Feature image: Artist Yasmin Spiro. Courtesy of the artist.
through November 2, 2025
submitted
Chicago, Illinois — Hyde Park Art Center, the celebrated non-profit hub for contemporary art on Chicago’s South Side, presents Yasmin Spiro: Cornerstone, the first major solo exhibition of Jamaican-born, Chicago-based artist Yasmin Spiro. The exhibition, which opened on April 19, 2025, and is on view until November 2, 2025, features a new body of mixed-media sculptures, sound and scent works, weavings, and video—exploring the layered intersections of land, body, memory, and architecture.
Drawing from her upbringing and cultural identity, Spiro embeds elements of Jamaica’s ecology, building practices, land ownership, and socio-political history into the work. The result is an immersive environment that invites visitors to reflect on the psychological and physical experience of navigating between the natural world, the built environment, and spaces that are shared or sacred.
At the center of the exhibition is the titular work Cornerstone—a towering, fort-like structure composed of cast forms, textile walls, rope, and wood, which visitors can enter. Created during Spiro’s 2024 Jackman Goldwasser Residency at Hyde Park Art Center, the sculpture takes inspiration from the architectural concept of a cornerstone: the first-laid stone of a foundation, determining the placement of all others. Here, it serves as a metaphor for home, origin, and identity shaped by homeland.
In addition, the exhibition includes three related bodies of work that combine old and new elements from Spiro’s practice, steeped in texture, muted organic tones, and sensory-rich materials.
The south end of the gallery features Landlines, an 18-foot-long burlap weaving embedded with handmade ceramic bells, found driftwood, and rope that projects a complex lattice of shadows on the wall and challenges our perception of space.
Photography: Mikey Moser
A series of six wall-mounted panels, Shelter, on the west wall, align woven and unraveling rope compositions next to shiny ribbed flesh-toned ceramic tiles, which the artist made while participating in the Arts/Industry residency at Kohler Co., supported by the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.
Photography: Mikey Moser
Finally, ropes descend from the ceiling on the north end of the gallery in Salt Gut Sheet Bends and extend downward, forming a suspended alternative architecture through which Spiro contemplates the fluidity of land and water and how migration, colonial histories, and national identity shape our relationship to land.
The exhibition is documented and enhanced through a publication with essays by critic and writer Seph Rodney and the exhibition’s curator Allison Peters Quinn.
Yasmin Spiro: Cornerstone is generously supported by the Abakanowicz Arts and Culture Charitable Foundation Research and Production Fund. With additional support provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Illinois Arts Council Agency, and The Joyce Foundation.
Photography: Mikey Moser
About Yasmin Spiro
Born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica by a family from multiple geographies, the interdisciplinary artist Yasmin Spiro approaches cultural identity with a unique perspective. Through her sculptures and installations, she addresses issues of socio-economic imbalance within the framework of urban development and architecture, often through the lens of Caribbean culture. Spiro works in a variety of media from wood, ceramic, natural and synthetic fibers and textiles to performance and video, exploring materiality while investigating the relationship between the body, nature, and the built environment. She attended Pratt Institute and held residences at the Dora Maar Foundation, The Kohler Arts and Industry residency, Vermont Studio Center, and the Chicago Artist Coalition. She currently resides in Chicago.
About Hyde Park Art Center
Hyde Park Art Center, at 5020 South Cornell Avenue on Chicago’s vibrant South Side, is a hub for contemporary arts in Chicago, serving as a gathering, production, and exhibition space for artists and the broader community to cultivate ideas, impact social change, and connect with new networks. Since its inception in 1939, Hyde Park Art Center has grown from a small collective of artists to establish a strong legacy of risk-taking and experimentation, emerging as a unique Chicago arts institution with social impact. Today, the Art Center offers a diverse suite of programs for artists and art lovers of all backgrounds, ages, and stages in their careers including: contemporary art exhibitions in six galleries; an open-access community-based school with 2,000 annual enrollments; weekly arts education to 1,000 elementary school students in public schools; weekly and summer teen programs for 100 teen artists; professional-advancement programs for artists; a local and international artist residency; and public programs that connect residents with Chicago art and artists. The Art Center’s Oakman Clinton School + Studio is the nation’s first fully contribute-what-you-can visual art school for all ages. The Art Center functions as an amplifier for creative voices of today and tomorrow, providing the space to cultivate new work and connections. For more information, visit www.hydeparkart.org.
Love looking at Artdose on Sunday evening. Great way to end the weekend, seeing art you may not have had a chance to see otherwise. Always inspiring. Thanks, Frank!
Thank you for reading, Kathy! – Frank