This week, some of our favorite shows explore spirituality, magic, and transformation — concepts that the modern and contemporary art world has not always been open to, though they’ve long haunted art. For artist Mestre Didi, art and spirituality were inextricable, but he also worked to increase the presence of African diasporic artists in Brazil and international art institutions. Similarly, Renée Stout coaxes out the magic in the everyday with her bewitching assemblages, many of which draw on her African diasporic heritage, while Young Joon Kwak uses glitter and rhinestones as metaphors for the body and self in a state of transformation. Meanwhile, Michelle Im’s art speaks to another kind of magic, that of hiding one’s true feelings behind a smile for all society to see. —Natalie Haddad, Reviews Editor
Michelle Im: Hello, Goodbye
Dimin, 406 Broadway Floor 2, Tribeca, Manhattan
Through July 11
“[T]he smiles of Im’s figures, which are literally painted on, lead one to wonder what fatigues or resentments they might be concealing.” —Li-Ming Hu
Renée Stout: Truth-telling
Marc Straus Gallery, 57 Walker Street, Tribeca, Manhattan
Through July 12
“Stout’s work recovers the cultic sense of art as simultaneously embedded in everyday life and conduits to magic, as if the works are tapped into some unseen undercurrent.” —Lisa Yin Zhang
Mestre Didi: Spiritual Form
El Museo del Barrio, 1230 Fifth Avenue, East Harlem, Manhattan
Through July 13
“[Mestre Didi] foregrounded African diasporic perspectives in Brazilian art and asserted the presence of alternative modernisms in a Eurocentric art world.” —NH
Young Joon Kwak: RESISTERHOOD
Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, 26 Wooster Street, Soho, Manhattan
Through July 27
“The artworks themselves remind me of glitter, and of trans and nonbinary existence — and, to be honest, of the universe itself.” —AX Mina
