A sigil is a symbol believed to have supernatural powers. In Simiya, an Islamic branch of occult practice, letters and numbers are arranged into sigils in order to conjure up metaphysical powers, like the ability to fly or to disappear. Artist Maryam Taghavi has long been drawn to these sigils, and other magic-imbued symbols, ornamented […]
Category: Art Feature
Posted inArts & Culture
Untangling identity
When Sarah Whyte was a child, her parents said it didn’t matter that she was Asian and they were white. What mattered, they said, was that she was their daughter. That didn’t stop adults from reminding her she was adopted, telling her to be grateful she’d been “saved” from the orphanage in China. Nor did […]
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An ode to Black women
At first glance, Gio Swaby’s artwork can be deceptively simple. Her portraits are marked by thin, black lines that sketch the images of beautiful, confident Black women. But looking closer, you are drawn into a complex composition of stitched, knotted, and dangling threads and colorful appliqued fabric on a raw canvas background. Simplicity and complexity […]
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Mie Kongo, in profile
The tenth edition of EXPO is upon us, and since its reinvention at Navy Pier, I’ve covered nine of them. I love EXPO; it’s the art equivalent of binge-watching the entire first season of Yellowjackets in a single day. It’s funny, scary, disgusting, uplifting, and shamelessly melodramatic. And like ten hours of your life hazily […]
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Jake Troyli contains multitudes
Jake Troyli moved to Chicago in September 2020, the same month “Don’t Forget to Pack a Lunch!,” his first-ever solo exhibition in Chicago, opened at Monique Meloche Gallery. In the exhibition’s titular work, Troyli puppeteers a small army of cloned characters through siloed loops of never-ending labor—physical, emotional, and otherwise. Small firefighters ascend a burning […]
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Edra Soto’s Graft project comes to the Hyde Park Art Center
“Prolific” understates the artworks artist Edra Soto has contributed to the cultural scene, radiating from Chicago and stretching to New York, California, Brazil, and beyond. Born in Puerto Rico, Soto treats her roots as a blueprint, building expansive bodies of work upon the boundless inspiration she finds within them. Over the course of the previous […]
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Times of uncertainty
On a chilly late November evening, Ukrainian artist Aliona Solomadina landed in Chicago, leaving behind her flourishing design career, beloved friends, and cozy studio in Kyiv. She was not alone, though. Her mother and 92-year-old grandmother had also fled their war-torn homeland to join her at the residency program in Chicago, to which she had […]
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Curb Appeal, a new apartment gallery, brings access to the fore
Sandy Guttman can hazard a few guesses as to why Chicago’s disability arts and culture scene is the envy of other major cities. We’re home to the consortium Bodies of Work, which funds artists and programming exploring the disability experience; the Cultural Access Collaborative, an artist-run group advocating for more accessible art spaces; Unfolding Disability […]
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These nothings
Aria Dean wants you in the hot seat—or cold storage. Her intentions aren’t subtle: you enter her exhibition at the Renaissance Society through aluminum double doors with rubber-trimmed circular windows and step onto a field of black industrial rubber flooring blanketed in nonslip nubbins. Natural light is restricted by a low, hulking perimeter wall, and […]
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An art gallery for the living room
“Most of the time, the ideas come to us. They are falling into our net,” says Jonas Mueller-Ahlheim, co-founder of the sspatz collective. When pandemic lockdowns closed art galleries in 2020, Mueller-Ahlheim and fellow sspatz cofounder, Thomas Georg Blank, were already hoping to reimagine art venues. Suddenly, their idea coincided with reality, as the world […]
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Fragments in ‘Unity’
The problem of the construction of history has been of particular interest to an ever-growing cadre of artists engaged in creative research (i.e., working against disciplinary boundaries to counter dominant modes of how knowledge gets made). Not quite engaged in institutional critique, social practice, or art history proper, creative researchers often contend with history’s emerging […]
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‘Don’t Act Like You Forgot:’ Shonna Pryor’s ‘Fiscal Frontiers’
A portal can be a gate, a door, a website. A pathway is what exists beyond the gate, the door, the webpage. Portals are changed by the people who once occupied their ether, just as pathways are shaped by all those who’ve traveled their twists and turns. This is good, this is how futures begin. […]
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Artists are all-in for Brandon Johnson
In the 2019 mayoral election, Lori Lightfoot stood out with her platform for supporting the arts in Chicago. Out of a crowded field of 14 candidates, she was the only one to hone in on the arts with a detailed plan. Not so this time around. Instead, candidate Brandon Johnson, who has recently surged in […]
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The writing is on the wall at two Roe-themed shows
Last summer the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion, overturning previous decisions made in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in a case that is now ubiquitously known as the Dobbs decision. Choice and decision go hand in hand, but they are not the same […]
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Defying gravity
Suddenly the audience was enveloped in darkness. We awaited the commencement. Two screens turn on, showing poetic verses scrolling up. Then, the music started flowing through the space, conducted by Asante Owusu-Brafi, Angel Bat Dawid, and Ishmael Ali as they sat under a somber blue light. Ethereal sounds and light piano keys echoed. I see […]