As an artist, a gay man, an AIDS victim, and a Cuban American, Felix Gonzalez-Torres roamed the periphery of our culture. But who put him there? Whose agenda draws the lines between marginal and mainstream? And once those lines are drawn, how does one lodge protest? In his poignant, political Install

Enigmatic, Flux, Minimal, Sardonic, Spectral

For Video artist Stan Douglas, the moment is always a multiple, layered event. Each moment speaks in chorus -- sometimes in harmony, sometimes not, but always in provocative juxtaposition. Take his 1994 piece entitled "Evening." On three screens that are almost cinematic in scope, three stations

Deconstructive, Distorted, Dystopic, Ironic, Layered, Political

Kara Walker uses the silhouette, that old parlor craft practiced by bonneted ladies, to create installations, prints, and paintings that stir intense controversy. The body of her work focuses on the antebellum South and the iconography and stereotypes surrounding African Americans, especially the ima

Figurative painting, Parody, Political, Severe, Violent

As a young man, Xu Bing developed an odd relationship to language. The son of a professor and a librarian, he spent his early years surrounded by books that he could not read. His school years coincided with the Cultural Revolution, when he and other children were sent off to camps to learn Mao's new

Absurd, Expatriate or third space artists, Subtle, Witty