performance art – Art Spiel

February 11, 2026February 10, 2026, by Michal Gavish

John Kelly: A FRIEND GAVE ME A BOOK at PPOW

I walked into the PPOW gallery the morning my friend Riki died. The 182-panel illustrated small drawings by New York artist John Kelly, which extend as an open graphic memoir around the gallery, captured me instantly, letting me in on a personal journey of mortality, pain, and beauty. There was something generous in the way Kelly handed his notebook and shared the manuscript of his injury. It resonated with my thoughts of investigating and dwelling on mourning and mortality.

November 21, 2025December 1, 2025, by William Corwin

Shervone Neckles: Steeping Memory

We do rely on art for healing purposes, but art that directly heals often requires a performative component. That is not to say that it delivers results, but there needs to be an interactive element in which the art appears to “give back” to the viewer. I visited the shrine of St. Anthony in Padua, for me, it was mostly to see the Donatello altarpiece and the Antonio and Tullio Lombardo friezes, but it was impossible to ignore the numerous worshippers at the shrine, their foreheads resting against the saint’s sarcophagus, inserting small pieces of paper with requests for St. Anthony. For nine years, Shervone Neckles has wheeled her healing cart — the Creative Wellness Gathering Station throughout the five boroughs and dispensed potions to fascinated and grateful onlookers.

May 27, 2025May 28, 2025, by Etty Yaniv

Wherever I Lay My Head at the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning

In Dialogue

Group picture(Members in picture from left to right): Euijin V. Ra (artist), Julia D. Shaw (artist), Courteny Symone Staton (artist), Laura OsCam (artist), Sherwin Banfield (Program Manager), TEDF (artist), Marleen Moise (artist).

Wherever I Lay My Head, now on view at The Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning , began with an invitation to Indira A. Abiskaroon to curate the culminating ARTWorks exhibition. The offer came from Program Manager Sherwin Banfield and was formalized in conversation with Director of Program Operations Wendy Arimah Berot. Abiskaroon’s first priority was to spend time with the ARTWorks Fellows—to learn how their practices had developed over the course of the program and to hear what ideas had been resonating in their weekly sessions.

May 21, 2025May 18, 2025, by Elizabeth Johnson

Lance Rautzhan and Cabin Contemporary

In conversation

Lance Rautzhan standing in front of Cabin Contemporary. Photo courtesy of Cabin Contemporary

Established in June 2022, Cabin Contemporary culls local, urban, and international artists for solo and group exhibitions, hosting contemporary art concepts and dialogue in a rural context, from April through October. Multidisciplinary artist and educator Lance Rautzhan curates exhibits of installation, new media, painting, and outsider art in an outbuilding on his family farm near the Appalachian Trail, Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, and Pennsylvania State Game Lands.

April 23, 2025April 27, 2025, by Yasmeen Abdallah

Care / Condition / Control at 601Artspace

In Dialogue

Works by John Coplans (left) Jarret Key (center) and Melissa Stern (right). Photo courtesy of Etienne Frossard/601Artspace

The group exhibition Care / Condition / Control, which ends its run at 601Artspace on April 27th, takes its conceptual root, quite literally, in the form of hair. Experienced by different generations, cultures, genders, and identities, one’s relationship to the very follicles that grow from us and upon us is deeply personal and unique to each of us. As each artist mines their own stories from these relationships, Chapman expands upon the inspiration and undertaking of such a complicated and tangled subject. Yasmeen Abdallah interviews curator A.E. Chapman about the ideas behind this show.

April 7, 2025April 5, 2025, by Etty Yaniv

Lilac Madar: Poppy Pink in Central Park

Featured Project

*PoppyPink New York [Rehearsal]*, June 2024, Participatory Performance, Central Park, New York, NY. Photo: Yonatan H. Mishal

Lilac Madar, best known for her photomontages and assemblages exploring feminist themes, turned to performance in the wake of October 7, 2023, as she began to grapple with mounting evidence of atrocities committed during the Hamas-led massacre in Israel—including the rape, sexual brutalization, and murder of women. Her grief made creation feel impossible—until a vision emerged: she was lost in Central Park, leaving a trail of pink thread behind her. PoppyPink, for her, is an act of remembrance—a body unraveling in real time, marking the absence and memory of the women violated and silenced. Named in part for artist Inbar Haiman (Pink), murdered at the Nova festival, the performance aims to affirm what art demands: to witness, to endure, to insist on presence. In this interview, we take a closer look at the project and its origins.

February 11, 2025February 11, 2025, by Laurie Gwen Shapiro

Judy Pfaff Taught Them to Break the Rules—Now They’re Sharing the Stage

A room with art pieces on the wall

AI-generated content may be incorrect. — Installation view

Judy Pfaff has never played by the rules—her art bends them, her teaching breaks them, and her career is proof she never needed them. A MacArthur “Genius” who reshaped installation art, she has spent five decades throwing order out the window in favor of energy, movement, and sheer creative force. That ethos is on full display at Art Cake in Brooklyn, where Pfaff and three former students have reunited—not in a classroom, but as equals in a space that refuses to sit still.

January 30, 2025January 31, 2025, by Terra Keck

The Art of Kimbap: A Reflection on Trust and Vulnerability

*My Right Hands and Your Left Hand, Cooking with Joshua Kun Kyung Sok. 2025.*

Kun Kyung Sok’s latest performance, “My Right Hand and Your Left Hand,” held at Space 776, invites audiences into an intimate and aromatic exploration of collaboration, creativity, and trust. The performance centers on Kun and her co-performer (a rolling cast of artists and non-artists) working together to prepare kimbap, a traditional Korean dish, using only her right hand and the other participant’s left hand. On opening night, while the salted streets of the Lower East Side froze, Kun’s audience huddled in close to witness a warm scene of clumsy vulnerability and palpable humor. “Armed” with a single knife, the two performers navigated the challenges of mutual control, toppling salt shakers and spilling rice, all the while the hypnotic scent of freshly prepared food permeated the space.

January 20, 2025January 10, 2025, by Sophia Ma

Expanding Asian Voices: Alchemyverse Leads the Inaugural Exhibition at Nunu Fine Art’s Project Space

Featured Project

Installation view of *Networks of Kisses*, photo credit Alchemyverse, images courtesy of Nunu Fine Art

The fall 2024 New York art season spotlighted exhibitions by the Asian diaspora, with prominent showcases like NYU 80WSE’s Legacies, featuring 90 artists and collective of Asian descent working between the 1970s and 1990s, and AS/COA New York’s The Appearance, which highlighted 33 Asian artists working in the Americas. Alongside these institutional exhibitions, numerous solo, dual, and group presentations were hosted across commercial galleries, while new spaces like SK Gallery emerged to center Asian artists in their programming. Among these efforts, Nunu Fine Art New York launched “Project Space: Asian Voices,” a platform to elevate experimental artistic expressions from Asia and its diaspora.

November 26, 2024December 10, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

In and Out of Lineage: Tracing Artistic Heritage Through SUNY New Paltz Faculty

Eva Zanardi, the guest curator of the group show—In and Out of Lineage: Tracing Artistic Heritage Through SUNY New Paltz Faculty—observes that many times in her life, art has raised her awareness and consequently even made her reconsider her point of view on important issues. Zanardi says that the prerogative that should belong to most art is to be thought-provoking; as the educator and activist Cezar A. Cruz says, “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” Eva Zanardi shared some of her curatorial process and gave us here a brief guide through the show.