EXPO Chicago as an art market innovator is something not always appreciated outside the ivied walls of the art world, if acknowledged at all. Technically, it’s the oldest modern art fair in North America; it started as Art Chicago in 1980, then was bought and rebranded as EXPO in 2012. EXPO’s legacy has been eclipsed by edgier American art fairs, like Art Basel Miami Beach, over the years. And the city doesn’t have the same colonial history or ocean access—and by extension, the concentration of wealth—that’s long made New York a power player in the international art market. Despite multiple financial setbacks, the fair has endured thanks to Chicago’s diverse exhibition opportunities and its support for social practice artists and creators whose work is more rooted in “craft” or “design.” 

Whether you’re visiting the city or just looking to get more acquainted with the art scene, here are eight exhibitions happening during EXPO Art Week that capture the spirit that makes the fair possible.

Barely Fair 

Now in its fifth year, Barely Fair is a private, artist-organized exhibition that showcases an international roster of presenters in booths of 20 by 20 inches—that is, 1:12 of the scale of EXPO booths. Run by local avant-garde artist collective Julius Caesar, the show’s size restrictions are also its greatest feature. The scale calls attention to the resources necessary to participate in something like EXPO and how that barrier to entry influences what art is deemed attention- or collection-worthy. At the same time, it invites an unparalleled amount of imagination from participants. Barely Fair will have 24 exhibitors this year, all of whom showcase something exciting and underappreciated by the broader art market, especially with regard to certain approaches, regions, or attitudes. 4/23–5/11; 4/23–4/27 11 AM-4 PM, 5/3–5/4 and 5/10–5/11 noon–5 PM, additional hours and location TBD, tickets required, barelyfair.com

Sukaina Kubba’s “Textile Museum” at Western Exhibitions

Western Exhibitions will be at Barely Fair, and it’ll also host two gallery shows during EXPO week. “Dogman Lives on the Ground” is an ode to a late friend by beloved painter, cartoonist, and textile artist Jessica Campbell, while “Textile Museum” is by lace-obsessed artist Sukaina Kubba. The Toronto-based creative has spent years developing a body of work to reflect lace’s evolution from something handmade with natural fibers via a preindustrial cottage industry to a machine-made product of synthetic materials via a postindustrial manufacturing industry. In exploring this, she also gets at how lace and its makers have been devalued over time. Kubba’s work relies on hand-drawn patterns she makes based on archives at the Textile Museum of Canada—an institution facing closure because of arts defunding. Here, she debuts work based on objects from the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Europe, North America, and South Asia. Through 6/7: Tue–Sat 11 AM–6 PM, Western Exhibitions, 1709 W. Chicago, westernexhibitions.com/exhibition/textile-museum

Robell Awake’s “Human Resources” at Volume Gallery

Using handmade ladder-back chairs marked with symbols, patterns, and materials, Atlanta-based artist Robell Awake makes Black history contemporary. Not only does he evolve the rich traditions of various Black chairmakers, but he also creates objects that allow people to literally sit with the past, present, and future simultaneously. In this show, he’s created six chairs inlaid with physical and figurative nods to the digital world—cords, cables, and even binary coding—as well as protective imagery drawn from various African spiritual traditions such as Hoodoo, or conjure. The chairs get at the malleability and policing of digital personhood, especially as it affects Black people, and the need to remain grounded and safe. Simultaneously, the chairs rebel against the false binary between functional objects and sculpture, emphasizing artisans as artists. Through 6/7: Tue–Sat 11 AM–6 PM, Volume Gallery, 1709 W. Chicago, wvvolumes.com/upcoming 

Damon Locks’s “We Are Our People / Listen to This” at Goldfinch

Local artist and educator Damon Locks is better known in the music world. In the 80s and 90s, he had a punk band with Fred Armisen called Trenchmouth; more recently, he’s made music with the free jazz groups the Exploding Star Orchestra and Black Monument Ensemble; and in January, he dropped a funk-infused solo record called List of Demands (International Anthem). But like most great artists, especially ones from Chicago, he’s multidisciplinary, and he’s long maintained a visual art practice, including teaching art to people behind bars. This show assembles two rooms’ worth of ink-on-paper drawings inspired by Locks’s interest in Black liberation histories, Afrofuturism, and anticarceral justice. Through 5/3: Fri–Sat noon–4 PM and by appointment, Goldfinch, 319 N. Albany, goldfinch-gallery.com/exhibitions/94-damon-locks-we-are-our-people/overview

Huguette Caland’s “Bribes de Corps” at the Arts Club of Chicago

Women are too often written out of modernism, especially if they’re not American—but Huguette Caland is finally getting her due. Caland was the daughter of Lebanon’s first postindependence president and grew up with strict expectations about how to look and behave, which she was great at rebelling against. She was overweight by her parents’ standards, married the nephew of her father’s political rival, and had multiple well-known affairs. In 1970, while in her late 30s, she ditched her husband and children to move to Paris and pursue art. Her paintings and sculptures are distinguished for their spontaneity and sensuous use of line and color. It’s the work of a woman not anguished by constraints; rather, she had an appetite for life that tore right through them. Through 8/2: Tue–Fri 11 AM–6 PM, Sat 11 AM–3 PM, Arts Club of Chicago, 201 E. Ontario, artsclubchicago.org/exhibit/huguette-caland-bribes-de-corps

“Wakaliga Uganda: If Uganda Was America” at the Renaissance Society

Wakaliga Uganda, a film studio that also goes by Ramon Film Productions, makes action-packed movies on shoestring budgets. Teen actors with no experience? Check. Homemade props? Check. Ultraviolence? Check, check, and check. Since 2005, the movies have developed something of a cult following—they’re more like the movies you expect Ghana’s over-the-top Deadly Prey movie posters to be (which were also brought to the States via Chicago), with a lot of sharp geopolitical commentary. In the studio’s first U.S. exhibition, the film If Uganda Was America plays alongside some of the studio’s other works in a site-specific installation designed to focus less on the films’ bombastic qualities and more on the company’s community-minded spirit of freewheeling creation. Through 4/27: Wed–Fri noon–6 PM, Sat–Sun 10 AM–6 PM, Renaissance Society, 5811 S. Ellis Avenue, Cobb Hall, 4th fl., renaissancesociety.org/exhibitions/558/wakaliga-uganda–if-uganda-was-america

“Into the Hourglass: Paño Arte from the Rudy Padilla Collection” at the National Museum of Mexican Art

The Chicago area is home to the second-largest Mexican immigrant population in the United States, and during EXPO, there’s no shortage of opportunities to see incredible art meditating on Mexican American identity. Among them is “Escaramuza, the Poetics of Home,” a portraiture series at the Poetry Foundation that captures the women domestically sustaining the Mexican equestrian tradition of escaramuza charra, and “Multiple Exposures,” a survey at the DePaul Art Museum of photographer Christina Fernandez’s work probing gender and labor. One could make a whole day out of visiting the National Museum of Mexican Art, but if I had to pick one show out of them all—at the museum or otherwise—it’d be “Into the Hourglass: Paño Arte from the Rudy Padilla Collection,” which showcases paños on handkerchiefs as tableaus popular among incarcerated artists and thus art objects to consider when exploring how Chicano iconography is adapted and shared between the inside and outside worlds. 

Through 8/10: Tue–Sun 10 AM–5 PM, National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th St., nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org/events/into-the-hourglass, free

“25!” at Monique Meloche

Monique Meloche is turning 25, and the gallery is celebrating its silver jubilee with a group show reflecting on its history. Namesake Meloche transitioned from art museums into galleries under the mentorship of local powerhouse Rhona Hoffman before founding her own contemporary art space. She grew it from her home into a West Town storefront that’s propelled the careers of emerging artists. Meloche will have a booth at EXPO (and is part of the fair’s selection committee), but it’s worth swinging by the gallery to get a better sense of her unique influence through artists she’s long championed, including Sanford Biggers, Rashid Johnson, and Ebony G. Patterson. 

Through 5/23: Tue–Sat 11 AM-6 PM, Monique Meloche, 451 N. Paulina., moniquemeloche.com