The last time I was at the CAC was in late 2017, for Caledonia Curry’s exhibition—better known as Swoon—titled The Canyon: 1999–2017. It was her first museum retrospective. I don’t recall every detail with clarity, but I do retain the certainty that it was a profoundly inspiring experience. Eight years later I return to the CAC for the public opening of What a Revolutionary Must Know, by the Iranian American artist Sheida Soleimani (b. 1990, Indianapolis).

Perhaps it was possible, even then, to sense that Jesus of Western Avenue, inaugurated on October 16, 2021, at the Cleve Carney Museum of Art (College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, Illinois), would become Tony Fitzpatrick’s final solo exhibition in his lifetime. The show gathered more than sixty recent works, reaffirming his—almost proverbial—fascination with Chicago’s urban nature and environment, expressed through his unmistakably personal graphic language.

One of the people I love most in the world—among other reasons, for something like this—cried for several minutes upon realizing that the book which had occupied her for a brief stretch of time had come to an end. To close it and return it to the shelf meant abandoning a world she already considered her own: one where good and evil were distinguished in every conceivable way. Beyond its beauty, that universe offered purpose, a sanctioned form of contemplation, and a steadfast commitment to the benevolence of the spirit.

To speak of Kina Matahari is to confront the politics of disguise. Her work unfolds where visibility becomes dangerous and the body itself turns into a medium of camouflage. Between the myth of the colonial dancer and the lived reality of the contemporary artist, Skin as Camouflage traces a lineage of women who have negotiated power through performance, artifice, and survival. What begins as an act of concealment becomes, in her hands, a language of emancipation.

Perhaps I am a member of The Grief Club. For several weeks now, a small print has rested on my desk granting me that privilege — dark cobalt green, number 137 in an edition of 200, signed by Sarah Stolar. It is not a relic, nor even a reminder of mortality. It is evidence that artistic experience, when born of pain, orients us toward an identitarian core that endures even through fracture. In the act of retracing what has been lived, we might find reconciliation, perhaps even peace.

Creative anxieties: “Anxiety limits my ability to travel, but don’t tell my mom” is the subtitle Juan-Sí González gives to his recent American Playgrounds series, from which a selection of 21 images is included in this catalog from his recent exhibition at the Cleveland Print Room in Cleveland, Ohio. For an immigrant, the alternative—moving with relative spontaneity around an unknown territory, at the mercy of an alien geography and culture...

In mid-August, in Louisville, Kentucky, I attended a conversation with Cuban artists presenting their work at Louisville Visual Art. My compatriots, the familiar. In a country where everything seems to flow through rigid channels, surprise is rare. I speak of migrant artists, many of them newly arrived. Some pieces were more compelling than others, and the stories carried nuances best considered one by one. As in cooking, the flavor of each ingredient, tasted alone, can prove more intense and memorable than the mixture in which it dissolves.

I have spoken at length with Juan-Sí. Twice in person, once by phone. About a month ago we shared a coffee, standing in my kitchen—the first guest to step into my still chairless apartment. Each time our dialogue drew to a close, after the inevitable farewell, I was left with the impression that I had merely touched the widening circle of water at the surface of a well whose depths few have known. That expanding ripple produced by such a fleeting contact is what I now attempt to turn into memory.

Contemporary war is no longer only a matter of territory and arms; it is also a visual phenomenon that penetrates homes and consciences through screens and social media. Many young people cannot, or do not know how to, shield themselves from that emotional tempest. Yet some have discovered ways of conjuring it. The photographic camera can become an extension of body and consciousness.