Editor’s note: Coco Picard’s comic for this issue examines artists Jennie C. Jones and Norman Teague on the occasion of their respective exhibitions this summer at Patron Gallery and Converso Gallery. Edited text from the comic is transcribed here to ease readability. Two summer exhibitions repurposed and remixed materials to make designed objects, furniture, paintings, […]
Category: Art Feature
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Threads of connection for the cause
Quilting has long been used as a tool of creative resistance. During the Civil War, abolitionists sold quilts to fundraise for their cause. Starting in 1965, the Alabama-based Freedom Quilting Bee Cooperative helped raise money for Black community members who lost income due to their involvement in the fight for civil rights. Today, artists like […]
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28 years of freedom on the wall
What do Cesar Chavez, Ayn Rand, and Harold Washington have in common? They are among the 69 people featured in Adam Brooks’s public art project Freedom Wall, which has been installed on the building at 325 W. Huron since 1994. The text-based installation, which is viewable from the Brown Line’s Chicago stop, has undoubtedly been […]
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Prince of the Mag Mile
“Prince: the Immersive Experience” begins with purple light through stained glass. Guests in groups of ten to 15 are led through double doors to a replica of the “When Doves Cry” music video set: portraits hung on purple walls, bouquets scattered on the floor, and a white claw-foot tub to pose behind. The only thing […]
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An invitation to listen to survivors
“It’s an invitation,” says Aaron Hughes, cocurator of “Remaking the Exceptional: Tea, Torture, and Reparations,” an exhibition currently on display at the DePaul Art Museum. Marking the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, the exhibit examines the similarities between survivors of torture at the U.S. military prison with survivors of […]
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Reshaping the landscape on the southeast side
A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held on May 21 at 89th and Commercial on the southeast side. It celebrated the opening of Commercial Ave Alfresco, a joint initiative organized by the group South Chicago Parents & Friends along with the city’s Special Service Area 5 commission. Both entities worked together with local artists and businesses, and […]
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Loving, repeating, collaborating, and intimacy
In a new exhibition, longtime collaborators Dutes Miller and Stan Shellabarger created an immersive multimedia installation that explores intimacy, distance, and the fluctuations between. The above comic captures their reflections on making together and materials in play. Text from the comic is transcribed here to ease readability. Our collaboration developed organically. We were both ceramic […]
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Deeper research and a politics of care
In the summer of 2020, the people of Chicago rose up in support of Black life, with thousands taking part in dozens of actions across the city. That season of uprisings had curator and cultural producer Ciera Alyse McKissick thinking about Black people moving through space: about how Black migration and travel has been a […]
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The big world of Brandon Breaux
Yes, Chance the Rapper did give a big push to artist Brandon Breaux’s career when Breaux designed the covers for three of the singer’s mixtapes: 10 Day, Acid Rap, and Coloring Book. Breaux also recently landed two high-profile commissions—the February 2022 Ebony cover honoring editor André Leon Talley, and the cover of Carry On: Reflections […]
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What’s fair about art fairs?
What’s fair about art fairs? That’s the question at the heart of Barely Fair, a show organized by Garfield Park gallery Julius Caesar that’s designed to run in tandem with the international art fair EXPO Chicago. Founded in 2019, this is the second iteration of the Barely Fair, which quietly marks EXPO’s return to in-person […]
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Two stories of diasporic movement
Azadeh Gholizadeh & Elnaz Javani on their two-person exhibition “Phonetic Fragments” at Roots & Culture Gallery: March 11th – April 9th, 2022
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‘We can imagine our way into something else’
When Anthony Holmes goes to the doctor today, he’s asked: How many heart attacks have you had? That’s because, Holmes says, the torture he faced in 1973 at the hands of then-Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge included shocking him with an electric shock box and suffocating him with plastic bags. Burge and the mostly white […]
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Subverting the dominant paradigm, one stitch at a time
The Bayeux Tapestry dates back to the 11th century, so you can’t really say that high art appreciation of fiber work is new. There’s a big difference, though, between validating a giant record of European military conquest and the recent explosion of curatorial interest in quilting, knitting, embroidery, and clothing. Mrinalini Mukherjee’s monumental draped fabric […]
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Here, now, and everything in between
Planted in the woods like an extraterrestrial monolith, both completely alien and perfectly at home in its environment, lies Image Continuous, a mirrored, eight-foot-tall cube with a sky-reflective circle in the middle. On view at the Edith Farnsworth House in Plano and part of David Wallace Haskins’s “Landscape + Light” exhibition, Image Continuous was conceived […]
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Temp check
Interviewees: Alma Weiser, director of Heaven Gallery; Janet Dees, Steven and Lisa Munster Tananbaum curator of modern and contemporary art at the Block Museum of Art; Asha Iman Veal, associate curator at the Museum of Contemporary Photography; Teresa Silva, executive and artistic director of the Chicago Artists Coalition; Edra Soto, artist and codirector of the […]