X, Nilay Mistry, and Chicago Public Art Group

The trajectory of X’s practice is an exploration of the human interface between our built environment, technology, history, futurity, our own self-relevance, and how we navigate this relationship to construct our notions of order. As an Indigenous Futurist, he believes art can transcend representation and become something sacred that embodies life. He believes that through a multiplicity of creation and being, our knowledge can be embedded into the landscape providing access for future generations of prosperity. His work directly engages the notions of a post-human world but actualizes to activate the possibility of our own prosperity by painting our self-constructed limitations and deconstructing them. Nilay Mistry is a landscape architect and urban designer based in Chicago with several years of experience in design practice and education in the United States, Africa, and Asia. Raised in an immigrant family, he is fascinated with calibrating parks, streets, and informal settlements as shared spaces for all participants in the city. Nilay attended Chicago Public Schools and earned a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture degree from the University of Illinois before pursuing a Master of Landscape Architecture in Urban Design degree from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Nilay is the Interim Program Director of the Master of Landscape Architecture + Urbanism Program (MLA+U) and Professor-in-Practice in the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture. Chicago Public Art Group (CPAG) is an internationally recognized coalition of professional artists working to produce public artwork with community involvement. For the past half-century, CPAG has produced nearly 1,000 projects, including murals, sculptures, earthworks, playgrounds, and mosaics throughout the Chicagoland area. CPAG is committed to enhancing public space and public engagement in all of Chicago’s neighborhoods through community-based art. This work is rooted in the principle that everyone deserves to see great art, that every community deserves a voice, and that artmaking and public art encourage community investment.