{"id":536562,"date":"2026-07-06T23:50:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T23:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/536562\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T23:50:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T23:50:10","slug":"in-two-chicago-exhibitions-liberation-takes-the-floor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/536562\/","title":{"rendered":"In Two Chicago Exhibitions, Liberation Takes the Floor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Art Review<\/a><\/p>\n

Shows at MCA Chicago and Wrightwood 659 chart a path from colonial dispossession to the possibilities of dance, music, and community.<\/p>\n


\n \"Laura
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

\"In
\n Denzil Forrester, “Duppy Deh” (2018), oil on linen (\u00a9 Denzil Forrester; photo Stephen White & Co., courtesy MCA Chicago, all other photos Laura Zornosa\/Hyperallergic)<\/p>\n

CHICAGO \u2014\u00a0An eerie, operatic, disembodied chorus floats to the front of Dispossessions in the Americas: The Extraction of Bodies, Land, and Heritage from La Conquista to the Present<\/a> at Wrightwood 659. This is \u201cCoro de plantas extintas\u201d (2020) by the Ecuadorian artist Saskia Calder\u00f3n, a video performance mourning the loss of endangered and extinct plant species. Ten minutes down the coast of Lake Michigan, another exhibition also opens with sound: A honeyed voice croons a Selena song from somewhere deep inside of Dancing the Revolution: From Dancehall to Reggaet\u00f3n<\/a> at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Is this a recording of Selena herself, or someone skilled singing karaoke? It is, as it turns out, \u201cKaraoke El Nuevo Horizonte\u201d (2014\/25) by Puerto Rican artist Radam\u00e9s \u201cJuni\u201d Figueroa; as part of the work, visitors can sing karaoke (dancehall, reggae, reggaet\u00f3n, salsa, and other Caribbean genres) during the museum\u2019s free hours.<\/p>\n

The moods here are strikingly different, but the two exhibitions pair artfully, complementing each other\u2019s sensibilities and scope. \u201cCoro de plantas extintas\u201d sets the tone for Dispossessions in the Americas as solemn \u2014 mourning something taken, in this case, autonomy. \u201cKaraoke El Nuevo Horizonte,\u201d on the other hand, with its glittering disco ball, Miami windows, and flamingo pink paint, celebrates something given \u2014 joy and togetherness \u2014 as does Dancing the Revolution as a whole. Dispossessions in the Americas poses a problem: The expansion of European colonialism since the turn of the 16th century catalyzed widespread dispossession in the form of deprivation of land, culture, and language across the Americas. The show’s more than 40 works critique and unsettle this problem; they begin to rock at its foundations. Dancing the Revolution, meanwhile, keeps rocking the colonial boat until it capsizes. It offers a solution to the problem that the former poses: Dancehall and reggaet\u00f3n, explored by around 50 contemporary artists, comprise a revolutionary practice for collective liberation.<\/p>\n

\"\"Radam\u00e9s \u201cJuni\u201d Figueroa, \u201cKaraoke El Nuevo Horizonte\u201d (2014\/25), wood, speakers, sound system, disco ball, microphones with stands, TV screen, karaoke system, Miami windows, pink paint, and shirts <\/p>\n

The works in Dispossessions in the Americas range from bearing witness to the deprivations of colonialism to poking holes in the fabric of its consequences. \u201cBurial Pyramid\u201d (1974) by the late Cuban artist Ana Mendieta \u2014 known for her singular \u201cearth-body\u201d sculptures<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 feels, at first glance, the most passive. It was also, to me, the most moving. For three minutes and 17 seconds, on Super 8 color film, Mendieta lies nude and supine beneath a mound of earth and stones in Oaxaca, Mexico. Look closer, though \u2014 she\u2019s not lying still. She\u2019s breathing, deeper and deeper, until the stones roll away and she\u2019s free. The small, intimate photographs of the series Exilio (1988\u20132007) by the Argentinian initiative Archivo de la Memoria Trans, too, may seem like mere documentation. The scenes are simple: tossing bread crumbs to swans, dozing off on the train, blowing a kiss to the camera. But the act of archiving \u2014 especially the lives of these trans women who were forced into exile in the \u201990s in the aftermath of the Dirty War<\/a> \u2014 preserves their histories, often excluded from dominant institutional narratives.<\/p>\n

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