Arts + Public Life Announces the Arts Lawn Public Art Project
Featuring new commissioned work by Chicago based artist Yvette Mayorga
Photo by Marzena Abrahamik
Photo by Marzena Abrahamik
APL will partner with the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture at the University of Chicago to support meaningful engagement with University of Chicago students and community members in Washington Park through public programming, workshops, and dialogues.
Mayorga’s richly detailed visual language, which incorporates elements of confectionery design, architectural ornament, and personal iconography, resonates with the aesthetic and cultural vitality of the South Side. This work marks an important step in APL’s commitment to embedding ambitious, artist-driven projects within the built environment of the Arts Block, and to fostering collaborations that bridge artistic practice with civic life.
About the Artist
About The Arts Lawn
Arts Lawn by Visual Manifesto
Arts + Public Life is pleased to announce the launch of the Arts Lawn Public Art Project, a new initiative dedicated to commissioning site-responsive works by contemporary artists. In 2025, we are thrilled to inaugurate this program with a major commission by Chicago-based artist Yvette Mayorga. This forthcoming installation, sited on the Arts Lawn—part of APL’s Arts Block in Washington Park—will contribute to the evolving visual and cultural landscape of Chicago’s South Side.
Mayorga will work closely with APL to develop “Queen of the City,” the first sculpture in her “City Lovers in Paradise” series. This new work draws from her interest in labor, adornment, and familial narrative, reimagining personal and collective memory through a vibrant, large-scale public form. Through her practice, Mayorga explores questions of identity, migration, and cultural production, creating spaces that invite reflection, celebration, and gathering.
Yvette Mayorga is a Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist known for her confectionary aesthetics and work exploring Latinx histories, border politics, and nostalgia. Influenced both by the opulence of the Rococo-styled churches of her youth and her immigrant parents’ labor as meatpackers and bakers, Mayorga’s City Lovers in Paradise series incorporates highly decorative elements, intricate details, and dramatic contrasts. Her approach reimagines the grandeur of European ornamentation through a Latinx lens, using pastel hues and thick, piped textures to challenge ideas of power, luxury, and belonging, and to reflect on the economic disparities of that era and their parallels in contemporary American society.
The Arts Lawn, the latest phase of the Arts Block—a vibrant collection of cultural and commercial spaces on Garfield Boulevard within Chicago's Washington Park, owned by the University of Chicago and operated by Arts + Public Life (APL)—builds upon a robust history of creative experimentation and cultural expression that drew audiences from across the city. Since its grand opening in 2023, the Arts Lawn has become an extraordinary hub for cultural activities, hosting live music, film screenings, youth arts activities, and APL’s signature programs like First Monday Jazz, Rearview Mirror Sessions, Vends + Vibes arts marketplace, and Community Yoga, as well as new events such as What She Said film screening and Next Stop Chicago: Homecoming celebration, a multiday gathering, fostering connection and enjoyment.
Arts Lawn Grand Opening by Anjali Pinto
In keeping with the Arts Lawn’s history and the vibrancy of the ongoing programs, Mayorga’s series celebrates popular forms with a sense of playfulness and joy while challenging traditional art hierarchies. By reimagining labor and place-making in a neighborhood that has survived decades of disinvestment, Mayorga’s work affirms visibility, belonging, and the aspirations of a community shaping its own empowered future.
In the Making: A Public Art Journey Through Washington Park
Preview Mayorga’s Work + Learn More about the Project
Friday, September 19
6:00PM-8:00PM
The Arts Lawn | 337 East Garfield
Take a trolley tour through the imagined Washington Park Public Art Corridor, exploring the intersections of public art, memory, and justice. Starting at the Arts Block, the journey includes stops at Amanda Williams’ Other Washingtons, the future site of Breath, Form & Freedom by the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials Foundation, and a preview of Yvette Mayorga’s City Lovers in Paradise.
The evening concludes on the Arts Lawn with a small reception, hands-on artmaking, storytelling, and an artist conversation with Candice Washington (Other Washingtons), John Gay and Survivors (Breath, Form & Freedom), and Yvette Mayorga (City Lovers in Paradise) moderated by Sheridan Tucker Anderson.