[excerpt] "Over at the Chico Art Center, the recently opened Uncovering a Resistance exhibit features works by Kyle Campbell, Oni Dakini, Gini Holmes and Ryan Ramos, four local artists with “limited exposure” united under one theme. As juror Jacob Meders put it in his show statement, it’s “art as resistance or as artists having critical conversations with their community.” Through Dakini’s expressionist palette of mixed-media on canvas, a woman stares out from “Dakini Dances,” defiant and tough, with a poignant wariness and surrounded by flora, snakes, skulls and other female profiles. In the center, a collaged scrap with an explanation of the symbolic nature of the sacred dakini female spirit is juxtaposed with a plain scrap with a penciled rifle, offering a contradiction of color and imagery.

In “Briefcase Full of Guts,” Campbell has placed a dozen white lead-crystal hand grenades in a protective black case, deeming them a precious commodity despite their deathly impact. And in “Fortifying the American Dream (Gates),” he has four powder-coated cast-iron picket fences suspended by ceiling wires, raising this symbol of life’s success beyond the grasp of many.

Ramos’ finely drawn colored pencil on paper “Amor” offers a tongue-in-cheek rendering of a Mexican man whose come-hither look beckons from underneath a blue sombrero.

Lastly, Holmes voices her take on women’s issues and politics in “Three Jobs.” For the piece, she has embroidered over a heat-transferred image on handmade paper and then attached it to a dinner plate for a multi textured effect. The image is of a woman working in a field from an 1888 etching, “The Portionless Girl,” and it’s encircled with a quote from a comment former President George W. Bush once made to a divorced Nebraska mother of three: “You work three jobs? … [t]hat is fantastic that you’re doing that.”

Sarcastic? Oh, yes. And an effective example of pointed resistance."