Upcoming performances

Commissioned and produced by High Line Art, High Line Performances are a series of live, often participatory events that transform the park into an open-air theater. This series has previously featured works by artists including Kevin Beasley, Simone Forti, Maria Hassabi, Alison Knowles, David Lamelas, Ryan McNamara, Benjamin Patterson, Mungo Thomson, Naama Tsabar, and the Trisha Brown Dance Company, among others.

Jesús “Bubu” Negrón (b. 1975, Barceloneta, Puerto Rico) presents a new iteration of The Back Portrait, his ongoing drawing project wherin he draws the backs of willing visitors, gives the sitter the original drawing, and keeps a photocopy for himself. This work was conceived for the Fiesta de la Calle San Sebastián in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 2000, where Negrón took on the role of a street sketch artist, but solely focusing on visitors’ backs. He sold each portrait on a sliding scale, depending on the financial situation of the participant. When the project travelled to Art Miami in 2002, The Back Portrait became Negrón’s act of rebellion within the art fair, displayed among high-priced, inaccessible artworks.

Alexandra Pirici (b. 1982, Bucharest, Romania) invites a group of performers to build a moving, porous threshold at the gate separating the eastern and western Rail Yards on the High Line. For the work, Pirici creates an embodied and flexible architectural “boundary” from the performers’ bodies, but one that can be negotiated and transformed. The performers’ movements reference historical and aesthetic thresholds both real and imagined, with different functions, such as a barricade from the Paris Commune and the fictional borders built by war and conflict in Francisco Goya’s iconic “Disasters of War” prints. As the performers’ bodies and movements shift, passersby will be able to pass through, but not without having to encounter the performers in one way or another.

12 Shouts to the Ten Forgotten Heavens is a three-year iterative performance project by Sibyl Kempson with her theater company 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co. Presented at the Whitney on 12 occasions, 12 Shouts marks each solstice and equinox occurring between March 2016 and December 2018, creating a new ceremonial calendar and a contemporary mythology. Kempson’s 2017 Autumnal Equinox performance begins with doll-making workshops in the lobby of the Whitney, traverses the museum’s outdoor area, and culminates in an itinerant performance by eight dancers on the High Line. Elaborating on themes explored through her previous performances—sacrifice, death, and reaping—Kempson further delves into ritual and animist narratives while also celebrating the flora on the High Line with the performers’ costumes designed by visual artist Suzanne Bocanegra.*

About High Line Art
Presented by Friends of the High Line, High Line Art commissions and produces public art projects on and around the High Line. Founded in 2009, High Line Art presents a wide array of artwork including site-specific commissions, exhibitions, performances, video programs, and a series of billboard interventions. Curated by Cecilia Alemani, the Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art, and produced by Friends of the High Line, High Line Art invites artists to think of creative ways to engage with the uniqueness of the architecture, history, and design of the High Line and to foster a productive dialogue with the surrounding neighborhood and urban landscape.

Support
Major support for High Line Art comes from Donald R. Mullen, Jr. and The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston. Additional funding is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and Dorothy Lichtenstein. High Line Art is supported, in part, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council and from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

*Please check art.thehighline.org for confirmed time and location.