Hirshhorn Announces Exhibition Devoted to Next Generation of Performance Artists
April 18, 2018
Hirshhorn Announces Exhibition Devoted to Next Generation of Performance Artists
Museum’s First Live Performance Series Features New and Recent Works by Moriah Evans, Morgan Bassichis, Will Rawls, Jen Rosenblit and Mariana Valencia
June 21–Aug. 12, 2018
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has announced “Does the body rule the mind, or does the mind rule the body?,” the first exhibition in the museum’s history to focus on live performance art, on view June 21–Aug. 12. Curated by Mark Beasley, the museum’s curator of media and performance art, “Does the body” presents new and recent works by leading performance artists who mix avant-garde gesture with popular culture, expressed through the rigor and dynamism of contemporary dance.
This film and live performance series will bring together five performers who work with dance, music and spoken word—Moriah Evans, Morgan Bassichis, Will Rawls, Jen Rosenblit and Mariana Valencia—to explore ideas of the body and identity. The works will be presented as a series of intimate dance and music performances designed specifically for the Hirshhorn’s circular galleries.
“Does the body” stages the live performances alongside a larger ongoing presentation of moving image documentaries and recorded works that offer an introduction to the work of this contemporary generation of American artists. Each piece is inherently social, inviting visitors connect to the artists and to each other through playfulness, movement, humor, control and liberation. Together, they challenge notions of how people construct identity through pop culture and the histories they tell each other.
“It’s very exciting to present the Hirshhorn’s first exhibition dedicated entirely to performance,” Beasley said. “This is a new generation of American performers who exactingly blend the history of avant-garde music and form with pop culture in order to challenge constructed social relations in order to suggest how we might better ‘dance together.’”
All performances will be free, with tickets required, unless otherwise noted. Evans’ “Be My Muse” will offer advance reservations for members of the public who wish to experience performing with the artist.
Jen Rosenblit, “I’m gonna need another one” (2018)
June 29; 7 p.m.: Hirshhorn Member exclusive preview
June 30; 7 p.m.: public debut
Rosenblit is a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow, choreographer and dancer whose work engages bodies, architecture and ideas of desire and autonomy. She will debut “I’m gonna need another one” (2018), a new work in which she inhabits five distinct characters from a wheat farmer to Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz through costumes, props and vivid theatrics.
Mariana Valencia, “Album” (2018)
July 12 and 13; 7 p.m.
Valencia, whose perfomances encompass ethnography and cross-cultural identity, will perform “Album” (2018), a solo work in which she presents a herstory through a choral surround of original songs, dance and monologues. Valencia is a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award to to Artists grantee (2018), a Jerome Travel and Study Grant Fellow (2014) and has presented her work nationally and internationally in Serbia and Macedonia.
Morgan Bassichis, “Me But Also Everybody (Part IV)” (2018)
July 19; 6:30 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Bassichis, who performs live comedic stories that explore history and mysticism, will present an intense solo work for piano and voice in the Hirshhorn’s Lerner Room that blends stand-up comedy, music and raw personal therapy. A composer, singer, comedian and cabaret artist, he has performed at Artists Space, Danspace Project, Dixon Place, MoMA PS1, Poetry Project, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art and the Whitney Museum.
Will Rawls, “Cursor” (2018)
July 26 and 27; 3 p.m.
“Cursor” was developed through a 2018 residency at Issue Project Room in NYC. Rawls takes the ubiquitous figure of the keyboard cursor as a guideline to investigate his work that encompasses dance, writing, voice and objects. Rawls speculates upon the cursor as a kind of body, describing the ephemeral unit as “a protagonist and an expectant messenger.” A choreographer, writer and performer, Rawls frequently explores the relationship between dance and blackness, ambiguity and abstraction. He has presented his work at The Chocolate Factory, MoMA PS1, Performa 15, The Whitney Museum of American Art, ImpulsTanz and Portland Institute of Contemporary Art. He is recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant and a New York Dance and Performance Award (“Bessie”) for Emerging Choreographer.
Moriah Evans, “Be My Muse” (2016)
Aug. 6–10; 11 a.m., noon, 2 p.m., 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. on the hour
As a choreographer, Evans interrogates dance’s complex history and structure with an exciting, expansive sense of the art form. In “Be My Muse,” Evans will occupy the Hirshhorn’s circular gallery for five days with a series of 49-minute performances. For each performance, she will expose her process to a series of interventions and opinions from museum visitors, producing an open choreography regulated both by time and the intimate, momentary exchanges between two people. “Be My Muse” examines the construction of a solo performance while redefining expressions of power, control, dominance, submission, and the authority of the artist.
About the Hirshhorn
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is the national museum of modern and contemporary art and a leading voice for 21st-century art and culture. Part of the Smithsonian, the Hirshhorn is located prominently on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. With nearly 12,000 paintings, sculptures, photographs, mixed-media installations, works on paper and new media works, its holdings encompass one of the most important collections of postwar American and European art in the world. The Hirshhorn presents diverse exhibitions and offers an array of public programs on the art of our time––free to all, 364 days a year. For more information, visit hirshhorn.si.edu.
Image: Will Rawls, “Cursor,” 2018. Courtesy of the artist
