Bibiana Suarez at the Hyde Park Art Center

Bibiana Suárez’s version of Memory, the matching card game, isn’t entirely different from the 1980s edition that I remember. The Chicago artist’s 100-plus large-scale cards include images of fruit, flowers and animals. But there are no stickers saying for export only on the fruit in Milton Bradley’s Memory, and the Taco Bell Chihuahua isn’t among the animals I recall.

Suárez, a DePaul professor who was born in Puerto Rico, parodies Memory to address the challenges facing America’s Latino population. Racism, anti-immigration panic and economic injustice shape many of her hand-painted, collaged or digitally printed works, which are beautifully executed but—considered together—a little too simplistic.

The artist arranges her cards in a game in progress that covers three gallery walls, leaving some unturned. The backs of these Texto/Naming cards spell out 39 names for Latinos ranging from neutral terms to slurs. Unlike the original Memory, “Memoria” emphasizes complementary rather than identical pairs. As they notice the subtle shifts within dyads, viewers think harder about Suárez’s message. Two cards depict a smiling girl: Though her features are the same in both images, one painting portrays her as Caucasian, the other as dark-skinned. Would we react the same way to the two in real life? (The blond white girl is the artist’s daughter. So much for stereotypes.)

Though Suárez’s board-game format makes her work unusually accessible, it prevents her from addressing Latino issues and history in depth. One card reproduces a 1956 photograph of braceros—Mexican guest workers—being sprayed with DDT as they enter the U.S., but “Memoria” provides little context for this horrifying scene. Fortunately, Suárez leads discussions throughout the show’s run, including Saturday 11 at the HPAC, so such episodes won’t be forgotten.