Resurrecting the Chicago Renaissance - Chicago Reader

There are moments when time and place collapse. The past and present merge. Something new feels strangely familiar.

The debut of the Floating Museum’s latest project, for Mecca, conjures the past and facilitates the revelations that come from remembering. The monumental inflatable sculpture has gravitas at 41 feet long and 30 feet tall, despite being made mostly of air.

Standing outside of the Illinois Institute of Technology’s (IIT) architecture building on a hot day in August, the unexpected rhythms of trumpet, drums, and bass, float up from the ground floor, just like they might have 80 or 90 years ago.

In the early 20th century, what is now IIT’s Crown Hall was an apartment complex that shook with the music and energy of the Chicago Black Renaissance. Black families in Bronzeville called the Mecca Flats home until its demolition in 1952 to expand the IIT campus, leaving behind only photographs, remains of domestic life, and the anecdotes that passed from generation to generation.

The exhibition’s inaugural event featured a new generation of Black creators, including the dynamic Corey Wilkes’s quartet and vocalist Melody Angel, who performed jubilantly, summoning and channeling the artistic genius of the past.

For Mecca is an amalgam of many sites of Black culture from the early 20th century, like the Savoy Ballroom and Pilgrim Baptist Church. On the inflatable archway, the word “REGAL” appears in the same bold lettering as the famed Regal Theater—a reminder for visitors to think about the historic Bronzeville residents as regal and dignified. The interior ceiling mimics the two glass atria that flooded the Mecca Flats’ courtyard with light and made the building’s architecture so unique.

An interior view of the inflatable sculpture, featuring images filling the walls with the interior of Mecca Flats inner atrium. Hanging in the center are translucent squares of fabric with image son them. And a projection on the top featured white text on a back background. Visitors can be seen outside the entryway and a few are inside the sculpture. — *For Mecca* uses an entirely black, white, and gray color palette so the viewer might engage with each image like an old silent film.
Credit: Cory Dewald. Courtesy: Floating Museum

While an archaeological discovery revealed the building’s colorful floor tiles, no color photographs of the apartment complex exist. For Mecca embraces this using an entirely black, white, and gray color palette so the viewer might engage with each image like an old silent film, allowing their imaginations to bring the figures and spaces to life.

The polyester structure features exterior and interior photographs with varying degrees of pixelation. The dye sublimation printing creates both sharp geometric shapes and blurred markings as though figures are in the process of being brought back into focus. On the wall, an image of a person standing on the edge of the balcony is almost completely obscured: an apparition. Silk organza sheets with photographs of Mecca Flats residents sway from the ceiling in the hot summer wind.

For Mecca challenges the permanence of traditional monuments. The site-responsive artistic approach allows it to be in constant dialogue with the place it’s erected and the people that gather within and around it. The installation serves as a tangible manifestation of the collective remembering happening beyond the structure. Archival research led by archivist Skyla Hearn heavily influenced the exhibition’s design, and a short film, after Mecca, was developed in response to Gwendolyn Brooks’s In the Mecca, a poetry collection inspired by her time working in and visiting the Mecca Flats.

By creating containers for conversation about the impacts of urban renewal and displacement, attendees are invited to explore and build upon the living archive. The word “mecca” evokes a deeper meaning of a powerful—even spiritual—gathering place. It alludes to the Black southerners who migrated to Bronzeville during the Great Migration, the tenants and guests of Mecca Flats who convened in the buildings’ hallways and courtyards, and the ephemeral, present communing of people intent on remembering.

On the morning of the inaugural exhibition, an IIT employee heard the music rehearsal and began to share his story: his parents had lived in the Mecca Flats decades ago. The band invited him to join them at the start of the event, and he did—joyously blowing a whistle alongside the musicians.

Together creating, if only for a moment, a kind of mecca.

for Mecca
For Mecca will have temporary installations at various Chicago Park District sites from August 2025 through Summer 2026. Follow the Floating Museum at instagram.com/thefloatingmuseum for updates on the next exhibition.