Zachary Cahill
Born: 1973
Connection to Illinois: Cahill is based in Chicago. Biography: Zachary Cahill is an interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago. His work examines the nature of propaganda, politics, nation-building, religion, and society. Cahill’s practice focuses primarily on a fictional nation, the USSA, as a metaphorical tool for investigating real political narratives. Through boldly colorful, fantastical, and nearly-abstract projects in a variety of media, the artist plays with the objects, places, and rituals that make up a society. Since 2010, the USSA has incorporated installations, paintings, sculptures, séance performances, and artistic writings, which have focused on several zones of idealogical indoctrination including: an orphanage, a gift shop, a wellness center, the state farm, a state church/assembly, and a postal service. His work has been exhibited in numerous venues in the United States and Europe, including the Berlin Biennale; Regina Rex, New York; Threewalls and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, among others. His writings have appeared in Afterall, Artforum, Critical Inquiry, Frieze, Journal of Visual Culture, Mousse and other arts publications.
Awards:
- Unicorn Death Moon: Paris Guidebook Voted #2 in The Chicago Reader 2023 Holiday Gift Guide for gifts by Chicago artists and creatives. 2024 Elgin Award nominee for an SFF poetry chapbook.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachary-cahill-72b07850/
Web: https://zacharycahill.com/home.html
WorldCat: http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=Zachary++Cahill
Selected Titles
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The The Black Flame of Paradise (A Novel) ISBN: 8867493396 OCLC: 1055464143 Mousse Publishing 2019 The Black Flame of Paradise is the first novel by Chicago-based artist Zachary Cahill (born 1973). The book is a proposition for a new model of religious life grounded in artistic and personal relations to the divine. |
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Unicorn Death Moon: Paris Guidebook ISBN: B0DGTQ8299 OCLC: Red Ogre Review 2024 Charles Baudelaire is said to have died a childless man – but did he really? His lunar bloodline certainly appears eerily alive, close to two centuries on, in the singular spells cast by Zachary Cahill – the Francophile bard of unicorn desolation. Dieter Roelstraete, Curator & Writer - - - - - Zachary Cahill’s Unicorn Death Moon: Paris Guidebook provides a path for the perplexed through the city of blinding light. Throughout, Cahill’s rich work marshals the imaginative to ground his reader in what is dark, fantastic, surreal, and magical. Jacob Henry Leveton, Sites / Sights of Ecology - - - - - Zachary Cahill's Unicorn Death Moon: Paris Guidebook will get you lost, so pleasantly, dreamily lost that along the way as you're enjoying fantastic drawings such as The Pageantry of the Night Sky and The Queen Gathers Her Emissaries, you might not notice at first that you're contemplating not only the mythical, but Death. This guidebook offers gentle whimsy, factual statements that may be fiction ("There are at least five secret societies in Paris that worship unicorns"), beautiful poetry, despair, Baudelaire's spleen, and happiness. And Paris as a sweeping background for the two close friends accompanying you through this guide and staying with you afterward: Unicorn and Death. Maud Lavin, Silences, Ohio & Mermaids and Lazy Activists: A Lake Michigan Tale |