We are pleased to announce Iman Issa’s solo exhibition, A Game, or So You May Think, at the Art Institute of Chicago, opening Saturday, 3 May 2025.

Iman Issa’s Heritage Studies are displays based on historical artifacts, which attempt to communicate their significance to the present moment. In her process, the objects are altered: Issa changes their materials, scale, and color to a degree that the resemblance between the historic artifact and Issa’s work can be difficult to discern. Despite these dissimilarities, the artist insists on the equivalence of these objects, almost like the equivalence between a photograph and its subject.

This exhibition of Issa’s Heritage Studies is the first substantial presentation of these works in the US in a decade. Seen together, they illuminate the artist’s consistent desire to pursue an “art that is not exactly part of the world but is certainly tied to it, revealing of it, and not just because it looks or sounds like it.”

www.artic.edu/exhibitions/10507/iman-issa-a-game-or-so-you-may-think