The Performa 2023 Biennial Opening Night Gala will celebrate our milestone 10th Performa Biennial and its full return to a vibrant three-week showcase of new, live performances by the best and brightest contemporary artists from around the world.

Join Performa Artists and Supporters for the Opening Night of the Performa 2023 Biennial at the Performa 2023 Hub.

For Performa 2023, SUPERFLEX will produce new versions of Free Beer.

Launch of the Performa 2023 Hub.

On the occasion of the Performa Biennial 2023, Jenna Sutela will present Midden (LIVE), a newly commissioned performance work that builds upon the sounds and messages produced by Vermi-Sibyl, 2023, a sculpture currently installed at SI.

To open and widen the conversation about contemporary art, Free Lunch Series invites the art world and public to an informal artist talk over a free vegetarian lunch. Initially developed by Art Hub Copenhagen (AHC), the casual talk format will occur three times during Performa Biennale 2023, inviting three artists to speak – or rather to initiate a conversation – about their practice, current research, or new ideas – and to explore the issues that are part of any artistic practice today.

Anna Maria Häkkinen’s newest work takes minimalist dance as a point of departure, exploring the sublime through ideas of surrender, release, tempo, autonomy and cooperation. Collaborating with an emerging generation of New York dance artists, Häkkinen reinterprets Judson Dance Theater figure Lucinda Childs, creating a bridge between the past and the present through an original score featuring a harpist and electronic dance music.

At Canal Projects, multidisciplinary artist Barnett Cohen unravels the injustice and violence present in everyday life through a text for two performers that slowly devolves into absurdity.

Featuring five dancers responding to the space of the table — above, below, upon — Alexa West’s Occasion, occasion, occasion considers the social architecture of gathering.

Berlin and Seoul-based artist Haegue Yang presents her sixth iteration of The Malady of Death, a text written by French filmmaker and author Marguerite Duras. Featuring Laurence Olivier award-winning actor Noma Dumezweni, Yang’s spectral staging will take advantage of the circular Peter B. Lewis Theater at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, highlighting the lone performer whose singular presence will be refracted throughout the space.

Anna Maria Häkkinen’s newest work takes minimalist dance as a point of departure, exploring the sublime through ideas of surrender, release, tempo, autonomy and cooperation. Collaborating with an emerging generation of New York dance artists, Häkkinen reinterprets Judson Dance Theater figure Lucinda Childs, creating a bridge between the past and the present through an original score featuring a harpist and electronic dance music.

At Canal Projects, multidisciplinary artist Barnett Cohen unravels the injustice and violence present in everyday life through a text for two performers that slowly devolves into absurdity.

Berlin and Seoul-based artist Haegue Yang presents her sixth iteration of The Malady of Death, a text written by French filmmaker and author Marguerite Duras. Featuring Laurence Olivier award-winning actor Noma Dumezweni, Yang’s spectral staging will take advantage of the circular Peter B. Lewis Theater at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, highlighting the lone performer whose singular presence will be refracted throughout the space.

To open and widen the conversation about contemporary art, Free Lunch Series invites the art world and public to an informal artist talk over a free vegetarian lunch. Initially developed by Art Hub Copenhagen (AHC), the casual talk format will occur three times during the Performa Biennial 2023, inviting three artists to speak – or rather to initiate a conversation – about their practice, current research, or new ideas – and to explore the issues that are part of any artistic practice today.

Acclaimed video and performance artist Pilvi Takala will be the Performa Hub’s Artist-in-Residence. Known for her research-driven projects observing unspoken rules and human behaviors, Takala will begin her research in New York for a future commission and share insight into her process.

What are the politics of listening? What is the role of the ear in framing histories of protest and performance? Writer and scholar Louis Chude-Sokei and Performa cordially invite you to join us at a keynote in the form of an experiment in listening.Founder of the international sonic archive, Echolocution, Chude-Sokei will interweave his critical work and auto-biographical experiences, as part of an ongoing exploration of the role of sonic ecologies in shaping contemporary culture.

Nikita Gale’s first live performance OTHER SEASONS takes the iconic concerti The Four Seasons as a point of departure, combining light, live sound, and atmospheric conditions, to bring Vivaldi’s exploration of weather’s ephemeral nature into our era of climate anxiety.

At Canal Projects, multidisciplinary artist Barnett Cohen unravels the injustice and violence present in everyday life through a text for two performers that slowly devolves into absurdity.

Featuring five dancers responding to the space of the table — above, below, upon — Alexa West’s Occasion, occasion, occasion considers the social architecture of gathering.

Nikita Gale’s first live performance OTHER SEASONS takes the iconic concerti The Four Seasons as a point of departure, combining light, live sound, and atmospheric conditions, to bring Vivaldi’s exploration of weather’s ephemeral nature into our era of climate anxiety.

To open and widen the conversation about contemporary art, Free Lunch Series invites the art world and public to an informal artist talk over a free vegetarian lunch. Initially developed by Art Hub Copenhagen (AHC), the casual talk format will occur three times during the Performa Biennial 2023, inviting three artists to speak – or rather to initiate a conversation – about their practice, current research, or new ideas – and to explore the issues that are part of any artistic practice today.

Artists Kitty Florentine and Kris Lemsalu convert 99 Canal into a metamorphic landscape of gardens and lighting features that mimic the glowing phenomena of young Mycena mushrooms.

Rabih Mroué will present the first live performance of his recent film Our Hirāk: The Tishreen Revolution, exploring the events that occurred in Beirut in 2019—which were catalyzed by a video of a woman kicking Education Minister Akram Chehayeb’s body-guard in the groin going viral—as a series of feminist and queer led uprisings.

A sci-fi fantasy cooking session riffing on the New Nordic movement and prepping for an uncertain future, the audience is invited to attend the creation of a menu of locally sourced foods and survivalist preparations. The all-star cast includes Chef Matthew Weingarten, Chef Markus Oxelman, Chef Jackie Gordon, Chef Erica Wides and food historian and Chef Scott Alves Barton. Co-produced with Art Hub, Copenhagen.

A sci-fi fantasy cooking session riffing on the New Nordic movement and prepping for an uncertain future, the audience is invited to attend the creation of a menu of locally sourced foods and survivalist preparations. The all-star cast includes Chef Matthew Weingarten, Chef Markus Oxelman, Chef Jackie Gordon, Chef Erica Wides and food historian and Chef Scott Alves Barton. Co-produced with Art Hub, Copenhagen.

Croatia-born, Amsterdam-based artist Nora Turato will present a monologue at Manhattan’s Society for Ethical Culture exploring the anxieties surrounding contemporary wellness culture and self-help practices. Additionally, Turato will present a new digital work at Fulton Transit Center.

Croatia-born, Amsterdam-based artist Nora Turato will present a monologue at Manhattan’s Society for Ethical Culture exploring the anxieties surrounding contemporary wellness culture and self-help practices. Additionally, Turato will present a new digital work at Fulton Transit Center.

Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi established a bilingual magazine –called Pages – in Farsi and English. All of the contributions gathered in their latest publication, whether based on actual experience, fictional, or drawn from archives, deal in one way or another with the question of the stage and produce a contested space of performance that is inevitably linked to the performer's body, whose thresholds are stretched and contracted into potentially new forms of staging.

Choreography by Ana Pi

French-Caribbean artist Julien Creuzet will use choreography, music, and sculpture to explore the collective memory of movements across the Black Atlantic, inspired by the artist’s personal archive of gestures and dances amassed through social media. Co-commissioned by Hartwig Art Foundation, Amsterdam.

Teo Ala-Ruona’s Enter Exude is a performance where gender unfurls through the sleekness of a high-performance sports car. Exploring techno-trans-masculinity, merging gender with technology, Ala-Ruona takes audiences on a hypnotic joyride, a sensory journey examining themes of sexuality, family dynamics, and queer ecology. A co-production with SAA.

Choreography by Ana Pi

French-Caribbean artist Julien Creuzet will use choreography, music, and sculpture to explore the collective memory of movements across the Black Atlantic, inspired by the artist’s personal archive of gestures and dances amassed through social media. Co-commissioned by Hartwig Art Foundation, Amsterdam.

Teo Ala-Ruona’s Enter Exude is a performance where gender unfurls through the sleekness of a high-performance sports car. Exploring techno-trans-masculinity, merging gender with technology, Ala-Ruona takes audiences on a hypnotic joyride, a sensory journey examining themes of sexuality, family dynamics, and queer ecology. A co-production with SAA.

Artist Marcel Dzama will work across drawing, video, music, and dance to stage his adaption of Spanish poet Federico García Lorca’s “A Trip to the Moon” (1929), a poem connected through vivid, dream-like imagery that calls to mind the cinematic experiments of Lorca’s Surrealist contemporaries.

Artist Marcel Dzama will work across drawing, video, music, and dance to stage his adaption of Spanish poet Federico García Lorca’s “A Trip to the Moon” (1929), a poem connected through vivid, dream-like imagery that calls to mind the cinematic experiments of Lorca’s Surrealist contemporaries.

Alexa West, Amelia Koper Heintzelman, and curator Mark Beasley will discuss West's Occasion, occasion, occasion at the Performa Hub.

Artist and filmmaker Shirin Neshat will reflect on her own experiences as a diasporic artist and filmmaker together with Performa’s Founder and Chief Curator RoseLee Goldberg.

Artist Marcel Dzama will work across drawing, video, music, and dance to stage his adaption of Spanish poet Federico García Lorca’s “A Trip to the Moon” (1929), a poem connected through vivid, dream-like imagery that calls to mind the cinematic experiments of Lorca’s Surrealist contemporaries.

Artist Marcel Dzama will work across drawing, video, music, and dance to stage his adaption of Spanish poet Federico García Lorca’s “A Trip to the Moon” (1929), a poem connected through vivid, dream-like imagery that calls to mind the cinematic experiments of Lorca’s Surrealist contemporaries.

Rana Hamadeh’s cacophonous sonic work takes the Shiite ceremony of Ashoura –– encompassing its current political, military, and legal expressions within the Lebanese/Syrian context, as its field for commentary and research –– an annual ritual during which mourners take the streets to 're-witness' the slaying of al-imam al-Hussein (626–680 AD), the grandson of the Prophet Mohammad and an allegorical reference to the ultimate figure of the oppressed.

Chef Antto Melasniemi and artist Rirkrit Tiravanija will combine music, food, and performance in an evening-length event at the Performa Hub.

For more than sixty years, German conceptual artist Franz Erhard Walther has been radically reimagining the relationship between space, objects, and bodies. While maybe better known in Europe than in the United States, Walther’s formative artistic experience took place in New York. Co-produced with Judd Foundation, Walther’s Performa Commission “Creation Needs Action” builds on the relationship between Walther and Judd and offers a means to compare two masters of Minimal Art.

Curated by PUBLICS, co-presented with Performa, and co-produced by PALO Art Productions, SONIC TONIC ASSEMBLY, a listening program of innovative sound artists using location-specific field recording as their starting point to create aural worlds at the intersection of sonic poetry, abstracted music, and experimental black and global feminist technologies. SONIC TONIC ASSEMBLY has two overlapping episodes of an extended unfolding event that sounds out and listens in.

Boy mother / faceless bloom is a stage work by Juni One Set, a collaboration of Senga Nengudi, eddy kwon, and Haruko Crow Nishimura & Joshua Kohl of Degenerate Art Ensemble. Threading mythology and autobiography, while drawing from the diverse lineages of queer, anti-colonial, and care-based artistic practices. Dance, music, poetry, ritual, and sculptural installation converge to tell a story of transformation, transgression, and the formation of new trancestral lines.

For more than sixty years, German conceptual artist Franz Erhard Walther has been radically reimagining the relationship between space, objects, and bodies. While maybe better known in Europe than in the United States, Walther’s formative artistic experience took place in New York. Co-produced with Judd Foundation, Walther’s Performa Commission “Creation Needs Action” builds on the relationship between Walther and Judd and offers a means to compare two masters of Minimal Art.

Boy mother / faceless bloom is a stage work by Juni One Set, a collaboration of Senga Nengudi, eddy kwon, and Haruko Crow Nishimura & Joshua Kohl of Degenerate Art Ensemble. Threading mythology and autobiography, while drawing from the diverse lineages of queer, anti-colonial, and care-based artistic practices. Dance, music, poetry, ritual, and sculptural installation converge to tell a story of transformation, transgression, and the formation of new trancestral lines.

Moderated by curator and writer Bhavisha Panchia, the episode Sounding a Black Grammar will advance different registers of listening through discussions and playback sessions with HxH (Lester St. Louis and Chris Williams) and Lamin Fofana, a film screening with Tony Cokes, the launch of the album Stupor by KMRU, and a pop-up shop with talks, listening sessions, and new releases from Sonic Wilderness, including with AGF, Cucina Povera, Lau Nau and Islaja.

Gregg Bordowitz and Pamela Sneed will present the first episode of a year-long project exploring the intersection of art and health activism, a subject that has influenced both their work and lives in myriad ways since the AIDS epidemic began in the 1980s.

For more than sixty years, German conceptual artist Franz Erhard Walther has been radically reimagining the relationship between space, objects, and bodies. While maybe better known in Europe than in the United States, Walther’s formative artistic experience took place in New York. Co-produced with Judd Foundation, Walther’s Performa Commission “Creation Needs Action” builds on the relationship between Walther and Judd and offers a means to compare two masters of Minimal Art.

Boy mother / faceless bloom is a stage work by Juni One Set, a collaboration of Senga Nengudi, eddy kwon, and Haruko Crow Nishimura & Joshua Kohl of Degenerate Art Ensemble. Threading mythology and autobiography, while drawing from the diverse lineages of queer, anti-colonial, and care-based artistic practices. Dance, music, poetry, ritual, and sculptural installation converge to tell a story of transformation, transgression, and the formation of new trancestral lines.

At the Performa Hub, Franz Erhard Walther and Performa senior curator Charles Aubin discuss Walther's Performa Commission Creation Needs Action.

As a part of her solo show at Salon 94, Los Angeles-based artist and sculptor Karon Davis will present a ballet amongst the sculptures of her exhibition, Beauty Must Suffer.

Calling upon past generations of New York artists such as John Giorno and David Wojnarowicz, novelist and performance-poet Niko Hallikainen will premiere Lavender Deal, a reflection on a pandemic-era romance. Hallikainen weaves personal experiences with historical collective memories through a “séance” summoning the spirits of New York’s queer artistic legends to navigate longing, love, and loss in contemporary life. A co-production with Tibet House.

Holley will perform live, accompanied by instrumental duo Nelson Patton and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, followed by a discussion with his musical collaborator Lee Bains, improvising and exploring ideas of protest music, particularly in the context of the US South and the abolitionist movement.

For Performa 2023, SUPERFLEX will produce new versions of Free Beer.

For more than sixty years, German conceptual artist Franz Erhard Walther has been radically reimagining the relationship between space, objects, and bodies. While maybe better known in Europe than in the United States, Walther’s formative artistic experience took place in New York. Co-produced with Judd Foundation, Walther’s Performa Commission “Creation Needs Action” builds on the relationship between Walther and Judd and offers a means to compare two masters of Minimal Art.

Calling upon past generations of New York artists such as John Giorno and David Wojnarowicz, novelist and performance-poet Niko Hallikainen will premiere Lavender Deal, a reflection on a pandemic-era romance. Hallikainen weaves personal experiences with historical collective memories through a “séance” summoning the spirits of New York’s queer artistic legends to navigate longing, love, and loss in contemporary life. A co-production with Tibet House.

Drawing from the history of protest movements in South Africa, this performance explores the relationship between the sound of defiance and the desire to build community from a foundation of radical love.

In AJAIB MAHLUQAT (ACAYIP MAHLUKAT), Göksu Kunak will present a live performance that tackles the notions of camouflage and self–censorship in relation to the politics and dictator(s) of an imaginary region.

Join the closing night of the Performa 2023 Biennial. Music by DJ Lovie.