Suchitra Mattai & Firelei Báez in Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s to Today: Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL

The 1990s were a period of profound social, political, and economic transformation. From the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc to the rise of transnational trade agreements, the decade’s large-scale shifts ushered in an era of international connectivity and social upheaval. In the cultural sector, art exhibitions expanded and turned global, and dialogues around identity, especially by those who have suffered systemic oppression, were featured front and center in cultural debates. The forces of this pivotal decade also had a major effect on the production, circulation, and presentation of art from the Caribbean.

Taking the 1990s as its cultural backdrop, Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today is the first major group exhibition in the United States to envision a new approach to contemporary art in the Caribbean diaspora, foregrounding forms that reveal new modes of thinking about identity and place. It uses the concept of weather and its constantly changing forms as a metaphor to analyze artistic practices connected to the Caribbean, understanding the region as a bellwether for our rapidly shifting times.

The exhibition is curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates, Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator, with Iris Colburn, Curatorial Assistant, Isabel Casso, former Susman Curatorial Fellow, and Nolan Jimbo, Susman Curatorial Fellow. It is accompanied by an expansive catalogue featuring scholarship as well as extensive plate sections reproducing exhibition artworks in full color. Authors include Carlos Garrido Castellano, Genevieve Hyacinthe, Aaron Kamugisha, and Mayra Santos-Febres, as well as a roundtable conversation with Carla Acevedo-Yates, Christopher Cozier, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, and Teresita Fernández. The exhibition is designed by SKETCH | Johann Wolfschoon, Panamá.