The Festival of Holes is a two-day event and exhibition platform for the presentation of hybrid work that lacks visibility or support in the commercial art world. Instead of favoring legibility, scalability, or market potential, the festival celebrates work that is radical, experimental, and defies easy categorization. To be held at SITE/less in Chicago, a guerilla storefront located beneath elevated tracks of the city’s rail line.
The Festival of Holes
Michael Workman, Mirrorglass: Land Acts (Traces), 2023. Performance, construction flag installation, text, and sound.
Zephyr / SITE/less (Michelle Kranicke and Molly Strom), 2023. Performance and installation view at SITE/less, Chicago.
Amanda Saucedo, Mirrorglass: Land Acts (Traces), 2023. Performed at the first Festival of Holes at the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society at the University of Chicago.
National Book Award-winning poet Daniel Borzutzky reading at Festival of Holes, 2025.
Michael Workman, Hurm Watches, 2022. Sakura and Black Magic inks on archival journal paper.
“Our grantees range from small arts organizations with one staff member to major museums, yet they all provide essential resources for artists as well as innovative platforms for critical cultural dialogue. Creative risk-taking is at the heart of this country’s most meaningful social, political, and cultural developments, therefore we are proud to stand behind artist-centered organizations that support experimental practice.”
Joel Wachs, President