On Sunday, April 12, I had the pleasure of attending EXPO CHICAGO, where contemporary art curators and artists alike from across the world gather in the city in order to share their work. This year, the artists at EXPO CHICAGO delivered some of the best work I’ve seen in a long time.
The amount of diversity and the sheer global reach of the works featured at this year’s EXPO cannot be understated. Let me be frank: my initial thought when art events boast global rosters is that they often focus on Europe, seemingly forgetting about Africa, South America, and Asia. I was pleasantly surprised to see artists and curators from South Korea, Japan, Mexico, and many other countries at this year’s fair. It reflects the reality of how globalized our world is, and I’m grateful that the fair has embraced this.
Houston’s Mitochondria Gallery is a great example of the fair’s geographic diversity. The gallery’s mission is to work with and support across Africa and the African diaspora, by giving them a global platform to share and sell their work. The booth showcased the work of both Chika Idu, and Ejiro Fenegal, both Nigerian artists who focus on very different aspects of the black diaspora.
Chika Idu’s paintings immediately caught my eye from far away, because the pieces were incredibly colorful and highly detailed. The booth showcased his “Swimmers” collection, which features black girls and boys jumping into bodies of water. Idu’s work focuses on the themes of a community in constant motion, and uses imagery of moving water to explore the conceptual inquiry of what world we’re leaving the next generation behind with. Symbolically, the water is a message of how we are not only connected to the Earth, but to each other, as the sea is what literally connects continents. This imagery creates very dynamic paintings with a lot of emotion.
Idu’s paintings pair well with Ejiro Fenegal’s work, which, in contrast, does not look forward into the future, but instead blends the lines of history and the present. Fenegal’s sculptures are inspired by traditional Nigerian feminine hairstyles and are based on real people, which may be the reason behind their incredibly detailed craftsmanship. While Fenegal’s marble statues look lifelike, however, they don’t fall into the uncanny as many realistic sculptures can.
Idu and Fenegal’s work is also another example of something I found well-done at EXPO: the level of the personal within these works. EXPO provides something that is desperately needed, not only in the contemporary art world but in general mainstream art spaces: art that’s made by real, breathing humans, that contains memories, ideas, and thoughts on the artists and their communities. In an age of AI-generated art, we can get highly detailed and beautiful pictures on demand, but what those pictures lack is history, passion, soul, and, of course, humanity. In such a fast moving and profit-hungry world, it can feel much more viable to use AI. The only way we can combat that is the undoubtable presence of our humanity and our perspectives.
The concept of extreme individuality and the self is something accomplished well by Maya Fuji, an artist working with the Charlie James Gallery. Each of her acrylic paintings is based on an hour of the artist’s life from a single day: moments like waking up, spending time with her sister, or riding her bike. Each piece is rendered in a cartoonish style inspired by anime and manga. Fuji’s first-generation Japanese American background also plays a role in the imagery of paintings, which contain an immense amount of detail. For example, the tiny white figures featured throughout are actually Japanese spirits. What I found especially interesting was the fact that Fuji often paints herself in the nude. I interpret this decision as a full exposure of the self; literally and figuratively being vulnerable by showing her true, bare self in her art.
Although this is just a small sample of the artists featured at 2026’s fair, they are some of the biggest reasons that you should consider going to EXPO CHICAGO next year.
The fair can be overwhelming and physically exhausting, particularly for physically disabled attendees, as the fair requires great amounts of walking with sparse seating. Wheelchair rentals are available, but guests are not guaranteed to receive them.
Despite this, EXPO can still be a great introduction to the summer events and art galleries Chicago has to offer and to the upcoming names shaping the global contemporary art world. Additionally, your support and investment in the artists’ work does mean something; in a world filled with inauthentic AI slop, putting attention on artists and their craft on such a large scale tells the world how important it is to keep the humanity of art intact.
