The Kitchen Sink

Terrain Biennial 2025

September 20 – November 30, 2025

DIY

From crafting to painting, mending to stitching, construction to recycling, artists are resourceful, performing science and alchemy with time and material. DIY is a core value of the Chicagoland art community, with apartment galleries, DIY shows, makerspaces, and lending libraries as key resource hubs for artists. Terrain Exhibitions brings contemporary art where it is most needed and least expected: yards, front steps, windowsills, porches, and rooftops in neighborhoods worldwide

This is an act of radical decentralization, taking art from privileged urban centers and bringing it into everyday spaces. By forging partnerships between artists and citizens, we create greater access for new and underserved audiences for contemporary art, empowering neighbors to make private spaces public in a spirit of generosity and collaboration.

Artists presenting work at Lillstreet:

Pinar Aral / Bishal Manandhar

Pinar Aral (b.1970, Istanbul, Türkiye) has a BA from the Institute of Industrial Design in Florence, Italy. Since her introduction to clay in 2015, her creative practice has become a therapeutic one, finding clay indispensable for her emotional and mental well-being. Her sculptures are interpretations of feelings, experiences, and memories with an attempt to find meaning and beauty. Pinar’s work has been shown at SOFA, the Merchandise Mart, and reputable galleries in Chicago. “State of Affairs” is a reaction to the unjust treatment imposed by those in power. This sculpture does not strive for beauty; instead, it confronts the viewer with the raw and unsettling truth about the current state of affairs.

Bishal Manandhar is a Chicago-based visual artist from Nepal, who is getting his MFA focusing on FMS (Fiber & Material Studies) from SAIC. Bishal moved to the USA in 2011. Anything overlooked in people’s lives and treated as “waste” becomes the starting point of Bishal’s art practice. He sees the value, potential, and richness in the unseen and discarded objects around us. Bishal sees “trash” as something full of beauty and life. He doesn’t see them as lifeless objects but as objects with a voice and a new hidden use; the ability to be something that brings us aesthetic pleasure. 

Recently, Bishal has been using discarded sandpapers, saw blades, and wood to create his art. In the past, Bishal had used burlap rice bags from the Nepali restaurant where he worked. He also uses tea and coffee packaging bags, plastics, Coffee filters, milk cartons from his time working at Dunkin Donuts, tea bags, soda cans, milk jars, and other waste materials from his household. He has worked excessively with burlap rice bags in the last few years and transformed them into a big tapestry. The process is to undo the rice bag and collect all the different components, such as the zipper, the bag handle, jute threads, plastic bags, and rice grains.

For Terrain, Bishal will install the composition of the burlap rice bag tapestry on an outdoor wall of the Lillstreet building.