Contributed by Lucas Moran / In times of great political upheaval and unrest, art has held us and guided us towards compassion. Picasso’s Guernica set the most titanic example of this in 1937. As we slide closer to authoritarianism and watch the world grow less familiar, artists continue the noble task of showing us how to live through it. Sasha Gordon set a tone in her recent show at Zwirner, depicting herself sitting on a lawn clipping her nails while the world – seemingly all we know – erupted in a mushroom cloud behind her. Less sardonic but in a similar warp are Alexis Rockman’s melting icecaps and Richard Mosse’s documentation of Amazonian deforestation. “Towards the Sun,” Heather Drayzen’s compelling solo show at My Pet Ram, feels just as urgent. The question she asks, though, isn’t What’s happening to us? but rather, What still matters?