Ways of seeing – Chicago Reader

In the project 60 wrd/min art critic, writer Lori Waxman explores how art writing can serve an expanded field of artists—including those incarcerated, trying to gain visas, working to establish themselves professionally, or just wanting feedback for a secret hobby. For this iteration, Waxman reviewed work made by Chicago artist Jiaming You.

Jiaming You

What makes a person? Nature and nurture both, surely, but also place. Some of the people portrayed in “Looking Out,” a solo show of paintings by Shanghai-born Jiaming You, recently on view at the Chinese American Museum of Chicago, illustrate this. They gaze at all sorts of landscapes—at the sunset, greenhouse flora, the skyline, a forest of trees—while reflecting others on the surfaces of their bodies. An urban woman’s silhouette is filled with a sunrise over the lake; the clothes of a child on a wintry bus are patterned with images of somewhere tropical. These geographies are felt in the layers that comprise our complex selves, magicked into visibility by the artist’s brush. In two standalone works, the effect is achieved through literal incorporation: a full-length mirror propped up against Viewfinder reflects the viewer and the library at the rear of the gallery. One Hundred Years and a Second, printed on vinyl and applied to the gallery’s front windows, allows the young women pictured to look outside, under the very real sky above. 

—Lori Waxman 2025-05-09 4:31 PM

“Jiaming You: Looking Out”
Through 4/27: Wed, Fri 9:30 AM–5 PM, Sat–Sun 10 AM–5 PM, Chinese American Museum of Chicago, 238 W. 23rd St., camochicago.org/spotlight-series/looking-out, suggested admission $8 adults, $5 students and seniors, free for members