RECOMMENDED Mexico City’s premier neighborhood for the underclass, Tepito is at the farthest remove from social despair and breakdown. As Francisco Mata Rosas, who “camped out” in the “barrio bravo” for two years, eloquently demonstrates in his 100 vivid color performance portraits against pure white backgrounds, Tepito’s denizens—male and female, young and old, gay and straight—are tough cookies with a flair for making the detritus of consumer capitalism into bold and radically idiosyncratic fashion statements. To his great credit, Mata Rosas imposes neither a humanist nor a freakish filter on his subjects; he lets them posture and vogue at their own whim and will—and they are better at directing themselves than any auteur would be at giving them orders. Imagine a perfectly relaxed middle-age skinhead hunk slouching in jeans and a t-shirt emblazoned with the hammer-and-sickle and a red star. (Michael Weinstein) Through November 9 at La Llorona Gallery
Repurposing AI: A Review of Stephanie Dinkins at Stamps Gallery While this show is timely for everyone, I consider its setting within a university art gallery and emerging tech hub like the city of Ann Arbor a subversive provocation which Dinkins invites the greater public—including members of the university community—to consider our own positionality to AI and technology.
Lost in Translation: A Review of Crip* at Gallery 400 The strongest works in the exhibition succinctly express the ways the artist relates to their own body while calling out how the artist’s body and body of work has been perceived or coded against norms or ideals.
