Charles Preston

I am a Chicago Black radical guerilla fugitive artist and a digital interventionist.#ChurchOnThe9 is a fugitive art practice and reimagination of Black art and community pre and post-institution. During the summer, every other Sunday on the block of Chicago's 79th and Cottage Grove, I host a community convening of the arts, politics, and fellowship. It is deemed "church" because it's reflective of the spiritual performance and practice of my enslaved African ancestors. They were denied the freedoms granted to US citizens, as simultaneously considered property and illegal persons. Yet, as fugitives, #ChurchOnThe9 is in communion with community, a recuperation of Afro-spiritual identity, and a continuation of a dying soapbox organizing tradition reminiscent of 1950's Harlem. My intention as a guerilla artist is to investigate the explicit entanglement of politics, entertainment, and art.