The 2023 Chicago Critic’s Table Cohort
Meet the 2023 Cohort
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Current Works: Samples from our 2023 Cohort
Zaria El-Fil
Natasha Moustache: Lerozyon (L-EURO-ZHUHN)
Portable Gray, Vol 6, Issue 2. 2023
Entering Lerozyon (L-EURO-ZHUHN), visitors are transported to the shores of the Seychelles Islands. Bird songs from the archipelago serve as their own dialect, inviting visitors into the vast, polyphonic landscape. The walls are predominantly beige/cream (a color called “dainty lace”) and resemble the sprawling sand beaches found in Seychelles. There is a mixture of framed images that protrude outward to meet the visitor and those printed directly onto the wall … [Read More]
Meralis Alvarez Morales
Works in Progress
2023
Drafts and musings as entry points to a larger discussion, shared by the author:
Notes on Classism and the general admission experience (House of Blues)
Camille Bacon
Immanuel Wilkins and Camille Bacon in conversation at the Stony Island Arts Bank
Rebuild Foundation. May 3. 2023
On March 28, 2023, ahead of his performance at Constellation, Chicago, alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins was joined by Camille Bacon for a conversation orbiting around the notion of musical composition and performance as a channel for the divine, specifically as it … [read more]
Camille Bacon
Rearrange: Torkwase Dyzon and Black Feminist Breathing
MOMUS. August 3, 2022
Spending time in a museum after it closes to the public holds a certain wonder. There is something invigorating about turning up where you know you are not usually “supposed” to be.
As scholar and somatic practitioner Aimee Cox says: “We have to train ourselves to be disobedient. I am exhausted by obedience—it has not served us.” Conscious disobedience has a way of enlivening the senses and hurtling our spirits back towards their … [read more]
Rikki Byrd
Curator's Talk | The New Black Vanguard: Antwaun Sargent in conversation with Rikki Byrd
Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), Mar 6, 2023
The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion highlights the work of 15 contemporary fashion photographers—from London to Lagos, New York to Johannesburg—whose images present radically new perspectives on the medium of … [Read More]
Britt Julious
Kara Jackson’s Mournful, Joyful, Unapologetic Guitar-Ass Music
Pitchfork, March 29, 2023
On Kara Jackson’s humbly epic song “no fun/party,” she mixes piercing personal reflections with writerly metaphors involving elephant tusks and dancing dragons, all atop her own spare guitar playing. Wistful strings simmer to the surface at points, intensifying the spotlight on Jackson’s plainly heartfelt delivery. It’s the kind of song that makes you instantly … [Read More]
Regina Victor
The Death of Oedipus and The Departure of Charlie Newell: ‘The Gospel at Colonus’ Heralds The Court Theatre Into a New Age
Rescripted, Sept 22, 2023
Watching The Gospel at Colonus at The Getty Villa is like watching a live resurrection. A theatre piece becomes a fossil on closing day, an antiquity to be dusted off and given new life. Mark J.P. Hood and Charlie Newell have rolled their stone all the way from … [Read More]