Art in the Caribbean Diaspora at MCA Chicago

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago will open “Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today,” organized by Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator Carla Acevedo-Yates on November 19, 2022. The show will run through April 23, 2023.

This major exhibition is an innovative rethinking of “Caribbean art,” focusing on art in the Caribbean diaspora and featuring an intergenerational group of 37 artists who live and work across the Americas and Europe. Challenging conventional ideas about the region, “Forecast Form” reveals the Caribbean as a place defined not by geography, but by constant exchange, displacement, and movement.  

“The exhibition’s focus on diaspora acknowledges that the region has been and continues to be constituted by movement; most notably of people, both forced and voluntary, but also of global commodities, financial assets, oil barrels, and tropical storms,” Curator Carla Acevedo-Yates said in the accompanying exhibition catalogue.

The art in the Caribbean diaspora exhibition takes the 1990s as a cultural backdrop. This decade—a period of profound social, political, and economic transformation globally—also had a major effect on art from the Caribbean, and in the cultural sector gave rise to a Pan-Caribbean art exhibition model that attempted to represent the region’s complex, colonial histories through art. In contrast, “Forecast Form” focuses on the affinities shared between works made by artists who have ties to the region yet hold diverse personal identities, geographies, and histories. The exhibition title references the weather’s constant movement as a metaphor for analyzing artistic practices. Through a deeply innovative exploration of form, Forecast Form positions the region as a place where the past, the present, and the future meet.

This comprehensive exhibition reveals new modes of thinking about identity and place. Working in cities across the globe, the exhibition’s 37 artists include Candida Alvarez, Firelei Báez, Álvaro Barrios, Frank Bowling, Sandra Brewster, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Donna Conlon and Jonathan Harker, Christopher Cozier, Julien Creuzet, Maksaens Denis, Peter Doig, Jeannette Ehlers, Tomm El-Saieh, Alia Farid, Teresita Fernández, Rafael Ferrer, Denzil Forrester, Joscelyn Gardner, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Deborah Jack, Engel Leonardo, Daniel Lind-Ramos, Suchitra Mattai, David Medalla, Ana Mendieta, Lorraine O’Grady, Ebony G. Patterson, Keith Piper, Marton Robinson, Donald Rodney, Freddy Rodríguez, Tavares Strachan, Zilia Sánchez, Rubem Valentim, Adán Vallecillo, Cosmo Whyte, and Didier William. Accompanying the exhibition is a substantial 288-page catalogue featuring groundbreaking scholarship as well as extensive plate sections reproducing exhibition artworks. 

“Forecast Form” will be the first major MCA exhibition presented in both Spanish and English and will launch the MCA’s transition into becoming a fully bilingual institution, with all subsequent exhibitions presented in both languages. Through this initiative, the museum aims to offer unprecedented access for visitors through Spanish and English content including gallery didactics, website content, wayfinding, signage, captioning for programming, on-site Spanish speaking visitor services associates, and more.  

“This exhibition underscores the MCA’s commitment to inspiring meaningful connections through contemporary art,” Madeleine Grynsztejn, Pritzker Director, said. “Not only are we sharing pivotal stories that encapsulate the nuance of the shared experience that is diaspora, but we’re doing so in a way that can be communicated to a more expansive, inclusive community.”