EXPO ART WEEK kicks off with an evening of overlapping receptions and programming, ending at the Smart with a special celebration of The Time is Now! 

The party features the live collaborative performance "Cultural Confluence" from Douglas R. Ewart’s Nyahbingi Drum Choir and Tatsu Aoki’s Miyumi Project that blends global traditions into a unique confluence of concepts and cultures that represent now and the future. The multidimensional, intergenerational performance draws on rhythmic traditions from Africa, the Caribbean, and East Asia and adds in song, poetry, dance, and multi-media.

The performance is organized artist and multi-instrumentalist Douglas R. Ewart, former chair of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), and features: Leon Q. Allan (trumpet), Dee Alexander (vocal), Kioto Aoki (taiko, bass and shamisen), Tatsu Aoki (shamisen, bass, and taiko), Rami Atassi (guitar), Baba Raymond Beans (funde and percussion), Mwata Bowden (winds and percussion), Paul Cotton (funde, repeater, djun djun), Coco Elysses (percussion), Douglas R. Ewart (bass drum, repeater, funde, and winds), Sandra Jackson-Opoku (poet), Jamie Kimpkers (cello), Keith McEachron (bass drum, repeater, funde, and vocals), Kiyomi Negi, Nicole Nolan (choreographer and dancer), Lela Pierce (choreographer and dancer), Clifton Robinson (repeater, djembe, djun djun, and funde), Noriko Sugiyama, Taiga Ultan (choreographer and dancer), Aliya Kadisha Ultan-Milat-Meyer, and Floyd Webb (multi-media)

Plus food, drinks, and after-hours access to see The Time Is Now!

FREE, open to all. Join in and share on Facebook »

South Side Events and Openings

Before stopping at the Smart, join in the For Freedoms Town Hall at Sweet Water Foundation (RSVP required) and explore a few of the other galleries, museums, and exhibition spaces in our dynamic community of arts and culture.
Throughout the evening, a free, hop-on-hop-off shuttle will be circulating between venues. Guest parking is available in the University’s Campus North Garage at 55th Street and Ellis Avenue.

Extended hours
Shadi Habib Allah
Tuesday, September 25, 5–8pm
The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, 5811 S. Ellis Avenue, Cobb Hall, 4th floor
Palestinian artist Shadi Habib Allah works across film, drawing, sculpture, and installation, often drawing on a process of deep research and on-the-ground physical engagement in specific locales. Richly varied in form and focus, his recent projects run the gamut from traveling along illicit trade routes with Bedouin smugglers to documenting labor and banter between mechanics in a Miami body shop. For his exhibition at the Renaissance Society, Habib Allah presents new photographs alongside recent video works.

Extended hours
Troublemaker: art is our last hope
Tuesday, September 25, 5–8pm 
Presented by boyoyoboy! gallery at DuSable Museum of African American History, 740 East 56th Place
South African artist Ayanda Mabulu demonstrates the political reach of the artists’ provocation. Under the license of free expression, the artist reimagines new relationships between living and past figures of power implicating them in various acts of violence or sexually compromised behavior. 

Opening Reception and Artist Tour:
Candice Lin: A Hard White Body, A Porous Slip
Tuesday, September 25, 6–8pm
Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, The University of Chicago, 915 E 60th Street
Bringing together fragile porcelain fragments in a fountain-like arrangement alongside drawings, archival documents and audio-visual works, Los Angeles-based artist Candice Lin weaves together narratives of racial, sexual and gender marginality with processes of decay, contamination and purification. Lin’s installation draws on the history of 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition and the artist’s ongoing exploration of the biographies of three distinct figures: novelist James Baldwin, botanist and first woman to circumnavigate the globe Jeanne Baré, and naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian. Artist-led tour of the exhibition begins at 6:30pm.

Opening Reception: Jason Doge: The Broad Church of Night
Tuesday, September 25, 6–8pm
Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, The University of Chicago, 5701 S. Woodlawn Avenue
For his first solo exhibition in Chicago, Berlin-based American artist Jason Dodge will further expand the reach of his sculptural language and its handle on the serendipitous poetry of everyday life. Dodge’s site-specific installation, conceived in direct, “live” response to the peculiar architecture of the Neubauer Collegium Gallery, will be animated in part by the Jamaican poet Ishion Hutchinson, from whom the exhibition derives its title.

EXPO ART WEEK Kick-off Party: The Time Is Now!
Tuesday, September 25, 8–10pm
Smart Museum of Art, 5550 S. Greenwood Avenue
See description above

Presented by Logan Center for the Arts, Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, The Renaissance Society, and the Smart Museum of Art, in collaboration with EXPO CHICAGO.

Image: Gerald Williams, Messages, 1970, Acrylic on canvas. Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, Purchase, The Paul and Miriam Kirkley Fund for Acquisitions, 2017.8.