On the second floor of the Hyde Park Art Center, Candace Hunter’s studio space brims with color and texture. On the rear wall hang several of her 20-inch-square mixed-media works, part of the joyous Brown Limbed Girls series she began in the early days of the pandemic. Some of those images landed on Chicago billboards for a COVID awareness campaign, as well in galleries in New Orleans and Oakland. 

But the studio also contains the ordered chaos of an artist preparing for her biggest solo show yet: The Alien-nations and Sovereign States of Octavia E. Butler, opening November 11 at HPAC for a four-month run. Butler, the influential novelist who died in 2006, broke barriers in the white-male-dominated world of genre fiction, becoming the first sci-fi visionary to receive a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant. Hunter discovered Butler’s Kindred as a college student in the late ’70s, then later absorbed herself in the Xenogenesis trilogy and The Parable of the Sower — “her best work,” Hunter says. 

The new exhibition comprises multiple sections, each containing installations that draw from different Butler works. Inspired by Parable, for instance, Hunter is crafting six Doors of Robledos — literal doors with painted images and Butler quotes adorning one side, photos of models representing both fictional and real-world refugees on the other. The exhibition will also include a cozy reading room and a short film inspired by the opening paragraphs of Xenogenesis, all designed to encourage the viewer to imagine other worlds.

For those familiar with some of the Kenwood artist’s more intimate works on canvas, this giant undertaking might seem like a departure. Indeed, as Hunter notes, HPAC curators anticipated more Brown Limbed Girls: “They said, ‘Oh, you’re not going to do paintings?’ ”

She recalls responding with a wry chuckle. “I said, ‘Those are for a commercial campaign so I can pay the rent and my daughter’s college tuition. This show is an opportunity for me to expand my horizons.’ ” Just like the intersectional author who inspired it.

Carlos Cortéz 100 Años
The National Museum of Mexican Art celebrates the centennial of the late Chicago printmaker, poet, and organizer — a key figure in the museum’s establishment — with a retrospective. Through Feb. 18

Camille Claudel
A major new exhibition at the Art Institute brings a fresh eye to the work of the French sculptor, a protégé of Rodin working around the turn of the 20th century in a medium that, at the time, wasn’t particularly welcoming to women. Oct. 7–Feb. 19

Difference Machines: Technology and Identity in Contemporary Art
This group show at Wrightwood 659 examines the ways we interact with increasingly ubiquitous digital tools, and how they shape our offline identities. Oct. 13–Dec. 16

— Kris vire