Art in winter 2024: Plenty of new exhibits in the new year, from speculative futures to documentary pasts

From speculative futures to documentary pasts, obsessive sculpture to coolly meditative spaces, historical Japanese design to contemporary Latinx devotional painting — there’s something for everyone at Chicago’s galleries and museums in the first few months of 2024. Below is a sampling of the best.

Candace Hunter: “The Alien-Nations and Sovereign States of Octavia E Butler”: Anyone interested in liberated future societies that fully value Black bodies will not want to miss the speculative worlds conjured here by Candace Hunter with synthetic plant sculptures, an Afrofuturist neon mural, culinary experiments and doorways to imaginary places. A lush reading nook completes the exhibition, the better to experience Hunter’s inspiration: “Parable of the Sower” and “Xenogenesis Trilogy,” novels by famed sci-fi author Octavia E. Butler. Through March 3 at the Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave.; more information at 773-324-5520 or hydeparkart.org

David Goldblatt: “No Ulterior Motive”: The great South African photographer, who died in 2018, was committed for all seven decades of his career to showing the realities of daily life in his country. Relatively free to move about the segregated land due to his Lithuanian Jewish heritage, Goldblatt aimed his camera everywhere, attending as incisively to a pair of women working in a funeral parlor in Soweto as to out-of-work nomadic sheep shearers living off roadkill in the Northern Cape and students cheering as a statue of Cecil Rhodes was removed at the University of Cape Town. Featuring 140 photographs by Goldblatt, plus 40 more by a selection of international contemporaries. Through March 25 at the Art Institute, 111 S. Michigan Ave.; more information at 312-443-3600 and artic.edu

“Chicago Works: Maryam Taghavi”: Though not a calligrapher by any means, the Iranian-born artist takes the noghte, the diacritical mark essential to written Persian, as the central motif of her first solo museum show. For Maryam Taghavi, noghtes are everything and nothing: they appear as cutouts in the gallery wall through which to glimpse infinitely mirrored prisms, are strung together to form imaginary horizon lines in a series of airbrushed paintings, and are entirely absent from a 13th-century poem. Through July 14 at the MCA Chicago, 220 E. Chicago Ave.; more information at 312-280-2660 and visit.mcachicago.org

“Contemporary Ex-Votos: Devotion Beyond Medium”: What does worship look like today versus yesteryear? Novel answers arise in this curatorial pairing of historical ex-votos — small devotional paintings depicting miracles, often illustrated on tin or other found materials — with new works by emerging Latinx artists, including a pink-frosted chapel by Yvette Mayorga and an installation of 28 panels by Francisco Guevara, who unsettlingly uses colonial artistic techniques to apply pre-Columbian pigments. Jan. 12 through March 16 at Gallery 400, 400 S. Peoria St.; more information at 312-996-6114 and gallery400.uic.edu

Norman Teague: “A Love Supreme”: If John Coltrane had been a furniture designer instead of a musical innovator, what might his bookshelves and chairs have looked like? Maybe something like the stools and pavilions of Norman Teague, who takes the jazz master and his titular album as a touchstone of improvisational bravado and bold Black aesthetics. In addition to a survey of Teague’s work, he and Rose Camara fill McCormick House, the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe digs next door, with jazz-influenced designs by an array of Chicago makers. Jan. 20 through April 28 at the Elmhurst Art Museum, 150 S. Cottage Hill Ave., Elmhurst; more information at 630-834-0202 and elmhurstartmuseum.org

“Native America: In Translation”: If in the past photography was a weapon in the fight to dispossess Native peoples of their land, freedom and culture, today it can be used to challenge that legacy. Apsáalooke artist Wendy Red Star curates work by nine Native creators, including Martine Gutierrez, known for “Indigenous Woman,” a fabulous 124-page fashion magazine starring herself as a trans, Mayan supermodel, and Rebecca Belmore, who reenacts for the camera indelible moments from past performances monumentalizing the lives of First Nations women. Jan. 26 through May 12 at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, 600 S. Michigan Ave.; more information at 312-663-5554 and mocp.org

“Actions for the Earth: Art, Care & Ecology”: As timely as they come, this group show features 18 international artists who care for our endangered planet via practices that borrow from Indigenous knowledge, natural sciences and healing traditions. Included is a meditation space by Katie West; a series of exercises for rethinking human-centered perspectives by Zheng Bo; and a mandala constructed of dirt and seeds by Arahmaiani, to be grown throughout the exhibition. Jan. 26 through July 7 at the Block Museum, 40 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston; more information at 847-491-4000 and blockmuseum.northwestern.edu

Selva Aparicio: “In Memory Of”: One of the most astonishing artists emerging in Chicago today, Selva Aparicio creates sculptures as obsessively painstaking as they are profoundly moving. She does this by decorating a coffin with hundreds of thousands of individually-placed dandelion seeds, by using leaves of lettuce to fashion a rose window as gem-colored as any made of stained glass, and by hand-carving the details of a patterned rug directly into hardwood flooring. March 14 through Aug. 4 at the DePaul Art Museum, 935 W. Fullerton Ave.; more information at 773-325-7506 and resources.depaul.edu

Mina Loy: “Strangeness Is Inevitable”: Born in 1882 and a part of the Parisian and New York art scenes of the 1920s and ‘30s, Mina Loy has always defied categorization. A poet, artist, actor, designer, inventor and thinker, she has for too long been overlooked by art history, a situation that ought to be set right by this retrospective, which includes 150 paintings, drawings, assemblages, letters, poems and patents, testifying to her indomitable spirit of revolution, connectivity and hybridity. March 19 through June 8 at the Arts Club of Chicago, 201 E. Ontario St.; more information at 312-787-3997, artsclubchicago.org

Meiji Modern: “Fifty Years of New Japan”: From 1868 to 1912, Japan underwent a period of enormous transformation, opening up its isolated feudal society to rapid economic, scientific, political, philosophical and social modernization. The changes were aesthetic, too, as evidenced in this survey of painted screens and scrolls, woodblock prints, fashionable clothing, cloisonné vases and more, all borrowed from American collections. March 21 through June 9 at the Smart Museum, 5550 S. Greenwood Ave.; more information at 773-702-0200 and smartmuseum.uchicago.edu