A scene from Mika Rottenberg's Still from Dough, 2005-2006.    (Photo: Courtesy Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery)

9. Mika Rottenberg, at Nicole Klagsbrun
It’s rare to see art about gender politics that doesn’t feel heavy-handed. Rottenberg’s video installation Dough showed an obese woman in a sweatshop-like setting whose tears, stimulated by allergies and conveyed through an assembly line, caused bread to rise. It was a fascinating New York solo-gallery debut by the 2004 Columbia MFA grad, who transforms women’s bodies into Rube Goldberg machines—a bizarre commentary on the division of labor.