As much as Sophie Calle is known as a photographer, she has also always been known as an artist’s book-maker. Well, not an artist’s book-maker exactly, since artist’s books are often unique art objects themselves, but instead cast in Calle’s conceptions as compendiums of an idea. Often nearly journalistic efforts at explorations of intimacy that guide so much the project of her lifelong artistic curiosities, I recall going through no less than three copies of Exquisite Pain, each volume stolen, absconded with, ripped from my (now somewhat onerously cumbersome) library, with its succulent, near-blood red, gilt-edged pages. I miss every stolen copy, and still can’t help but harbor some pang of resentment for each of the thieves.

Calle’s work merits such ardor, of course, as it is almost designed to elicit it. My first encounter in person with Calle’s work, for example, was as an art critic visiting the 2007 Venice Biennale, where she represented France with "Take Care of Yourself," an installation inspired by a breakup email she received, which concluded with the phrase "take care of yourself."

Business had slowed since sundown. Thad stood tall and straight-backed at the register. The regulars stopping for sandwiches and beer tried talking with him. It was mostly chatter about the weather or an upcoming hockey game but some of them managed to slip in a comment about Thaddeus Ramz, how good a man he’d been, how sad it was that he wouldn’t ever be seen at the poolroom having a beer or reading newspapers at Dunkin’ Donuts. Thad tried to smile the best he could, thanking them for saying kind things and assuring that his family was alright, that his grandpa would’ve been proud that people missed him.

He leaned against the register staring at nothing when Seth and Ernie came into the store and went to the back cooler. He watched Ernie snap a chocolate bar off the shelf as he raised a hand to Daisy Trotter and asked how she was in his dopey drawl. He laughed at Daisy about being so quiet and the smaller girl tried to smile. But she’d been tense and withdrawn all shift, preparing deli sandwiches for the customers with postured absorption. Thad tried talking with her like things were usual but he left her be when she was looking sorry for him.

Walking towards the tavern at dawn, an old man named Milardo carried his bag. As he approached the squat white building with its bright red shutters burning in the morning sun, he turned his face away. He looked over the wooden fence at the cows grazing. He wondered what it would be like to be a cow, lazing all day in the wide, open green pastures—not a care in the world. But then the bag, as if sensing his reverie, seemed to weigh heavier on his shoulders. It began pulling him towards the bar. He walked into the place. A square patch of sunlight showed through a small window and fell over the counter. The old man dropped the bag at his feet and nudged it into the shade where the sun could not get at it. He ordered a cup of coffee just as one of the patrons clapped him on the shoulder.

Merce Cunningham famously said, “You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive.” This ephemerality also means that tracking dance’s history, especially before the advent of the iPhone, can be a Herculean task. For the average choreographer and performer with no access to academic resources, just trying to educate oneself about the art form’s history and some of its historical figures that are not easily accessed or even represented on the internet, is daunting. That is why the recent exhibition at the Cultural Center: Blondell Cummings: Dance as Moving Pictures (originally co-organized by Art + Practice and the Getty Research Institute) and organized here in Chicago by Elise Butterfield, Curator of Exhibitions at DCASE, was such a gift. The event showcased Blondell Cummings’ independent work in movement and video. Cummings, a student of dance, photography and film grappled with ideas of how movement, a 3-dimensional live art form could also be as powerful in a 2-dimensional medium. Her early studies searched for that place of compromise wherein the best of both methods were able to surface and the energy of the body and the details of the dancing would leap off the screen.

As part of Intuit Art Museum’s recent reopening, Chicago-based artist and designer Bob Faust unveiled a striking new architectural intervention that reimagines the museum’s façade as both signal and symbol. Wrapping the building in bold, layered imagery drawn from works in Intuit’s permanent collection—including pieces by Henry Darger, Mr. Imagination, and Pauline Simon—the project draws passersby into playful yet reflective encounters. From afar, the vinyl wrap suggests modernist patterning, but closer inspection reveals figurative fragments and gestures that hint at the stories inside.

While different in scope from his recent Wayfindings public sculpture on the West Side, both projects reflect Faust’s commitment to building visual infrastructures of participation, layered with memory, identity, and place. The Intuit project stands as a quietly radical gesture—an outward-facing museum façade that listens back. Bridge Couture Editor Kristin Mariani sat down with Faust to discuss these projects and more in the interview below.

Kristin Mariani: I am so excited to talk about Wayfindings and your façade intervention at the Intuit Art Museum.

Bob Faust: Thank you, thank you. 

Yes, yes. Would you like to start with the more recent Intuit Art Museum project, or Wayfindings? Do you have a preference?

Let's go to Wayfindings first, I think. It has a lot in it.

Great, It's such a beautiful project. Let's begin with community engagement. Wayfindings is a major public art initiative that deeply involves community interaction, located on the city’s new Joint Public Safety Training Campus and newest Boys & Girls Club at 4433 W. Chicago Avenue in the Austin neighborhood. Can you talk about how this participatory process influenced the design that you created? 

Absolutely. It was a big project that took place kind of fast for something as large as it is. It included stakeholders even before anything was done—just the RFP process involved working with the stakeholders. It included: the police department, the fire department, the Boys and Girls Club, Alderman Mitts’ office, and a lot of neighborhood leaders including a few pastors, business leaders, block club leaders, art leaders, and DCASE of course. And then the kicker to it was that there were three architecture firms involved, as well as a landscape architect. So it was a lot of folks that had vested interest and wanted to know that all of their concerns, excitement, and opportunities were going to be acknowledged and worked into the final product.

When the MCA postponed the career-spanning show Indulge Me by Iraqi artist Wafaa Bilal for a whole year, some hearsay from my gossip network suggested that it was due to the postponement of a rocket launch. The work in question is Canto III (2015), a response the artist made to a rumorhe heard: Saddam Hussein's political party, the Ba'athists, wanted to launch gold busts of the leader to outer space and directly above Baghdad, so the busts, like a satellite, would forever orbit around Earth and be “watching” Iraq. The installation of Canto III further conceptualizes the materialization of this “crazy” space Saddam project, but with a satirical twist. It imagines sending a miniature bust, equipped with a selfie cam, to just below the orbit: close enough that it would send live feed for a year or so before burning into dust by gravity, but not enough to be granted eternity in space (albeit comically as a piece of space junk).

The Ba’athists’ project was never realized, nor did Bilal’s miniature make it to space. But I wasn’t surprised when unverified intel pointed to that the daredevil artist did seek options to tag the sculpture to some commercial rocket launch. After all, it’s not like artists haven’t done it before. Trevor Paglen did it; recently Eduardo Kac did it too. But there’s something strangely poetic about an imaginary project that stems from a rumor and becomes the subject of gossip for a show. It shrouds itself with irresistible myths that point to alternative realities, where what could have happened becomes the focus of interest.

Global contemporary fashion does not have an obvious home in Chicago's museums. The Art Institute has not collected tailored garments as earnestly as they have collected textiles; the MCA’s flirtations with fashion are sporadic; the Chicago History Museum has a mandate to only acquire clothing with local connections; and while the Design Museum could be a promising site for fashion, it has yet to build a serious collection. This leaves the city with a noticeable gap in fashion collection and exhibition norms. When the UK’s Victoria & Albert Museum began shopping its blockbuster exhibition, Africa Fashion, it wasn’t clear a Chicago institution would bid to host it. Surprisingly, the Field Museum, best known for its flora and fauna specimens and towering presence of Sue the T. rex, came forward. But the Field is only partially comprised of wonders of the natural world; it is also rich with marvels of human culture and creation. Fashion in the past and present is how we create and communicate our identities, individually and in community, and with this exhibition the Field has created new narratives for its collections, boldly linking them to contemporary design, and human futures.

Exhibiting African fashion in an institution that had historically displayed cultural objects and garments from indigenous cultures and the Global South (as though those societies had been subsumed and did not have a place in the modern dialogue) helps to reintegrate the relevance of those societies in our continuing human chronicle. Perhaps this is a story of revisions and reparations in a museum collection, or perhaps it is a story of how colonization did not eliminate the traditions of making and dressing—they remained, they were adapted, and with independence, they have shone forth. The pieces in Africa Fashion speak to tradition, but also resilience, self-definition, and a defiant modernity.

April 17, 1975 lives on in infamy as the date of the Khmer Rouge’s takeover of Cambodia’s capitol city, Phnom Penh. This watershed event ushered in the Communist rule of Cambodia which lasted for three grueling years, eight months, and twenty days. During this condensed period, as estimated two to four million people died of starvation, disease or disappearance. Urban centers in Cambodia were emptied and all organized educational, religious, and cultural institutions were abolished. Cambodia was effectively cut off from the rest of world in what has since been called the Cambodian genocide.

The tragedy of this period continues to haunt communities living inside and outside of Cambodia, but it should not be mistaken as a solely defining event. Genocide survivors, as well as second and third generation survivors are also embodiments of bravery and resilience. While committed to sharing stories from this dark history, survivors are also committed to recovering cultural practices, engaging in trauma recovery and moving forward. April 17 th remains a significant date for continuing the work of honoring the past but also casting a prospective future. This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the takeover of Phnom Penh, which catalyzed meetings between Cambodian community members around the world.

In Mexican history, the charro—a skilled horseman and master of cattle work—emerged as a national icon during the colonial period and solidified his status in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. Dressed in elaborately adorned suits and wide-brimmed sombreros, the charro became a symbol of rural pride, tradition, and patriotic masculinity. His image would come to define la charreada, Mexico’s official national sport, and spread into popular culture as a paragon of honor, discipline, and strength.

This figure finds its echo in the American cowboy, who, though mythologized in different ways, likewise became central to national identity—particularly in the narrative of Manifest Destiny and the mass-murderous, genocidal settling of the American West. In both contexts, the cowboy has been held up as a hyper-masculine archetype: stoic, solitary, shaped by conquest and tethered to land and cattle. But these histories, deeply entangled with colonialism, erasure, and exclusion, often obscure the roles women and Indigenous peoples played in shaping equestrian traditions.

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.