This fall, the Neubauer Collegium will present Soviet-born Israeli artist Zoya Cherkassky’s first solo exhibition in the US outside New York. Teasingly titled The Global Political Crisis, the exhibition will consist of a suite of erotic drawings in Cherkassky’s signature diaristic style and four large acrylic paintings with similarly sexually charged content, as well as an erotic sculpture and a small collection of jokey pornographic chotchkes. Touching on the vexed issue of free speech at a moment when political and cultural leaders seem to have very clear ideas about what art should say and do (or, just as patronizingly, what it shouldn’t say and do), Cherkassky’s humorous paean to the “joy of sex” offers a vision of everyday desire that stands in knowing, defiant contrast with the planetary polycrisis alluded to in the title. More than a mere escapist fantasy, Cherkassky’s foray into the age-old tradition of ars erotica symbolizes the importance of pleasure in our trying times – of joining the beleaguered forces of eros against a surging spirit of thanatos.