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 EditorMichelle Im: Hello, GoodbyeDimin, 406 Broadway Floor 2, Tribeca, ManhattanThrough July 11Michelle Im, “Ju-Bi Eun-Bi (宙飛 恩飛)” (2025), ceramic, epoxy, acrylic, white gold luster, enamel (photo 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 HuRead the full review here.Renée Stout: Truth-tellingMarc Straus Gallery, 57 Walker Street, Tribeca, ManhattanThrough July 12Installation view of Renée Stout: Truth-telling at Marc Straus (2025) (photo 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 ZhangRead the full review here.Mestre Didi: Spiritual Form El Museo del Barrio, 1230 Fifth Avenue, East Harlem, ManhattanThrough July 13Mestre Didi, “Ceremonial staff,” detail (undated) (photo Natalie Haddad/Hyperallergic)“[Mestre Didi] foregrounded African diasporic perspectives in Brazilian art and asserted the presence of alternative modernisms in a Eurocentric art world.” —NHRead the full review here.Young Joon Kwak: RESISTERHOODLeslie-Lohman Museum of Art, 26 Wooster Street, Soho, ManhattanThrough July 27Young Joon Kwak, “Femmmes (Nic, Toria, Yara)” (2025) (photo 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 Read the full review here.