I know it’s going to be a good fall for art viewing when this list is painfully hard to narrow down.

How can I not have included Dala Nasser at the Renaissance Society or Deb Sokolow at Western Exhibitions? What about Rebecca Morris at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Rathin Barman at the Arts Club, or Nnaemeka Ekwelum, with collaborative projects on view at the South Side Community Art Center? The Terrain Biennial turns 10 out in Oak Park, Sapphire & Crystals celebrates its 36th anniversary at the Logan Center and the National Museum of Mexican Art marks the centennial birthday of the late, great Carlos Cortéz.

It was no easy task to choose just the following highlights so, yes, that was me sneaking in a few extras above:

“Susan Giles, Space Has Become This Material Thing”: In this Chicago artist’s past sculptures, architectural monuments have gone twisty, sideways and all jumbled together, as if they were malleable stuff. Now she’s studying hand gestures, turning the manual language of her subjects — young and old people who recently moved to new homes — into drawings and sculptures, giving permanent physical shape to ephemeral speech. Through Oct. 27 at Columbia College Chicago’s Glass Curtain Gallery, 1104 S. Wabash Ave; more information at 312-369-6643 and students.colum.edu

“Jimmy DeSana: Suburban”: A fixture of the New York downtown scene and an important contributor to queer mail art networks, DeSana’s career was cut tragically short in 1990 by AIDS, but recently revivified with a critically lauded retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum. The highlight of that show was this series, shot between 1979 and 1985, in which nearly nude bodies stage colorful messes of gender, behavioral, social and artistic norms. Prepare to see 12 of the funniest, sexiest photographs ever made. Through Oct. 28 at Document, 1709 W. Chicago Ave.; more information at 312-535-4555 and documentspace.com

“Earthly Visions: Inside the Climate Crisis”: Eight artists reveal their own approaches to the extreme weather, warming oceans, rampant pollution, species extinctions and material wastes that have become the reality of our planet. Tomás Saraceno indexes air pollution, Theo Cuthand envisions Indigenous futures, Jeremy Bolen visualizes proposed scientific solutions, Cydney Lewis and Nnenna Okore reimagine trash, Ursula Biemann and Lorraine Gilbert document communities that care for the land, and Terry Evans celebrates the hard-won health of Chicago-area landscapes. Through Dec. 16 at Gallery 400, 400 S. Peoria St.; more information at 312-996-6114 and gallery400.uic.edu

“William Estrada: Multiples & Multitudes”: Chicago has long been home to a multitude of social practice artists, and for the past two decades Estrada has been one of the most community-minded. In neighborhoods like Little Village and North Lawndale, he has toiled on his own and with collaborators to set up free family portrait studios; host summer art workshops and events; run pop-up printshops for radical messaging; bike and push around a mobile art cart, modeled on Mexican street food vendors but dispensing opportunities to create art; and teach bilingual art lessons for families as Maestro William on YouTube. Through Oct. 29 at Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave.; more information at 773-324-5520 and hydeparkart.org

“Life Cycles”: Some art takes the passage of life as its subject matter, but all artworks are themselves subject to changes throughout their own existence. Material, legality and meaning can all fluctuate, as can ownership — as when an art object is welcomed into an institutional collection such as DePaul Art Museum’s. It features vital work by a heterogeneous mix of modern and contemporary artists, including Gertrude Abercrombie, Richard Hull, Laurel Nakadate, Claire Zeisler and Abelardo Morell, plus 10 Chicago artists not (yet) in the museum’s collection. Through Feb. 11, 2024, at DePaul Art Museum, 935 W. Fullerton Ave.; more information at 773-325-7506 and resources.depaul.edu

“Native Futures”: Indigenous futurism isn’t just science fiction, it’s also reality, as envisioned by the more than one dozen established and emerging artists from the Great Lakes region featured in the inaugural exhibition of the Center for Native Futures. Chicago’s only all-Native artist-operated fine arts organization has hosted virtual events, done advising and mounted a standout booth at last year’s EXPO, but this fall marks the long-awaited opening of their permanent space in the Marquette Building and an opportunity to see what happens when traditional techniques are evolved by artists like Chris Pappan, Noelle Garcia, Tom Jones and June Carpenter. Sept. 16 through May 2024 at Center for Native Futures, 56 W. Adams St., Suite 102; more information at 773-519-3238 and centerfornativefutures.org

“entre horizontes: Art and Activism between Chicago and Puerto Rico”: Watery vistas aside, Chicago and Puerto Rico have in common generations of artists, many of them with socially and politically engaged practices. Prints, videos, paintings and sculptures — by Candida Alvarez, Angel Otero, José Lerma, Edra Soto and Rafael Ferrer, among others — share space with archival materials documenting related community movements, from the Young Lords to the Humboldt Park rebellion. Through May 5, 2024, at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 220 E. Chicago Ave.; more information at 312-280-2660 and visit.mcachicago.org

“Chicago Architecture Biennial 5: This is a Rehearsal”: Right on point with the international trend of collaborative curating, this year’s edition has been organized by local group the Floating Museum. CAB 5 takes as its theme the never-ending evolution of cities, and it promises to spread the art, ideas and design around town, with plenty of satellite events — including a new sculpture by the infamously playful Viennese collective Gelitin at the Neubauer Collegium and a group show about water at 6018North — in addition to expansive main presentations at the Cultural Center and the Graham Foundation. Various venues and dates, Sept. 21 through Feb. 11, 2024; more information at chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org

“Difference Machines: Technology and Identity in Contemporary Art”: The internet allows us to escape our bodies; the internet fuses our offline and online selves. The internet facilitates free expression and communication; the internet helps governments and corporations surveil our behavior, monetize our choices and control our possibilities. Seventeen artists — among them Keith Piper, Sondra Perry and Joiri Minaya — parse the difference, in works spanning three decades and everything from bioart experiments to online games and 3D printed sculptures. Oct. 13 through Dec. 16 at Wrightwood 659, 659 W. Wrightwood Ave.; more information at 773-437-6601 and wrightwood659.org

“Faith Ringgold: American People”: If today activism and art-making so often go hand in hand, craft is no longer pitted against the fine arts, and Black figuration has become the most significant trend, Ringgold is one of the great reasons why. The Harlem-born nonagenarian artist, author, educator and organizer made some of the boldest, most impactful artworks of the civil rights era and never stopped. This survey of her six-decades-long career — including her celebrated story quilts and “Black Light” series — is as welcome as it is overdue. Nov. 18 through Feb. 25, 2024 at MCA Chicago, 220 E. Chicago Ave.; more information at 312-280-2660 and visit.mcachicago.org

Lori Waxman is a freelance critic.