Police and Thieves at the Hyde Park Art Center

The U.S. imprisons a greater percentage of its citizens than any other country—and one need only look at Amitis Motevalli’s installation Shohadha for proof that American law enforcement is imperfect. Framing her stenciled portraits in a backdrop evoking Islamic ornament, the Los Angeles artist portrays contemporary “martyrs” killed needlessly by police. Sheriffs “claimed that [Christian Portillo] was a wanted drug dealer, yet everyone knew he was not,” Motevalli writes in an explanatory text. “He was my friend.”

Curated by Karla Diaz and Mario Ybarra Jr., “Police and Thieves” presents powerful indictments of police brutality and prisons by L.A. and Chicago artists. In Los Angeles Poverty Department’s videotaped performance State of Incarceration (2010), actors (many of them ex-convicts) play prisoners and guards in a gallery filled wall to wall with bunk beds—just as a California jail would be. The video conveys such an environment’s mind-warping claustrophobia and sadism with devastating efficacy.

“Police and Thieves” would be stronger, however, if it offered more insight into the former’s perspective. (At least one respected Chicago artist is also a cop.) Pieces such as Shohadha and Ray “CRO” Noland’s Officer Frugoli leave viewers angry about the bigotry and corruption undermining our justice system. Noland’s damning stencil of Frugoli, accused of killing two people in a drunk-driving accident, might be accurate. But this show’s uniformly monstrous cops make its nuanced portraits of criminals harder to appreciate.