in creative writing from the University of Maryland, College Park and has also studied at The New School. A.J. hopes that all the memories and histories that are said to have “too many Black people” are told and retold again.
Angel Bat Dawid is a Black American Traditional Music Composer, Improviser, Clarinetist, Pianist and Vinyl Addict. A sonic archaeologist gathering sounds and music from space, the heavens, the ether and beyond. Restoring peace, love and healing to the world using the most powerful tool imaginable — OMINI-VERSAL SOUND. Music is a language, you see, a universal language.-Sun Ra
Amina Ross with J’Sun Howard, Khadijah Ksyia, Jared Brown and A.J. McClenon
An undisciplined creator. Amina Ross creates boundary-crossing works that embrace embodiment, imaging technologies, intimacy and collectivity in physical and digital spaces. Amina has exhibited work, spoken on panels and taught workshops at venues throughout the United States. Amina’s intention within a media-centering practice is to engage sensuality and sense-perception as modes of reclaiming the body. Amina is currently a 2018-2019 Artist-in-Residence at Arts & Public Life and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture at the University of Chicago. —
As an educator Amina is currently an adjunct lecturer in the Contemporary Practices department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Co-lead artist of Teen Creative Agency at the Museum of Contemporary Art. As a curator and cultural organizer Amina is curator of ECLIPSING, a multi-media festival celebrating darkness. —Khadijah Kysia, is a licensed acupuncturist, writer and scholar with four decades worth of experience navigating the world in a black femme body. Khadijah will share with us her (counter)narrative and strategies for cultivating internal power and moving through the world whilst actively healing herself and others. Khadijah’s narrative will be set alongside the sounds of Jared Brown, the self-proclaimed “high priest of sounds for the girls at night.”
J’Sun Howard is a master of movement, navigating the politics of desire both on and off stage J’Sun’s (counter)narrative will be set alongside the work of A.J. McClenon, a multimedia sound artist who blends archival sound bites and personal narrative that, in AJ’s own word “level hierarchies of truth”.
Aquil Charlton
Multimedia Artist. Social practitioner. Musician.
Aquil (‘AQ’) Charlton uses his imagination to envision a more just world. As an electronic musician, he performs live improvisations and collaborates with other electronic musicians and visual artists to create immersive experiences.
Since founding Mobile Music Box in 2016, AQ teaches intergenerational groups how to make instruments from recycled materials to encourage more environmental consciousness — particularly in communities of color. Additionally, he frequently engages the public in live music-making.
A Bronzeville resident, AQ is a teaching artist in his community and father to a young son with a passion for youth development.
Engagements
Dreaming of a Future Catalog Launch
07/09/2025
Join us as we celebrate the launch of our Dreaming of a Future anniversary project catalog! As a curatorial and exhibition project, Dreaming of a Future calls attention to Threewalls place in this lineage of Chicago-based Black art spaces while doing the work of engaging neighborhood communities and artists with a deep practice of community. Dreaming of a Future also remains a call to collectively participate in resistance. Resistance to accepting the limitations of our current conditions. The conditions that tell us that we must exist within the status quo. A status quo that is framed by and through the lens of Whiteness, White supremacy, and capitalism. Whiteness, White supremacy, and capitalism work in tandem to distract us from dreaming a future. A future where historically excluded communities have their needs met, access to what they want, and conditions that spur creative avenues to care, love, and reparations.
The publication highlights the work of Regina Agu, Andres L. Hernandez, Norman W. Long and Nnenna Okore who offer responses to the call to dream while also offering their own dreams for a future Chicago. Additional essayists and contributors include Emmanuel Iduma, Napoleon Jones-Henderson, Gervais Marsh, Wisdom Baty, Nancy Sánchez Tamayo and Erica Cardwell.
Time: 6:30-8 PM
Black Arts Consortium Abbott Hall 710 N. Lake Shore Drive Chicago, IL 60611
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¡Acompáñenos a celebrar el lanzamiento del catálogo de aniversario de nuestro proyecto "Soñando un Futuro"! Como proyecto curatorial y expositivo, "Soñando un Futuro" destaca el lugar de Threewalls en este linaje de espacios de arte negro con sede en Chicago, a la vez que trabaja para involucrar a las comunidades y artistas del vecindario con una profunda práctica comunitaria. "Soñando un Futuro" también es un llamado a participar colectivamente en la resistencia. Resistencia a aceptar las limitaciones de nuestras condiciones actuales. Las condiciones que nos dicen que debemos existir dentro del statu quo. Un statu quo enmarcado por y a través de la lente de la blancura, la supremacía blanca y el capitalismo. La blancura, la supremacía blanca y el capitalismo trabajan en conjunto para distraernos de soñar un futuro. Un futuro donde las comunidades históricamente excluidas tengan satisfechas sus necesidades, acceso a lo que desean y condiciones que impulsen vías creativas para el cuidado, el amor y la reparación.
La publicación destaca el trabajo de Regina Agu, Andrés L. Hernández, Norman W. Long y Nnenna Okore, quienes ofrecen respuestas al llamado a soñar y, al mismo tiempo, ofrecen sus propios sueños para un futuro en Chicago. Otros ensayistas y colaboradores incluyen a Emmanuel Iduma, Napoleon Jones-Henderson, Gervais Marsh, Wisdom Baty, Nancy Sánchez Tamayo y Erica Cardwell.
Our Programs
In-Session
#IN-SESSIONImplemented in 2017, In-Session is a remix of a traditional lecture or panel and critical interdisciplinary salon that incorporates reading, conversation, and response together. The salons are focused on a selection from a shared reading list which is compiled by Threewalls and based on a theme. The curated reading list is an act of decolonization: citing texts and creators that are not centered in mainstream culture and expanding scholarship that shapes lived experiences of our Threewalls community.
Stay Informed
Threewalls is always finding new ways to share our artist’s unique voices through exhibits, talks, and gatherings. We would like you to be the first to know about these opportunities.