To tell history as a single story leaves out many voices. El Otro Lado, or the other side, attempts to assuage the thankless void left by so many people’s untold tales by giving them a voice—and a visualization.

Total Disinformation Awareness is an exhibition about information: its proliferation and concealment in a computerized age. It’s also about a distinctly American shared mythos born out of 9.11, beneath the glare of then-tube, now-digital TVs.

Susan York’s handful of minimalist works are big, black and queer. They sneak around the space in corners, on the floor, in and on walls. Sometimes, they tiptoe barely a whit from the blank walls or hover just a finger’s length from the floor.

The process in both Yozo Suzuki’s Gambit: An Opening Move and David Kimball Anderson’s In Nature is laid bare. What the exhibitions are intended for is more nebulous—but definitely not the point.

Art is often used as a stand-in for historical information. To be clichéd, a picture’s 1,000 words fill in, correctly or not, so many muted expanses of an ever-fleeting past. Historical information, on the other hand, rarely stands in for art.

When Bravo aired Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, the art world let out a collective groan. Criticism abounded, but we suspect the laments had less to do with critical upset and more reflect high-brow disdain for reality shows.

Archives, ideally, provide insight into the past. Through the information they contain, they have the potential to illuminate dark corners of shared history. Blending Archives, however, is more personal.

In regard to his decision to mine two huge gashes into the Virgin River Mesa, earth artist Michael Heizer in 1967 explained, “The position of art as a malleable barter-exchange item falters as the cumulative economic structure gluts.

Pop surrealism consists of art that is frequently loved but rarely appreciated. The movement takes pop art detritus and combines it with surrealist principles for work that includes, but is not limited to, comic books, lowrider decals, tattoos and anything else normally considered lowbrow.

Cultural objects can be inspiring—especially other cultures’ objects. They also can be easily appropriated, and it’s often hard to tell where influence ends and theft begins. That said, the two simultaneous exhibitions at Linda Durham Contemporary Art share thematic ties, stark beauty and a complicated Asia fetish.