ARTIST STATEMENT
As a burlesque performer, in Show & Tell, I interview and photograph my peers on stages and in show venues, in their homes, and outside in public spaces, creating my own continuous visual archive of contemporary Chicago burlesque. Although still a fringe artform wherever it is found, burlesque has had a home in the city for over 150 years. Chicago has a long history of prominent performers, including Syrian-born Fahreda Mazar Spyropoulos, aka “Little Egypt,” who performed the “hoochie-coochie” — better known today as the “belly dance” — at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Last year, the Burlesque Hall of Fame crowned Chicago’s own Honey Bee Rose “Mx. Exotic World 2024,” the highest honor in international burlesque. In the early 1900s, Chicago’s many burlesque theaters were located around the periphery of the central business district, with a significant cluster lined along S. State St. between Van Buren and Polk. As performances became more titillating, local authorities increasingly challenged their right to exist. Social reformers and child welfare advocates condemned the strip shows as bad moral influences and police periodically raided theaters, arresting the performers and charging them with unlawful and immoral conduct. In their own words, performers in Show & Tell share their nuanced perspectives and demonstrate both the pleasure and complication inherent in performing burlesque, an artform that, since its inception, has relentlessly challenged the status quo. Through reveals, and through bodies unafraid of taking up space for their own sake, local burlesque artists embrace masquerade and sexual freedom.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Erica McKeehen (b. 1987, Marion, OH) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Chicago, IL. She currently works in exhibitions and arts administration at Evanston Art Center. McKeehen creates self-portraits and images, often paired with interviews and writing, of her friends and peers who are burlesque performers and sex workers. In building long-term collaborative narratives, she explores identity, storytelling, and performance, presenting nuanced views of experience, sexuality, and autonomy. Alongside her visual practice, she is a performer and the cocreator of Chicago’s Lust for Life, a rock n’ roll burlesque show, with her collaborator Kitty Tornado. Growing up in rural Ohio, McKeehen spent her childhood consumed by her dad’s vast rock n’ roll media collection. Her lifelong fascinations with public persona and depictions of glamorous icons come from the music videos, album covers, and photo spreads in Rolling Stone that she studiously viewed. McKeehen received her BS from Ohio University, and her MA and MFA, both from Columbia College Chicago where her photographic work was recognized by the Stuart Abelson Graduate Research Fellowship, Albert P. Weisman Award, John Mulvany and Bob Thall Scholarship in Photography, and Fogelson Foundation Photography Scholarship, among others.
© Erica McKeehen