Finally, we have a brutally realistic, yet beautiful large-format photo-documentary of China, done by an American, that depicts with admirable precision the profound contradictions of that country’s development into a super-power. Following in the footsteps of Joel Sternfeld, who brought street photography into the American boondocks, Daniel Traub has chosen to photograph the marginal spaces where desperate migrants from China’s hinterland mix uneasily with nouveaux-riches exurbanites on the “city’s edge.” Nothing can top Traub’s shot of a refuse-ridden migrant encampment on the outskirts of Beijing that is nestled in the woods and outdoes, along the same trajectory, any decrepit rural American trailer park, spent mattresses and all. This is not the China of starry-eyed Westerners eager to capture a past that never was, or of the rising contingent of Chinese hyper-postmodernists; it is the reality of inequality and rising expectations that the vaunted Olympics will do nothing to solve. (Michael Weinstein)
Daniel Traub, “City’s Edge,” shows at Catherine Edelman Gallery, 300 West Superior, (312)266-2350, through August 29.
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.
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.
