After thirty-three years spent supervising inventory in a state-run home-supplies store in Brno, Czech Republic, Jana Šedá (1930–2007) retired and began to drift into a diminished old age. Widowed and living with her son and his family, she withdrew into asocial immobility, oversleeping, rarely speaking, and spending most of her waking hours watching TV. Her granddaughter, Czech artist Kateřina Šedá, began interviewing Jana regularly about her past and eventually cajoled her into making drawings of the hundreds of items she used to keep on the shelves of the store.

More than five hundred of the

The title of William Cordova’s exhibition at ThreeWalls, “the house that frank lloyd wright built for atahualpa, fred hampton y mark clark,” was the first clue that I might lack the knowledge necessary to recognize the artist’s varied references. Wright I got, but Atahualpa? Fred Hampton and Mark Clark sounded familiar—but maybe too familiar: They could be any Americans, and my grasp of US history is weak. Further poking around Cordova’s careful arrangement of small found-object sculptures and minimal collages unearthed further doubts: Tupac Shakur is a dead rapper, check, but Tupac Amaru? Who