REVIEWS: 6 Off-Site Events and Exhibitions to Visit After EXPO Art Week
Crowd shots of day hours at the fair. Image courtesy BARELY FAIR.
REVIEWS
6 Off-Site Events and Exhibitions to Visit After EXPO Art Week
By Xiao daCunha
One thing that sets EXPO Chicago apart from many other major art fairs is its deep connection with Chicago’s art community as a whole. While the on-site fair at Navy Pier has come to an end, remember: there are still plenty of things to do at this year’s off-site partners. If you weren’t able to make it to this year’s EXPO Chicago due to travel limitations or scheduling conflicts, you still have some time left to visit the off-site events and exhibitions hosted by EXPO ART WEEK partners.
Barely Fair
WHEN: MAY 3 – 4 , 12 – 5 PM; MAY 10 – 11, 12 – 5 PM
WHERE: McKINLEY PARK, CHICAGO, IL
(Venue address provided through our ticketing platform upon booking.)
Who says art fairs have to be grand and fancy? Barely Fair dares to go the opposite direction. Challenging everyone’s existing knowledge of what an art fair should look and feel like, Barely Fair is the mini fair presented in 20x20 inch white cubes — galleries presented at 1:12 scale.
The 2025 Barely Fair shows 24 exhibitors, including familiar local names such as Chicago Art Book Fair, Comfort Station, and Corbett vs. Dempsey. Adorable, tiny, intricate… these adjectives fly through our brains as we look at the mini gallery and shrunken artworks. Ultimately, Barely Fair challenges our fixed understanding of space and perspectives. When art became so small that we can very much stuff them into our pockets, how does the audience’s relationship with the art change?
Laleh Motlagh, from the (Un)Avoidable Silence series, hand-drawn, black and gray felt pen on paper, 11 x 8.5 in. each.
Laleh Motlagh: Cultivating Dispersal
WHEN: through April 30
WHERE: Chicago Art Department, 1926 S Halsted St, Chicago, 60608
If you can only visit one more exhibition in the month of April, it should be Laleh Motlagh’s solo exhibition, Cultivating Dispersal, at the Chicago Art Department. Using fine lines mimicking plant lives with a hint of surreal automatism, the Iranian Azerbaijani-American artist investigates the idea of migration and belonging through an ecological lens. While colonial rule categorizes certain plants as wasteful weeds that need to be disposed of, the artist asks the viewer to reframe their thinking and look at weeds not as intruders, but as “life resisting containment.”
In these drawings, layers of images overlap each other. Closer observations reveal continents, locations, paths… or are these roots pushing through the cracks? In Motlagh’s work, migration becomes the dormant preparation — silent roots spreading under the soil until new lives sprout. What belongs to a land, and what doesn’t?
Andrea Carlson, The Indifference of Fire, 2023. [installation view] Oil, acrylic, gouache, ink, color pencil, and graphite on paper approximately 46 x 182 inches (overall), 11.5 x 30 inches (each of 24 elements), Gochman Family Collection. ©Andrea Carlson, courtesy Bockley Gallery and JAMES FUENTES.
Woven Being: Art for Zhegagoynak/Chicagoland
WHEN: through Jul 13, 2025
WHERE: The Block Museum of Art, 40 Arts Circle Dr, Evanston, 60208
Although Chicagoland has a rich history of Indigenous peoples, indigenous artists’ voices are often erased or invisible throughout art history. Woven Being brings forward four artists with connections to Zhegagoynak: Andrea Carlson (Grand Portage Ojibwe/European descent), Kelly Church (Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Tribe of Pottawatomi/Ottawa), Nora Moore Lloyd (Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe), and Jason Wesaw (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi), exploring the core narratives and practices shaping contemporary Indigenous creative practices in Chicagoland and beyond.
Read our review on Woven Beingto see what our contributor thinks about the exhibition.
Myth of the Organic City, installation view. Image courtesy 618 North.
Myth of the Organic City
WHEN: through June 1, 2025
WHERE: 6018|North, 6018 N Kenmore Ave, Chicago, IL 60660
Diving into Chicago’s deeply intertwined relationship with the indigenous people, Myth of the Organic City is a historical and contemporary survey into Chicago’s design and land use. The exhibition presents a chronological investigation from Chicagoland’s indigenous roots through 20th-century infrastructure projects, and eventually into present-day developments and ongoing conversations. Featuring maps, landscape designs, installations, wall drawings, sculptures, and multimedia works, the exhibition is a thoughtful urban development dissertation of city planning, land development, and the impact of colonial settlement.
Michelle Alexander, The Mother. The Sister. The Pressure, 2025, Organza, tulle, chiffon, buttons, staples, thread, pins, pearls, digital photos, site specific installation, Connective Thread, curated by Michelle Alexander.
Connective Thread
WHEN: through June 8, 2025
WHERE: Ivory Gate Gallery, 44 E Cedar St, Chicago, IL 60611
Connective Thread, opening at Ivory Gate Gallery on April 25th, explores the intimate and universal aspects of womanhood and collective bonds built through single strands: fabrics, textiles, and clothing.
Curated by fashion industry veteran and mixed-media artist Michelle Alexander, the exhibition showcases artwork by Michelle Alexander, Michelle Grabner, Sam Jaffe, Carmen Neely, Adrianne Rubenstein, and Lauren Seiden. Together, these artists look into the experience of the body and how it defines and interferes with one’s experience and interaction with themselves and their surroundings, narrating the complexity of the female identity.
A part of the exhibition is also on view at the Barely Fair.
Damon Locks, Distortion, 2025. 36x48. Image courtesy the artist and The Goldfinch.
Damon Locks: We Are Our People
WHEN: through May 3
WHERE: The Goldfinch, 319 N Albany Ave, Chicago, IL 60612
We Are Our People/Listen to This is Damon Locks’ new two-part solo exhibition featuring new drawings, paintings, and mixed media works. Locks is a Chicago-based visual artist, educator, vocalist/musician who has been working with the Prisons and Neighborhood Arts Project as a teaching artist since 2014.
Combining portraits, collaged words, and abstract patterns, these new works confront racial injustice by addressing systematic discrimination. In one painting, Locks paints a pair of handcuffs behind locked prison bars, and writes: Can freedom be had in un-free places? Other pieces capture the grief, anger, fear in the African American experience — yet, at the same time, positivity, resilience, peace, and forgiveness.
Xiao daCunha is Visual Art editor of Bridge & a writer and artist living in Chicago and Kansas City, Missouri.
Like what you’re reading? Consider donating a few dollars to our writer’s fund and help us keep publishing every Monday.
