“In K8 Hardy’s performances, the body makes itself a transmitter in order to update and queer the world with its broadcasts….If contemporary art is first and foremost a system for producing subjects in the form of contemporary artists…it’s probably time for artists to rethink their own role in this system’s reproduction….Instead of simply feeding the network in new and creative ways, artists would get more involved in de-creation, and engage subjectivization as an ever-recurring opportunity for unworking.” — John Kelsey*

K8 Hardy, Raúl de Nieves, and Participant present BEAUTIFUL RADIATING ENERGY, with de Nieves in a piece Hardy first performed at Reena Spaulings in 2004.

participantinc.org/

At the 2017 Whitney Biennial, a room of de Nieves’ work—robed figures, taxidermy birds, a wall of faux stained glass—anchors the east end of the fifth floor. “Part church, part nightclub, part tomb.”**

RAÚL DE NIEVES—2017 WHITNEY BIENNIAL, through June 11.

WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, 99 Gansevoort Street, New York City.

whitney.org/Exhibitions/2017Biennial

*John Kelsey, “Information in Drag,” in K8 Hardy, How To: Untitled Runway Show, eds. K8 Hardy and Dorothée Perret (Los Angeles: DoPe Press, 2013), 111, 117–118.

**Charlotte Ickes, Whitney Biennial 2017, exh. cat., ed. Jason Best (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2017), 152.