What to See During EXPO CHICAGO

Apr 3, 2024

A still image from a video with a pink trampoline background featuring many different gymnasts in various states of jumping. The gymnasts wear blue, green, red, and white jumpsuits.
A still image from a video with a pink trampoline background featuring many different gymnasts in various states of jumping. The gymnasts wear blue, green, red, and white jumpsuits.

We've got EXPO week covered

Every April, the art world convenes at our doorstep for EXPO Chicago, and Chicagoans jump at the chance to show off our vibrant local art scene. Need help navigating all the goings-on going down April 11-14? Here’s our roundup of the events, installations, and exhibitions we won’t be missing, and follow us around the city all weekend long on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter/X. Coming from out of town? Our favorite place to stay, and official hotel partner, is 21c Museum Hotel.

Nora Turato at ART on THE MART + Art Institute of Chicago

Women in a t-shirt dancing with a gradient foreground.

Graphic designer-turned-performance artist Nora Turato is known for her text-based examinations of how we communicate in a post-internet world. Her latest work, THIS IS A TEST OF SEVERANCE. can you let go?, debuts with a free opening event at ART on THE MART, Friday, April 12 at 8pm. No ticket or signup is required — just meet us on the Riverwalk.

Saturday at 2pm: Turato performs pool 6, a found-text monologue originally commissioned for Performa’s 2023 Biennial, at The Art Institute of Chicago. The event is free with registration.

Image: Nora Turato, Performance view, Basement Roma, Rome, 2021. Photography: Robert Apa. Credits: Basement Roma/CURA.

Yuge Zhou at OVERRIDE Billboard Project

A still image from a video with a pink trampoline background featuring many different gymnasts in various states of jumping. The gymnasts wear blue, green, red, and white jumpsuits.

Chinese-born, Chicago-based artist Yuge Zhou, who you may recall as the mind behind 2022’s Love Letters, makes work that “often depicts simultaneous and ephemeral encounters amidst the rush of contemporary life.” Zhou is one of ten artists whose work takes over billboards and kiosks across the city thanks to OVERRIDE: A Billboard Project, a city-wide public art initiative by EXPO Chicago and the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE), running April 1 – 21.

Image: Yuge Zhou, still from Trampoline Color Exercise, 2024

Brendan Fernandes in Grant Park

An image of a bronze statue depicting a male military official atop a horse, holding an American flag. Two skyscrapers are behind the statue. An anonymous park-goer sits on the base of the monument.

Get to know upcoming 2024 ART on THE MART artist Brendan Fernandes with New Monuments: Chicago, the first in a series of interventions that expand the limited historical narratives embodied by traditional monuments. See the artist’s sculptural response to the General John Alexander Logan Monument in Grant Park (S Michigan Ave & E 9th St.), on view April 10 – 13, 11am – 5pm.

New Monuments: Chicago is the culmination of Fernandes’s fellowship project with Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum and is presented in association with the Chicago Park District. The sculptural installation was designed in collaboration with AIM Architecture.

Image courtesy of Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum 

Nicole Eisenman at MCA Chicago

A painting depicting a beer garden with many people sitting at tables and one waitstaff. The man sitting at the table in the foreground is holding a cat.

Open just in time for EXPO, Nicole Eisenman’s What Happened at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is the first major survey of the artist’s painted confrontations with the ridiculosity of contemporary politics, society, and day-to-day life. The show features roughly 100 works made between 1992 and today, and runs through September 22, 2024 — so you have plenty of time to catch it before it’s gone.

Image: Nicole Eisenman (b. 1965, Verdun, France; lives in Brooklyn, NY), Beer Garden with A.K., 2009. Oil on canvas. De Ying Foundation. Photo: Bryan Conley, © 2023 Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.