April 2021 Issue: Breakout Artists

Breakout Artists 2021

"While much of the city and the art world within it was on pause this past year, this group of Breakout Artists continued their practices, although perhaps in new and surprising ways. SaraNoa Mark spent a lot of time at the lake, weaving conversations they had there into carved asphalt sculptures. Neireda Patricia donned a mermaid’s tail and swam around a fish tank-turned-gallery on Instagram. Nat Pyper serialized a sci-fi short story for a digital exhibition that considered the lives of Latinx youth within a heavily surveilled world.

These artists’ works also function, on some occasions, as entry points into envisioning a different kind of world. A world where we ask institutions for more than visual representation, as with the works of Unyimeabasi Udoh, a world where we slow down and appreciate daily rituals with family and friends, as with the cakes and process-based works of Hyun Jung Jun. With their many approaches, these artists ensure that our ideas of what art is, and can continue to expand, and that our community transforms for the better, creating ever more opportunities for connection and inclusion." (Kerry Cardoza)

The 2021 Breakout Artists

+ A year-by-year list of Breakout Artists, all the way back to 2004

+ Cover by Caroline Kent (Breakout Artist 2020) 

Visionario: A conversation with Immersive Van Gogh's creator Massimiliano Siccardi

"The “Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit” was not conceived with COVID-19 in mind. Nevertheless, the exhibit suits our era of forced distances well, as if meant all along for those of us eager for art in shared public spaces. Also for our hunger for some bigger context for the psychic trauma of a maddening time, our collective version of what the artist called his “terrible fits of anxiety… feeling of emptiness and fatigue.” Amid his trials, Van Gogh discovered new light in the world and produced his blazingly lustrous canvases. In the exhibit, that light is amplified, too." (Ted C. Fishman)

Carrington's World

An original seven-page comics story by Summer Pierre. A print exclusive. 

+ Print exclusive: A "mood board" of lighting from local designers and boutiques. 

Arts & Culture

Art: The Art Institute of Chicago’s 3D Storytelling Project's corrective opportunity

Design: The Weaving Mill's delightfully throwback catalog

Dining & Drinking: Charred Wing Bar ups the game

Film: The Gunda years

Lit: A conversation with W.J.T. Mitchell about his memoir, "Mental Traveler"

Music: Chicago Opera Theater’s digital season

Stage: A conversation with Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell, the new artistic director of Hubbard Street Dance Company

+ Reviews: What we're watching, reading and listening to

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