The art of puppetry expresses what living things can't, The Contemporary Museum's curator, Jay Jensen, said during a gallery tour. He wasn't referring to actions, for puppetry references the motions of living things, but politics and meaning.

The audience is attracted to the power of what puppetry symbolizes, and by the atmosphere of fantasy that condenses around it.

Work in "The Puppet Show" ranges from the clearly recognizable tradition of ventriloquist dummies and Muppets to robots running amok and human beings ritually reduced to prosthetics and automatons. Between these extremes of figurative representation are shadow puppets, surrealist performance sets, twisted expressions of the familiar and colossal, anatomical abstractions.

Though the stories these puppets tell, many through animation and video, are not for children, "The Puppet Show" isn't about sensationalism or shock value. It is in line with one of the West's most treasured puppet narratives: Punch and Judy. Just as Mr. Punch rages through his play brutally assaulting everyone up to and including the Devil with his man-sized stick, the artists in "The Puppet Show" attack our sensibilities with both subtlety and ferocity.

The show opens with a little mountain of floral and vegetative patterns and translucent textiles tenuously connected to the ceiling by string and rope. It is unclear whether this is a stage curtain about to rise, a cloak over some other figure, or an even more abstract figure awaiting activation in Anne Chu's "Landscape Marionette II." Though not culturally specific, Chu reminds us that many people consider the land itself to have ears, eyes and limbs and, therefore, agency; the military history bombed into the body of Kaho'olawe and Pele's current venting of sulphur dioxide come to mind. Chu's piece demonstrates that a puppet needn't necessarily be based on the physical expressions of people or animals.

In a similar vein, Pierre Huyghe's "This is Not A Time for Dreaming" brings architecture itself to life, as it explores the politics and conflict behind the construction of Le Corbusier's only work built in North America. In this video, powerfully shot and directed with all the conventions of narrative cinema, the artist himself is rendered as a puppet manipulating other historical figures while buildings grow and fold, tornadoes of bureaucracy form and collapse, and vines overtake everything.

Cara Walker demonstrates another way that historical narratives can become puppets. Her videos "Testimony" and "8 Possible Beginnings" bring her Victorian cut-out silhouettes to life, reversing the balance of power in the pre-Civil War American South. The masters of the big house, identified by the racial profiles cut by their hats, beards and facial features, are beaten and sexually assaulted as they beg for mercy (or more?) from leering pickaninnies. Figures are lynched by folktale animals Br'er Rabbit and Br'er Fox, and the tree doesn't seem too happy about it. Walker, visibly manipulating the scenes in the shadows, crafts a revenge fantasy and harsh critique that expresses the monstrosity of slavery on behalf of those who descended from this era on either side of the ownership line.

Evidently, the strings of history are difficult to sever, particularly when people in the present cannot or will not express themselves in reference to its ongoing influences. South African artist William Kentridge, famous for his animations commenting on the effects of apartheid, understands this situation intimately. "Ubu Tells the Truth," his collaboration with the Handspring Puppet Company, joins the narrative of Alfred Jarry's 1896 "Ubu Roi" (an over-the-top satirical tale of a murderous, gluttonous, power-hungry tyrant) with the actualities of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation hearings. These hearings exposed the entire nation — particularly the privileged White minority — to the documented brutality of the apartheid regime. Puppets intermingling with live actors allow "Ubu Tells the Truth" to grasp the reality of South Africa's past without being overwhelmed by literal re-presentations or re-enactments.

If Walker and Kentridge are using puppetry to explore issues of human rights, there are many works that reverse the current and explore what we might call puppet rights.

Christian Janowski's "Puppet Conference" is a send-up of academic conferences, featuring puppet stars such as Fozzie Bear, Grover and Lambchop.

Charlie White's photograph "The Persuaders" features a natty brown "monster," a ski-capped thug and a brain-damaged green thing. It represents the apprehension that people feel about puppets by granting them a menacing agency as they surround a repulsed-looking human female.

Laurie Simmons' "The Music of Regret (Meryl)" features actress Meryl Streep surrounded by ventriloquist dummies: empty-eyed male suitors who appear to be admiring her and infecting her with their gaze. Streep is posing as Simmons, who in "The Music of Regret V" is still surrounded and renders herself a dummy as well.

With so many things in our world that mask and control human decisions — voicemail trees, computer viruses, Facebook accounts, and the electoral college — it's a confusing time to consider puppets. If the power of the puppet lies in expressing what we can't or won't, then what exactly does an actual person become when he or she is subject to "off stag" or "background" control and influence? Corporations, cars and governments are nonliving structures with joints, faces, limbs, personalities and costumes; they are puppets that we supposedly control! Why is it, then, that so often we experience their power flowing in the opposite direction? Because when we are unable or unwilling to express ourselves, we become less than puppets, we become slaves.

Though we remain controlled spectators in "The Puppet Show" and can't become puppeteers, these artists have created a window into a world that reminds us that great power comes from the creation of effigies, mimics, caricatures, and characters built and manipulated from the shadows.

David A.M. Goldberg is a cultural critic and writer.