FALL OF FREEDOM: an online exhibition featuring Antonius-Tín Bui, Cheryl Pope, and Joel Ross

  • Fall of Freedom is an urgent call to the arts community to unite in defiance of authoritarian forces sweeping the...

    Fall of Freedom is an urgent call to the arts community to unite in defiance of authoritarian forces sweeping the nation. Our Democracy is under attack. Threats to free expression are rising. Dissent is being criminalized. Institutions and media have been recast as mouthpieces of propaganda. From November 21–22, 2025, galleries, museums, libraries, comedy clubs, theaters, and concert halls across the country will host exhibitions, performances, and public events that channel the urgency of this moment and activating a nationwide wave of creative resistance. Fall of Freedom is an open invitation to artists, creators, and communities to take part—and to celebrate the experiences, cultures, and identities that shape the fabric of our nation.

     

    Art matters. Artists are a threat to American fascism.

     

    Presented in the spirit of the national Fall of Freedom initiative, moniquemeloche brings together an intergenerational group of artists whose practices confront power, identity, and the urgent stakes of political expression. This online exhibition highlights 3 artists, Antonius-Tín Bui, Cheryl Pope, and Joel Ross, whose works use language, material, and gesture to challenge the narratives that shape civic life. The online exhibition celebrates art as a form of resistance—probing social inequities, amplifying marginalized voices, and insisting on the right to speak, dissent, and imagine otherwise.

     

    A portion of all proceeds from this exhibition will be donated to the ACLU in support of civil liberties and freedom of expression.

  • Antonius-Tín Bui

    Not Sorry for the Trouble
    Antonius‑Tin Bui’s Not Sorry for the Trouble is a powerful body of work in hand- and laser-cut paper that confronts stereotypes...

    Antonius‑Tin Bui’s Not Sorry for the Trouble is a powerful body of work in hand- and laser-cut paper that confronts stereotypes of Asian Americans as silent, submissive, or apolitical. Drawing on traditional paper‑cutting techniques, Bui weaves together delicately crafted forms and bold text statements — phrases like “Year of the Queer,” “Abolish I.C.E.,” and “Yellow Peril Supports Black Power” — to reclaim voice and visibility. Through the interplay of light and shadow, these cut-paper works carry a three-dimensional depth that evokes both fragility and force. More than aesthetic gestures, they are rooted in Bui’s experience as a queer, non-binary, Vietnamese-American, grappling with intergenerational trauma and the histories of their community. In crafting these statements, Bui challenges dominant narratives and reclaims space for queer AAPI identity — demanding recognition, respect, and self-determination.

    • Antonius-Tín Bui Year of the Queer, 2019 hand and laser cut color paper 19 1/2 x 13 3/4 in 49.5 x 34.9 cm
      Antonius-Tín Bui
      Year of the Queer, 2019
      hand and laser cut color paper
      19 1/2 x 13 3/4 in
      49.5 x 34.9 cm
      $ 3,000.00
      Inquire
    • Antonius-Tín Bui Dear White People, Stop Colonizing Our Culture, 2019 hand and laser cut color paper 23 1/4 x 15 1/2 in 59.1 x 39.4 cm
      Antonius-Tín Bui
      Dear White People, Stop Colonizing Our Culture, 2019
      hand and laser cut color paper
      23 1/4 x 15 1/2 in
      59.1 x 39.4 cm
      $ 3,000.00
      Inquire
    • Antonius-Tín Bui Act Up, Flight Back, Fight AIDS!, 2019 hand and laser cut color paper 17 x 14 in 43.2 x 35.6 cm
      Antonius-Tín Bui
      Act Up, Flight Back, Fight AIDS!, 2019
      hand and laser cut color paper
      17 x 14 in
      43.2 x 35.6 cm
      $ 3,000.00
      Inquire
  • Antonius-Tín Bui (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work traverses the realms of hand-cut paper, community engagement, performance, and soft...

    Antonius-Tín Bui (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work traverses the realms of hand-cut paper, community engagement, performance, and soft sculpture to visualize hybrid identities or histories that confront the unsettling present. Bui’s hybridized identity as a queer, genderfluid, and Vietnamese American informs the way they employ beauty as a refuge for fellow marginalized communities. Their intensive paper-cutting process is exceptionally meditative; each sheet of paper represents an archive of memories and oral histories, mirroring the intergenerational trauma that so many refugee communities are faced with. Through their rigorous and reductive process, they deconstruct the white canvas, metaphorically carving out space for the narratives that are so often omitted from recognized histories.   

      

    Bui (b.1992, Bronx, NY) received their BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD (2016). Bui has had recent solo exhibitions at Various Small Fires, Dallas, TX (2024); moniquemeloche, Chicago, IL (2023); Hudson D. Walker Gallery, Provincetown, MA (2020); Laband Art Gallery, LMU, Los Angeles, CA (2019); Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TX (2018). Recent groupexhibitions include Portland State University, OR (2024); The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY (2024); the Weatherspoon Museum of Art, Greensboro, NC (2023); Artspace, New Haven, CT (2022); Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, Sacramento, CA (2022); the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX (2022); Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York, NY (2022); USC Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, CA (2021); Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston, TX (2020); Blaffer Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX (2019); and National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C. (2019).   

      

    Public collections include the Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI; New York Historical Society, New York, NY; BMO Harris Bank Corporate Art Collection, Chicago, IL; Bank of America Art Program, Newark, DE; JP Morgan Chase Art Collection, New York, NY; Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation, Portland, OR; Eaton Workshop, Washington D.C.; Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Little Rock, AR; Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington D.C.; and the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design, Lancaster, PA. They are a recipient of The Outwin Boochever Prize (2021) and MICA Alumni Grant (2018). Bui is a fellow of the 2022 Queer|Art|Mentorship program, and has received additional fellowships from MASS MoCA (forthcoming); Golden Foundation, New Berlin, NY (2024); James Castle House, Boise, ID (2022); Kimmel Nelson Center for the Arts, Nebraska City, NE (2022); Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA (2019); Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY (2024, 2019); The Growlery, San Francisco, CA (2019); and Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston, TX (2018). Bui lives and works in Chicago, IL. 

  • Cheryl Pope

    Championship Varsity Banners
    Cheryl Pope’s varsity-banner series transforms personal and communal narratives into public, celebratory symbols. In A Silent I (2010), created with...
    Cheryl Pope’s varsity-banner series transforms personal and communal narratives into public, celebratory symbols. In A Silent I (2010), created with...
    Cheryl Pope’s varsity-banner series transforms personal and communal narratives into public, celebratory symbols. In A Silent I (2010), created with...
    Cheryl Pope’s varsity-banner series transforms personal and communal narratives into public, celebratory symbols. In A Silent I (2010), created with Chicago youth from Lindblom Math & Science Academy in Chicago, students’ truths and contradictions were embroidered onto championship-style banners, elevating intimate reflections to the grandeur of athletic achievement. A Community Is Built on Empathy (2015-16), developed during a residency at Kenyon College, gathered student voices on identity and connection, using the same bold, varsity aesthetic to visualize how empathy forms the foundation of community. Across both projects, Pope’s work merges socially engaged practice, text, and familiar forms to highlight vulnerability, dialogue, and the power of making private truths visible.
  • Cheryl Pope is an interdisciplinary visual artist who questions and responds to issues of identity as it relates to the...

    Cheryl Pope is an interdisciplinary visual artist who questions and responds to issues of identity as it relates to the individual and the community, specifically regarding race, gender, class, history, power, and place. Her practice emerges from the act and politics of listening, and recently introduces a novel material to explore the artist’s memories. Referencing the familiar repertoire of the French Post-Impressionist, Intimist, and Imagist paintings, Pope recreates deeply personal recollections that cinematically compose the silent complexities of beautiful and tragic oscillations between love and loss in our everyday lives. Images of couples are drawn from memory, referencing the artist’s own relationships and moments of disconnect, anxiety, and desire, while beach scenes depicting a mother and child accentuate a tender stillness of caregiving. In these scenes, the figures exist in a nest of choreography–a rotating stage of mystery, tragedy, and poetry of day-to-day living with feelings of presence and absence woven throughout.   

      

    Pope (b.1980, Chicago, IL) received her MA in Design (2010) and BFA (2003) from the School of the Art Institute, Chicago, IL, where she is an Adjunct Professor.  Pope has had recent solo exhibitions at moniquemeloche, Chicago, IL (2022, 2019); The Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, KS (2022); Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, IL (2019); Galleria Bianconi, Milan, Italy (2019); Andres Guerrero Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2018); and Fort Gansevoort, New York, NY (2017). Notable group presentations include Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, East Lansing, MI (2023); The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY (2023 2021); Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY (2023); Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI (2022); Weinberg/Newton Gallery, Chicago, IL (2022); Skin in the Game curated by Zoe Lukov, Chicago, IL (2022); Fountainhead, Miami, FL (2021); Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA (2021); Virginia MOCA, Virgina Beach, VA (2021); and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL (2020). Pope’s work is currently included in the group exhibition Get in the Game: Sport and Contemporary Culture which debuted at SFMoMA and travels to Crystal Bridges Museum and PAMM.

      

    Pope’s work is in the collections of Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, FL; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; UBS Art Collection, New York, NY; Joan Flasche Artists Book Collection, Chicago, IL; Seattle Art Museum, WA; Honolulu Museum of Art, HI; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; Poetry Foundation, Chicago, IL; DePaul University Art Museum, Chicago, IL; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; United States Embassy, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; The Jackson West Memorial Hospital, Miami, FL; and The Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, KS. She has been the recipient of several awards and fellowships, including the Public Artist Award, Franklin Works, Minneapolis, MN (2017); Selected Artist, Year of Public Art, Chicago Cultural Center, IL (2017); Mellon Fellowship, Kenyon College, Gambier, OH (2016); and 3Arts Award, Chicago, IL (2015). Pope lives and works in Chicago, IL and Miami, FL. 

  • Joel Ross

    Replicas of Flags I've Burned
    Joel Ross’s work interrogates American identity, patriotism, and the power of language. In Replicas of Flags I’ve Burned, Ross reconstructs...
    Joel Ross’s work interrogates American identity, patriotism, and the power of language. In Replicas of Flags I’ve Burned, Ross reconstructs...
    Joel Ross’s work interrogates American identity, patriotism, and the power of language. In Replicas of Flags I’ve Burned, Ross reconstructs national symbols, re-making American flags alongside text-based drawings drawn from slogans and cultural commentary, exposing contradictions and moral hypocrisy in national narratives. His text-based works on paper, such as Self Evident (Blue), employ vinyl paint and graphite to render language as both material and message, exploring the tension between ideals and lived realities. Across these works, Ross combines political critique with poetic storytelling, creating pieces that are simultaneously civic, personal, and deeply reflective.
  • Joel Ross’s practice centers on two intertwined threads: the mythic role of the roadside in American culture and the slipperiness...

    Joel Ross’s practice centers on two intertwined threads: the mythic role of the roadside in American culture and the slipperiness of language. Through signs, placards, and other situational interventions—often placed discreetly in public space—he creates physical manifestations of lived experience. His works operate as fragmented, poetic accounts that can be unflattering, humorous, or unexpectedly heartbreaking. Ross investigates how form and context shape interpretation, and how the stories people tell reinforce or destabilize their beliefs. For him, storytelling is a means of survival and truth-making: we endure the day, and then attempt to understand it by narrating it.

     

    Joel Ross (b.1966, Port Arthur, Texas) is an American artist working across photography, installation, and site-based interventions. He holds an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art (1992) and a BFA from Tufts University (1990). Before pursuing art, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps and comes from a family grounded in public service—his father was a police sergeant and his grandfather a Baptist preacher. Ross is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Art & Design at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His work has been exhibited widely, including solo and group exhibitions that highlight his ongoing interest in perception, memory, and the architecture of public space.