When you’re a kid, few things are as delicious as keeping a secret. You steal a cookie, blame the dog, and suddenly you’re living a double life. Secrets make you feel interesting—mystical, even. Then adulthood happens, and secrets start to involve texts you shouldn’t have sent to your ex or some of the darkest moments of your life. The thrill is gone; what’s left is stress over what’s a secret and what’s not, and perhaps a vague sense that you’re being haunted by your own browser history.
If you’re feeling the unbearable weight of all things undisclosed, let The Confessions Project lighten the psychic load for you. The pop-up encourages strangers to roll up to a vintage typewriter resting on a wooden podium, anonymously punch out a secret nagging their conscience and deposit it in a steel mailbox enveloped in clanging silver chains. Think of it as a pressure valve for the over-thinkers, over-feelers and mildly guilty.
The project, produced by the Chicago art collective Wrath + Love, has been popping up throughout the city—in Logan Square, Hyde Park, Lincoln Park and Wicker Park—all within the past month. The endeavor was inspired by artist Ernest Smith’s time spent as a first responder in Nevada, according to Block Club. Wrath + Love was Smith’s magazine in college, and he returned to Chicago to revive it as a multidisciplinary art collective paying homage to street art. “For months, we’ve been collecting real confessions from strangers across Chicago—transforming them into a living ritual of film, photography, and storytelling,” Wrath + Love’s Instagram post promoting the series reads.
View this post on Instagram
The Confessions Project arrives at a critical moment in Chicago’s pop-up scene, where authenticity now ranks far above the corporate sheen of PR-engineered experiences. Take Terrible Portraits, a traveling art concept in which Chicago performance artist Jacob Ryan Reno scrawls—indeed—terrible portraits in “five terrible minutes.” Droves of Chicagoans line up for them anyway, eager to experience something, anything that hasn’t been gnarled by the death grip of AI. And Rise Pilates Club took Oak Street Beach by storm this summer—starting with a dozen early risers and no PA, then growing into a full-blown spandex-clad spectacle drawing thousands.
As the connotation of secrets takes on a new existential weight in Chicago—sheltering neighbors from ICE raids, planning protests under the cover of night, rightfully growing existential anxiety—this is an opportunity for Chicagoans to unload some of the psychic load they’re forced to carry. In a city saturated with pop-ups promising transformation by way of scented candles or garish aura portraits, The Confessions Project offers something rare: a fleeting sort of honesty. The roving art project doesn’t claim to fix anyone or anything; instead, it offers an opportunity for everyone to drop the performance and speak plainly, without fear. And that in itself is pretty extraordinary.
The Confessions Project will be popping up on the third floor of the Flatiron Building (1579 N Milwaukee Ave) on Friday, November 7, at 7pm. The event is free and open to the public.