In Fabricated Evidence— the third and last exhibition of the series The Undeniably There, curated by faculty Barbara Materia and Spencer McNeil— participants present ideas as “real” facts: evidence manufactured through the acts of translation and interpretation. Conjectures become objects, drawings, photographs, physical models, images, postcards, posters, videos, and other artifacts—each one performing reality.
Like a souvenir, the artifact operates as a material trace or physical memory of a past or ongoing speculation, altered and abstracted through shifts in scale, medium, and matter. It may document less what the original idea was than project what it could still become: a future memory.
Artifacts are exhibited as the final state of an existing idea, the residue of an abandoned one, or as the proof of a project still imagined—real, unreal, speculative, or simply persuasive.
Participants:
Alaina Griffin, Andrew Jennings, Aura Venckunaite, Andrew Zago, Clare Lyster, Daniel Mellis, Francesco Marullo, Jayne Kelley, Judith De Jong & Stuart Shanks, Kelly Bair, Misiūna / McCarthy, Penelope Dean, Spencer McNeil, Studio Becker Xu, Thomas Kelley & Carrie Norman, Vincent Calabro & Akima Brackeen.
The Undeniably There, a year-long, three-part exhibition series, is organized within and for the UIC School of Architecture and is envisioned as a platform for exchanging ideas while serving as an informal pedagogical tool—a platform for students to explore theoretical questions about architecture and participate in school-wide discussions on various disciplinary themes.
Rather than presenting finished objects, the three interconnected exhibitions—one held in fall 2025 and two in spring 2026—invite the school’s faculty and staff to inhabit the interval between concept and construction, where conjecture and rigor, delirium and method, work side by side until speculation acquires the density of fact. The series aims to disrupt conventional narratives of architectural production and reveal the many lives an idea can take on its way to becoming form. Additionally, it seeks to explore architecture as a language—an evolving system of signs, symbols, and associations through which ideas are generated, debated, and ultimately made tangible.
Friday, April 3, 5:30 pm
3550 Octagon A+DS
845 W Harrison Street
Chicago, Illinois