A.J. McClenon
Vega Travel Run Five Hundred and Ninety Eight to Three Hundred and Fifty Six
July 20 - August 15, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 25th
Details and registration coming soon
Vega, the alter-ego character of A.J. McClenon, travels through cityscapes, landscapes, water, and wind to help imprisoned people escape the Universal Location Project (URP), a program designed by the government that forces people into wormholes to find better Earth-like planets parallel to our own.
In order to find a major loophole, Vega must travel to find their first-known, documented, enslaved ancestor, Milledge Outsz, in Trenton, SC, and gather a map route for escape.
A.J. McClenon is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist and educator whose practice moves through text, repurposed materials, moving and still images, performance, and sound.
McClenon's work is driven by familial and collective grief, water, Blackness, geomorphology, and the global future. Drawing from physics, psychology, and visual and sonic languages, McClenon explores how time, ecology, and the decentering of humanness overlap and examines the Earth as a living archive and sonic instrument.
McClenon has shown work and performed at places like MCA Chicago, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center.
McClenon is currently an Assistant Professor, Adjunct at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and does teen programming at Columbus Park in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago.