Playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht argued that art is not so much “a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” The exhibit of the 2016 Sondheim Artscape Finalists at the Baltimore Museum of Art includes a combination of both notions.

On one wall, for example, a display of quilts reflects the reality of sexual violence, while also trying to hammer home the need to confront that abuse and reclaim the dignity of the abused.

Around the corner, another entry in the show takes on racism by juxtaposing a bracing reality of the distant past with more recent images of people embracing the dream of a more sensitive, open world.

In another gallery, an artist's installation reminds us of the reality of official Catholic Church teachings regarding sex and orientation, even as it reveals the experiences of LGBT people welcomed at a parish in Baltimore.

An entry of video and photos takes the viewer back to 2015, holding up a mirror to life on the streets right after the days of the Freddie Gray-related unrest. But the images also seem, in a way, to invite us to reconsider everything about that trying time in a different light.

Other parts of the exhibit aren't as loaded with issues and implications, but are no less intriguing.

The jurors — Tim Griffin, executive director and chief curator at The Kitchen; Rujeko Hockley, assistant curator of contemporary art at the Brooklyn Museum; and Mia Locks, co-curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art's 2017 Whitney Biennial — may well have a tough time choosing one winner on July 9.

Here's a look at the finalists for the $25,000 Sondheim Artscape Prize, a program of the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts:

Theo Anthony

“My impulse was to grab a camera and go,” filmmaker and photographer Theo Anthony says about the rioting that broke out last year in Baltimore.

Some of what resulted from Anthony's documenting is included in “Peace in the Absence of War,” an absorbing 12-minute silent video of nonviolent scenes he shot between April 27 and May 2, 2015. It's the artist's response to what he viewed as a tendency by “outside media” to focus on imagery “that only contributed to a narrative of violence.”

His video shows the quiet, the waiting. A cat wanders a deserted street. The only animation at a boarded-up CVS store comes from the reflection of police lights on light poles.

Complementing the haunting footage are three strikingly lighted portraits, each titled “Cop Face,” capturing expressionless police officers in riot gear; one could be a robot, given how little of the officer's human features can be detected behind the helmet.

Other helmeted figures appear in photographs, including one of two young football players, their small forms outlined against a threatening sky.

For something completely different, there's “Day at the Races” in Mechanicsville, a wry slice-of-life silent video that artfully captures the ordinary.

“I try to get people at their most bored,” Anthony says, “the moment when the smile fades.”

Stephanie Barber

One gallery in the exhibit is devoted to a fanciful, witty installation by Baltimore-based multimedia artist Stephanie Barber. For a quarter, you can try out a gumball-type vending machine with little containers holding sentences from her essay, “Nature as a Metaphor for Economic, Emotional and Existential Horror.”

“I think that makes everything pretty clear,” Barber says of the title.

Found photographs fill three viewfinders. Mini-essays about nature are attached to the pictures.

One all-lower-case text, accompanying a shot of kids in paper hats sitting around a table, begins: “children are introduced to the spiritual and empathic benefits of zoomorphic practice.”

Barber's interest in nature and the way humans think about and interact with it animates “Lawn Poem,” a carpet of artificial grass dotted with cloth snakes. “I'm super-duper interested in snakes,” the artist says. “There is so much that is mystical and spiritual about them.”

Dominating this scene is a large video of a running tiger superimposed over constantly shifting photos from a design magazine of upscale living rooms; the animal seems to be endlessly seeking a way out.

“There are always art books on the tables in those photos,” Barber says.

“That's so you'll know this is not just some gaudy interior design, but really high-class.”

Darcie Book

“I'm in love with paint,” says Darcie Book.

That passion animates a collection of vibrant works created from shimmering latex paint. Applied to birch and vinyl, the paint appears to be still flowing.

Book, who likes to use stir sticks to shape the abstract pieces, reveals a keen sense of color and form. Some items take on floral shapes; others suggest fans or scarves. One large installation creates a kind of waterfall in shades of black, red and purple.

“I'm using paint as a sculptural material,” the Baltimore-based artist says.

That three-dimensional effect makes for a lively experience; there's an intriguing energy in every fold and crease of the paint.

Larry Cook

A video work by Landover-based Larry Cook bearing the loaded title “Stockholm Syndrome” deconstructs the notion of a postracial world. Juxtaposed with images from the TV series “Roots” (the original) and the more recent film “Twelve Years a Slave” is footage of people gathered in Chicago to celebrate the 2008 election of President Barack Obama.

“I use this framework to get at the evolutionary nature of racism,” Cook says, “at the same time confronting a complex web of half-truths and wishful thinking.”

Spelling out provocative neon messages is not a new artistic device, but the line Cook illuminates in white neon grabs attention in a fresh, telling way: “Some of My Best Friends are Black.”

The artist confronts religion in Plexiglas-encased pieces titled “Whitewashed,” one of them a traditional image of Jesus.

“People of African descent have a white deity,” Cooks says, “and the psychological effects of that are not considered enough.”

Cook's art challenges the viewer in multiple ways.

“The work is really a wake-up call,” he says.

FORCE:

Upsetting Rape Culture

Art does not get much more activist than the Baltimore-based initiative FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture, co-founded by Hannah Brancato and Rebecca Nagle. Through public art and social media, the organization has been tackling the issue of sexual violence since 2010.

In the tradition of the Names Project/AIDS Memorial Quilt, FORCE has an ongoing “Monument Quilt” that currently contains 1,500 8-foot-by-8-foot red fabric squares. A 50-square portion of that work fills an entire wall of the Sondheim exhibit.

The messages and images are sobering. One example: “I still remember vividly the sensation of your cold wet hand covering my mouth.” Another offers a graphic illustration of what it means for a woman to be reduced to a sex object.

“It's about removing the stigma,” Brancato says of the quilt project. “Sexual violence is so behind closed doors. We're saying it's a public issue and we all have to deal with it. These survivor stories on the quilt humanize it.”

FORCE will present a quilt-making session, workshops and performances from noon to 2 p.m. Sunday at the BMA.

Eric Kruszewski

An installation by Baltimore-born, Washington-based photographer and filmmaker Eric Kruszewski introduces visitors to members of the LGBT community who have found a welcome at what might seem an unlikely place.

A ministry at Baltimore's St. Matthew Roman Catholic Church called LEAD (LGBT Educating and Affirming Diversity), directed by the Rev. Joseph Muth Jr., is documented by Kruszewski in a series of videos collectively titled “The Lost Flock: Catholic Gays Struggle Between Church and Self.”

One of them is projected on a large screen in front of reclaimed pews. The others can be viewed individually on monitors embedded in wood lecterns, the kind seen near many an altar.

The artist, who was raised Catholic, met a parishioner at St. Matthew who asked if he would consider helping to tell the stories of individuals involved in LEAD.

“I hadn't attended church in some time,” Kruszewski says. “I went to a service and then a meeting of LEAD. I just felt so much warmth and openness. I thought these are voices that should be heard. I made countless trips to St. Matthew, and every time I left, I felt like I grew.”

Christos Palios

The Baltimore-born Greek-American photographer Christos Palios discovered striking subjects when visiting family in Greece. He was particularly taken with the many abandoned buildings he spotted in the country, resulting in a series of works titled “Un-finished//Contemporary Ruins.”

“A lot of the buildings I found serendipitously, taking back roads,” Palios says. “I call them stalled structures of progress.”

The stark images, including private homes once primed for expansion and a massive concrete edifice intended to be a customs house before construction stopped, reflect Greece's economic struggles. But they also speak to the desires of many Greeks “to build on and build up,” Palios says. “There is an ethos about these buildings.”

Also in the exhibit is a series of vividly composed still-life photos done in Greece called “Conversations” — people-less views of post-meal dinner tables, shot from above. Among all the plates and glasses, the fish bones and half-eaten desserts are cellphones, reminders that people now take their techno-devices everywhere, even to the family meal.

“I remember my 87-year-old grandfather picking up a flip phone to look at the time, even though he had a watch on,” Palios says.

tim.smith@baltsun.com