ROY LEWIS’ THE Wall of Respect received national critical acclaim when it was unveiled in 1967 on the side of a building at 43rd Street and Langley. It is noted as the first collective street mural. The Wall became famous as a “revolutionary political artwork of Black liberation.” (Photo by Roy Lewis)
In the 1980s, Chicago became one of the first cities in the U.S. to have its own major art fair, first with the Chicago International Art Exposition and later with Art Chicago.
However, the game really changed with the launch of EXPO CHICAGO, which transformed the fair into a high-voltage catalyst for the city’s cultural revival, thus staking Chicago’s claim as a player on the international art circuit. Now in its 12th edition, EXPO CHICAGO returns to Navy Pier Festival Hall through April 27 with more than 170 exhibitors from 36 countries and 93 cities.
GRAY is pleased to participate in the 2025 edition of EXPO Chicago in the fair’s CONTRAST sector, with selections from “So Be It! Asé! Photographic Echoes of FESTAC ’77,” an exhibition curated by Chicago-based art historian Romi Crawford.
This presentation unveils visual documentation of one of the most significant, yet lesser known, cultural events of the 20th Century: the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, held in Lagos, Nigeria.
Known as FESTAC, the 1977 Pan-African festival and convening, brought together around 17,000 artists from African countries and Black Diaspora communities across the world. GRAY’s EXPO Chicago exhibition features photographs by Roy Lewis, Bob Crawford and K. Kofi Moyo, three members of the United States delegation to FESTAC.
As members of the Black Arts Movement in Chicago, Lewis, Crawford, and Moyo each embarked on careers of documenting momentous social and political developments.
After high school in Natchez, Mississippi, Lewis came to Chicago, was drafted into the army and landed a job at Johnson Publishing. His first camera cost just $25 and his talent was recognized when Jet Magazine published his photograph of musician Thelonius Monk in 1964.
As a full-time freelance photographer, in 1974 Lewis traveled to Zaire to film the Ali-Foreman fight—this critical, historical video would later be featured in the Hollywood film, “When We Were Kings.”
Crawford documented Black life on the city’s South Side throughout the 60s and 70s and sought to reveal the ways in which Black Aesthetics—a meld of African heritage and celebration of Black beauty—permeated all aspects of daily life in his community.
In 1967, Crawford documented the creation of the Wall of Respect by 21 members of the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), a collective of Black artists, writers, intellectuals and activists on Chicago’s South Side.
This collective also included Roy Lewis. The outdoor mural, was located at 43rd and Langley and featured Black heroes and heroines.
Photojournalist Moyo’s extensive archive of street photography and photojournalism chronicles some of the most pivotal moments of the period, including the Chicago uprising after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
He took photos in the Lawndale neighborhood on the West Side, one of a young Black boy standing near a group of armed National Guardsmen, their faces hidden by gas masks.
The photo is one of dozens that Moyo took during the days of looting and violence that engulfed the city after King’s killing.
CONTRAST is a new section of galleries and artist presentations for the 2025 edition of EXPO Chicago. The inaugural section will be curated by Lauren Haynes, Head Curator, Governors Island Arts and Vice President for Arts and Culture at the Trust for Governors Island.
For more than six decades GRAY has supported the visions of leading artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, bringing their works to audiences around the globe and cultivating major collections to preserve their impactful legacies.
Apparitions presents the work of more than 20 pioneering artists from across the last century, whose interrogations of the human form and its fleeting presence have pushed boundaries of representation. Whether by dematerializing the body, imagining spirits, or making mirages, the artists on view conjure a hallucinatory realm—a liminal space between what appears and what vanishes.
Exhibited artists include many and of note is Chicago’s Theaster Gates, who creates work that focuses on space theory and land development, sculpture and performance. Drawing on his interest and training in urban planning and preservation, Gates redeems spaces that have been left behind. Known for his recirculation of art-world capital, Gates creates work that focuses on the possibility of the “life within things.”
Apparitions will be on view at GRAY Chicago (2044 W. Carroll Ave.) through June 27, 2025. The exhibition will open with a reception from 6 – 8 p.m. on Friday, April 25.
For more information, visit expochicago.com.