For the Streets of New York City
October 12–31, 2021
Artists: Kevin Beasley, Ericka Beckman, Sara Cwynar, Danielle Dean, Madeline Hollander, Andrés Jaque, Tschabalala Self, and Shikeith
Performa, the first and only live visual art performance biennial, is pleased to announce details for the ninth edition of its city-wide biennial. Taking place almost entirely outdoors from October 12–31, the program will focus on New York City as it re-emerges from a prolonged traumatic experience that has radically altered our way of life, affecting the larger social infrastructure as well as the everyday details of our day-to-day existence. The Performa 2021 Biennial will feature new live performances by Kevin Beasley, Ericka Beckman, Sara Cwynar, Danielle Dean, Madeline Hollander, Andrés Jaque (Office for Political Innovation), Tschabalala Self, and Shikeith. For the first time in its 16-year history, the entire Biennial will be open to the public free of charge, and will be live streamed.
Set against Manhattan’s skyscrapers, Pictures Generation artist Ericka Beckman will present STALK, an alternative version of the fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk in which workers revolt against capitalist domination. Kevin Beasley will stage his first outdoor live performance at a downtown Manhattan intersection: using microphones to magnify the faint sounds that usually disappear into the white noise of Manhattan, Beasley will “play” the street and its inhabitants back to audiences.
Artist and choreographer Madeline Hollander will collaborate with 25 professional dancers from New York City’s iconic dance companies who were forced to cancel performances due to the pandemic shutdown, and interweave these cancelled choreographies as an ode to the dancers of New York City. Pittsburgh-based artist Shikeith will present his first major performance: an experimental opera that brings together a gospel choir, dancers, instrumentalists and a musical score drawing from Black spiritual practices, to recontextualize dominant ideas of Black masculinity. Tschabalala Self will present her first live performance, an intimate play about a couple, taking place on a sculptural stage in a Harlem park that incorporates the iconography of Self’s paintings, including brightly colored geometric patterns and allusions to human figures.
British-American artist Danielle Dean will bring together a cast of online gig workers and actors to revisit events that took place at Fordlândia, a short-lived rubber plantation established by Henry Ford in the Amazon in the 1920s, drawing connections to the global monopoly of Amazon. Architect Andrés Jaque (Office for Political Innovation) will create a performance exploring New York’s use of UltraClear™ glass, an environmentally toxic yet highly sought-after new building material that has superior optical clarity, creating the illusion of “clear skies.” For her first live performance, Sara Cwynar will illustrate how image and language are used to create false social and political realities—online and in real life—to address the overwhelming media bombardment that we experience in contemporary society.
RoseLee Goldberg, Founding Director & Chief Curator, comments: “Each artist has barrelled through the limitations and pressures that this period has imposed on us all, as well as their working methods as artists, to arrive at poignant and inspiring productions that will reveal very different facets of the city. The ninth edition of the Performa Biennial will capture the powerful energy that drives New Yorkers and will show that its artists and art communities are as resilient and bold as ever.”
Kathy Noble, Senior Curator & Head of Curatorial Affairs, continues: “This year we are looking at New York anew through the lens of the artist’s eyes, while supporting them to make works they would not be able to make in a traditional brick and mortar institution. We chose to focus on mostly New York based artists, to think about the city, its communities, and its transformation.”
The Performa 2021 Biennial is curated by RoseLee Goldberg, Founding Director and Chief Curator, Kathy Noble, Senior Curator and Head of Curatorial Affairs, Charles Aubin, Senior Curator and Head of Publications, Job Piston, Associate Curator at Large; and produced by Esa Nickle, Managing Director and Executive Producer, and Sasha Okshteyn, Senior Producer.
Press contact: performa [at] culturalcounsel.com
