Art
The Politics of Sound in a Prison
Lawrence Abu Hamdan attempts to reconstruct the psycho-physical conditions in which prisoners lived at Syria’s Saydnaya prison by using recorded testimonials.
Review
Art
Refereeing Trump
Richard Kraft has classified Trump’s daily actions “in the fashion of a soccer referee,” assigning yellow and red cards to the President’s conduct.
Art
The Mesmerizing Mundane Objects of Ordinary North Korean Life
With North Korea so often discussed only in terms of extremes, this exhibit's focus on the mundane is what makes it so fascinating.
Art
Tantalizing Quilts Woven with Poetic, Political Messages
The artists in Piecework embed intriguing, coded messages into their quilts.
Art
An Art Collection Fit for an Executed King
Underpinning this exhibition of work from the collection of the executed king is a focused arrangement that allows the political events of the time to be told through the narrative of the collection’s history.
Art
Paintings of Toxic Landscapes Where Politics and Aesthetics Are in Perfect Balance
Greg Lindquist's landscape paintings, rendered in a range of queasy-making yellows and greens, address air and water pollution from coal-powered plant emissions.
Film
40 Strangers Meet in a Deeply Uncomfortable Documentary
In Leigh Ledare's new film The Task, his subjects are not only aware of their participation in an art project, but openly speak about it.
Art
A Symphony of Delicate and Colorful Concrete Forms
Cathy Hsiao's concrete sculptures, currently on view at Chicago gallery Goldfinch, possess a surprising airiness.
Art
The Politics and Repercussions of Color in Two Exhibitions
Edgar Arceneaux complicates the viewer's relationship to the history of blackface, and Yishai Jusidman depicts his particular vision of the Holocaust.
Art
Looking to Cuba's Past to Fabricate Tomorrow's Utopia
Adiós Utopia memorializes the driving utopian conceit of contemporary Cuban art, its galleries a testament to the credulity of this dream.
Art
Alexis Rockman Paints the Past and Possible Futures of the Great Lakes
In an exhibition at the Grand Rapids Art Museum, Rockman portrays the histories and environmental crises of the world's largest freshwater ecosystem.
Books
A Graphic Novel Tells the Story of David Bowie, Orgies and All
With a nod to Heinz Edelmann and Milton Glaser, Néjib illustrates a couple of formative years in the life of David Bowie.