This week, a few of our favourite exhibits discover spirituality, magic, and transformation — ideas that the trendy and modern artwork world has not all the time been open to, although they’ve lengthy haunted artwork. For artist Mestre Didi, artwork and spirituality have been inextricable, however he additionally labored to extend the presence of African diasporic artists in Brazil and worldwide artwork establishments. Equally, Renée Stout coaxes out the magic within the on a regular basis together with her bewitching assemblages, a lot of which draw on her African diasporic heritage, whereas Younger Joon Kwak makes use of glitter and rhinestones as metaphors for the physique and self in a state of transformation. In the meantime, Michelle Im’s artwork speaks to a different form of magic, that of hiding one’s true emotions behind a smile for all society to see. —Natalie Haddad, Evaluations Editor
Michelle Im: Whats up, Goodbye
Dimin, 406 Broadway Flooring 2, Tribeca, ManhattanThrough July 11
Michelle Im, “Ju-Bi Eun-Bi (宙飛 恩飛)” (2025), ceramic, epoxy, acrylic, white gold luster, enamel (picture Li-Ming Hu/Hyperallergic)
“[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
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Renée Stout: Fact-telling
Marc Straus Gallery, 57 Walker Road, Tribeca, ManhattanThrough July 12
Set up view of Renée Stout: Fact-telling at Marc Straus (2025) (picture Lisa Yin Zhang/Hyperallergic)
“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
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Mestre Didi: Non secular Type
El Museo del Barrio, 1230 Fifth Avenue, East Harlem, ManhattanThrough July 13
Mestre Didi, “Ceremonial staff,” element (undated) (picture Natalie Haddad/Hyperallergic)
“[Mestre Didi] foregrounded African diasporic perspectives in Brazilian art and asserted the presence of alternative modernisms in a Eurocentric art world.” —NH
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Younger Joon Kwak: RESISTERHOOD
Leslie-Lohman Museum of Artwork, 26 Wooster Road, Soho, ManhattanThrough July 27
Younger Joon Kwak, “Femmmes (Nic, Toria, Yara)” (2025) (picture AX Mina/Hyperallergic)
“The artworks themselves remind me of glitter, and of trans and nonbinary existence — and, to be honest, of the universe itself.” —AX Mina
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