2025 Chicago
Critic’s Table Cohort
-Felicia Holman
“The second cohort of APL's Chicago Critics' Table was the Southside-based North star of my 2025, and I'm forever grateful. As I continue navigation of my creative recalibration, I savor the genuine fellowship and support I experienced in this intimate cohort. Conceived by Adrienne Brown / facilitated by Tempestt Hazel and comprised of seven dynamic writers from myriad creative environs and practices, CCT 2025 was an interdisciplinary / intergenerational salve for my exasperated artistic spirit. I sincerely look forward to welcoming future CCT fellows into our expansive APL community”
Meet the 2025 Cohort
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“The Chicago Critics' Tables provides a much needed, rare space for writers to share thinking and dreaming space. Writing can often feel like an alienating or isolating endeavor, and I appreciated weekly gatherings with peers that offered support and camaraderie. It's fun and fueling and such a unique experience.”
-Yasmin Zacaria Mikhaiel
Collaborative Salons
During the 2025 Cohort season, each critic hosted a series of collaborative salons. While every gathering centered on a unique topic, they shared a unified goal: bringing leading voices in criticism together to foster a supportive professional network and spark experimental dialogue.
Get Your Creative Life in Order
Yasmin Zacaria Mikhaiel | August 21. 2025
A salon-style discussion and hands-on zine workshop organized by Yasmin, focusing on genuinely committing to your artistic practice, featuring panelist Cori Lin and zine artist Jasjyot Singh Hans.
Pleasure Portal Praxis
Felicia Holman | September 4, 2025
Part hula hoop flow sesh/part creative writing room, "Pleasure Portal Praxis" extols the vital impact that intuitive somatic movement can have within a pleasurable creative practice. Drawing from her own pandemic-era embodiment practices and personal testimony, Felicia guided attendees toward a deeper mind-body connection through a circuit of intuitive movement and guided writing intervals. Participants came ready to move, write, and reflect, enjoying light bites, non-alcoholic beverages, and hula-hooping along the way.
Bronzeville: Contemporary Culture in the Historical Context
Jen Torwudzo-Stroh | October 2, 2025
Historian and art critic Jen Torwudzo-Stroh facilitated a conversation on the cultural present and future of Bronzeville—Chicago’s historic Black neighborhood and home of the Chicago Black Renaissance. Gathering local cultural producers and community stakeholders, the discussion explored what it takes to build a contemporary art institution within a neighborhood defined by such a rich cultural legacy.
WITH(IN).DIGITAL for BYTE: A Thinktasting, a dialogue in technology, time and taste.
Bri Robinson | September 18, 2025
Bri Robinson and Candace Sanders of WITH(IN).DIGITAL led a exploration into taste, memory, and critique. Consider how a single bite—accompanied by the scent of a buttery, flaky crust—can instantly recall a summer romance. Our human senses dismantle and reconstruct information to help us navigate reality. In much the same way, critics function like research and development chefs: breaking down complex ideas into accessible truths so we can better process what we consume.
The Possibilities of Public Art on the South Side
Maira Khwaja | October 2, 2025
Writer, organizer, and educator Maira Khwaja brought together trusted South Side artists to examine the role of public art in today's political landscape. The discussion tackled pressing questions—from the limits of socially engaged art to lessons from historical movements—exploring how creative practices can build people-power amid growing self-censorship and economic displacement.
Speakeasy Cinema Screening: An Active Engagement Session.
Cortlyn Kelly | September 18, 2025
Featuring a film screening and guided reflection exercise, the event invited attendees to explore the distinction between real-time emotional documentation and retrospective thought. Complete with refreshments, sweet treats, and popcorn, the session offered a supportive, experimental space to engage deeply with artistic practice.
Urban Alchemy: A Salon on Fashion x Urban Design
Nekita Thomas | October 16, 2025
Nekita Thomas moderated a conversation between Sherman “Dilla” Thomas, Chicago historian, and Corey Gilley, founder of Leaders 1354, about the ways fashion and physical space have interacted in Chicago over time
Current Works:
Work Samples from the 2025 Critics Table Cohort
Supergraphic Landscapes
Nekita Thomas
Supergraphic Landscapes is a book about the future of public spaces—and how reimagining graphics in the built environment can unlock new modes of civic participation.
Joseph Altshuler, an architectural designer, and Nekita Thomas, a graphic designer, introduce three design strategies—Play-scapes, Care-scapes, and Action-scapes—that reshape how we move within, access, and commemorate in the city. Through essays, speculative drawings, and collaborations with guest contributors, they reveal how a painted pattern, a textured path, or a layered graphic can disrupt routines, nurture intimacy, and hold shared histories in place.
Iranian Culture Will Not Be Erased
Yasmin Zacaria Mikhaiel
“I can’t help but want to gather and commit to taking space for our culture. It feels like an impossible time to celebrate anything, but there are Persian traditions thousands of years old that demand we honor our changing seasons and recognize our perseverance as a community. In my desire to further connect with my Iranian roots and share artistic space in the diaspora, I fell into cultural organizing work and met friends also yearning for and building our community.”
Tuning Away From Mechanized Listening By: Livy Snyder
Bri Robinson
A series featuring the music ecosystems of the Midwest and the artists cultivating careful listening. Illustrations by Bri Robinson
Magic is the Medium
Jen Torwudzo-Stroh
In her first-ever solo museum exhibition “On Wonder, Mind, & Magic,” Andrews beautifully expands her practice from the stage into the Elmhurst Art Museum’s gallery space. Across three distinct galleries, the exhibition combines elegant sculptural objects, interactive installations, and documentation from performances spanning Andrews’s artistic practice. She translates it all into a series of multisensory installations that both delight and disrupt our perception, firmly establishing magic as a legitimate form of contemporary performance art.
‘You Can See Everything’ Review: Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s Elizabeth Holmes Documentary Is Boundary-Pushing and Absurd
Cortlyn Kelly
Telluride: Everything we thought we knew about the beleaguered Theranos founder and convicted fraudster may or may not be true, according to A24's made-in-secret new documentary.
-Nekita Thomas
“Chicago Critics Table gave me a rare space to slow down, think critically about my practice, and talk through my work with artists and thinkers across disciplines. It strengthened how I articulate what is at stake in my work, while also giving me greater confidence in my own perspective and agency to re-position my work within larger cultural, spatial, and civic conversations.”
Curriculum Reading Lists
A sample of some of the readings from 2025 Critics Table Cohort
Writing About Indigenous Art with Critical Care by David Garneau
Black Trans Feminist Thought Can Set Us Free by George Yancy
Black Criticism is Always Good—Especially When Black Art Isn’t by Kathleen Newman-Bremang
Practicing Acknowledgment by Jessica Swoboda
He Carried His Hope As A Shield by Roxane Gay