Portable Gray, issue 16: Costumes and Collapse

The Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry at the University of Chicago is pleased to announce the release of the sixteenth issue of Portable Gray, a publication that draws on the work of the Gray Center, a research center for experimental collaborations between artists and scholars. Guest edited by Leah Feldman, our spring 2026 edition, Costumes and Collapse, explores the continued life of wearable art, as at once a record of the past—imprinted by the presence of the body—as it fashions forms of survival in its stitches, patterns, and silhouettes, generating armor to shelter fabulous possibilities for future-becoming. 

Editor’s Plaisance
Leah Feldman

Orientalist Erotics: The Semiotics of Dress and Desire
Hoda El Shakry, Leah Feldman, Slavs and Tatars

Let’s Get It On: On the Wearable Art of Betye Saar
Dieter Roelstraete

Talking Tatreez with Rachel Dedman
Hoda El Shakry

Flux and Flow: Portable Language of Cloth
Alia Ali

Higher Ground: an Interview with Nick Cave
Rikki Byrd

“The Color Is,” (a portfolio)
Nick Cave

Queerness Is A Form of Dismantling
Uta Bekaia

Portfolio
Uta Bekaia

Revolutionary Frequencies: A conversation moderated by Leah Feldman
Uta Bekaia, Thomas F. DeFrantz, Jonathan Flatley, Theaster Gates, Dato Koridze, Duane Powell, and Kris Trujillo

Wearing White
Stephanie Cristello

Silke Otto-Knapp, Yves Saint Laurent, and Art as Fashion
Catriona MacLeod

Maquillage, More or Less
Matt Morris

Live, Laugh, Love: a conversation with Tim Nicholson on Grills, Wearable Art, and Comedy as Craft
Mike Schuh

Emotional Materialism, A Quadritych
Omar Kholeif

Portable Gray Review (PGR)

The Sitting Ovation Sessions: Something on Silence
Annette LePique

Buñuel: Master of Dreams; Vesna Jovanovic: Carnival
Ellen Wiese

Girl Gangs, Zines, and Powerslides:  A History of Badass Women Skateboarders
Isaac Bjorke

Robyn Mineko & Artists: To Leave You
Nicky Ni

Gregory Jacobsen: Smiles and Piles
Erik Wenzel

What is Contemproary Symposium 2025
Regina Victor

Freedom in Form: Richard Hunt
Pia Singh

Upcoming issue: Comicedy (on comics and comedy)

*All issues of the journal are free online to students, staff, and faculty at any institution that subscribes to Portable Gray or the Complete Chicago Package from the University of Chicago Press. Search your library’s collection of online journals or ask your librarian if they subscribe to Portable Gray. You can also support the work of the Gray Center with your very own subscription today. Find out more here.

Executive Editor:  Seth Brodsky / Editor-in-Chief: Zachary Cahill / Guest Editor: Leah Feldman / Senior Editor: Mike Schuh / Managing Editor: Naomi Blumberg / Editor at Large: Stephanie Cristello / Contributing Editors: Sabrina Craig and Desiree Foerster / Design: David Khan-Giordano / ISSN 2637-8361.

About the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry
The Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry is a forum at the University of Chicago for experimental collaborations between artists and scholars. Gray Center activities take place all over campus (encompassing various divisions, departments, and programs), across the community, throughout the city, and beyond. Through its various programs—including Gray Center Fellowships,  The Gray Co-Lab for Arts and Science, exploratory research initiatives, the monthly Sidebar conversation series, Gray Sound, an experimental music and sound performance series, international conferences, and institutional collaborations—the Gray Center seeks to foster a culture of innovation and experimentation at the intersection of arts practice and scholarship.

Press contact: Mike Schuh, mikes1@uchicago.edu.