My top ten choices acknowledge some exciting trends in Chicago art. One is the new emphasis on Afro-Futurism, which synthesizes traditional designs and media, psychedelic mysticism, current technology, and utopian politics. Then there are the new breeds of artists and curators exploring unusual media, staging “interventions” (often socially committed work created or displayed in public places, not galleries), and exhibiting in individuals’ apartments and yards, introducing a welcome spontaneity and vulnerability.
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Nick Cave: Soundsuits at the Chicago Cultural Center, April 22-July 9
African-inspired rococo costumes for dancers by SAIC fashion department chair Nick Cave constituted the most singularly striking collection of figurative mixed-media sculptures you were likely to see this year without going to Wisconsin to see Tom Evermore’s giant scrap-metal ostriches.
Sabrina Raaf at Wendy Cooper, April 28-June 3
The Version festival–just over two weeks of installations, events, exhibits, performances, talks, tours, and workshops–emphasizes video, electronics, and other new media and adds preoccupations with activism, partying, and their hybrid offspring, interventions. Signal examples were the “art shanties” originally constructed by the Soap Factory collective for Minnesota ice fishermen, offering activities from karaoke to building pinhole cameras.
California Occidental Museum of Art: COMA 5, July 15
