Eliana Willis

This year’s Whitney Biennial names 63 participating artists and collectives, but unless visitors also buy a copy of the exhibition catalogue, they will only be able to see works by 62 of them.
That’s because artist EJ Hill, known primarily for his arduous durational performance art, declined to show his work at the museum. Instead, he contributed only to the biennial’s official publication, where he is represented by a blank page of pink paper.
Striking in its simplicity, the pale pink page is strangely beautiful, a thin sliver of color visible in the book’s fore-edge when the pages are closed. But it’s undoubtedly an unorthodox response to an invitation to one of the contemporary art world’s most prestigious exhibitions—one that would be a major career milestone for any young artist.
Through his Los Angeles gallery, Commonwealth and Council, Hill declined to comment on the move, leaving the interpretation of the cryptic gesture up to the viewer. But the artist’s previous works may offer some clues.
EJ Hill, Altar (for victors past, present, and future) in “Made in L.A. 2018” at the Hammer Museum at UCLA. Photo courtesy of the Hammer Museum at UCLA.
For the 2018 “Made in L.A.” biennial at the Hammer Museum, Hill revisited six of the seven schools he had attended in the city and ran laps around them. He later installed a model track in the galleries and, for the entirety of the show, stood atop a podium-like sculpture in the galleries.
A statement from the museum said the work “reflects both the hardships that certain bodies are forced to endure and the enormous resilience of those bodies.”
The omission of Hill’s own body from the Whitney Biennial, and his refusal this time to endure physical hardship, also speaks volumes.
EJ Hill’s contribution to the 2022 Whitney Biennial is a blank pink page in the exhibition catalogue. Photo by Paul Salveson.
It could be read as a decision rooted in self care, and a natural progression from Hill’s recent solo show “Wherever We Will to Root,” which opened at Los Angeles’s Occidental College in February, and featured a series of six floral paintings.
This departure from physical performance was about “the work of care, a therapeutic mechanism for healing, rehabilitation, and even refusal,” according to the exhibition statement.
EJ Hill’s contribution to the 2022 Whitney Biennial is a blank pink page in the exhibition catalogue. Photo by Paul Salveson.
“No more wringing myself dry. Just flowers, and clouds, and puppies, and ribbons, and pink, and other sissy boy shit,” Hill wrote in a since-deleted Instagram post that was quoted by the Art Newspaper.
The artist’s account now contains just one post, shared on April 7, of a plain pink square. It’s the same shade of “Millennial Pink,” which became ubiquitous over the past decade, as the catalogue contribution, and it, too, offers no caption or explanation.
“We admire EJ’s embrace of opacity and his questioning of what representation means at this historical moment,” David Breslin and Adrianne Edwards, the exhibition’s co-curators, told Artnet News in an email.
EJ Hill’s contribution to the 2022 Whitney Biennial is a blank pink page in the exhibition catalogue. Photo by Paul Salveson.
Hill’s pink page has a soothing aura about it, seemingly offering readers a moment to rest. Perhaps it also offered Hill a moment to recharge his creative energies for his next artistic endeavor—and it looks like a return to performance is on the horizon, with a solo show featuring an installation with a performance stage opening at MASS MoCA in the fall.
“Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It’s Kept” is on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, New York, April 6–September 5, 2022.
“EJ Hill: Brake Run Helix” will be on view at MASS MoCA, 1040 MASS MoCA WAYNorth Adams, Massachusetts, October 29, 2022–January 2024.
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At this year’s Carnegie International, the emphasis is definitely on the “international.”
“How can we think of the ‘international’ as an idea from the specific place that we’re working from?” said Sohrab Mohebbi, head curator of the 58th edition of the show, set to open this September at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 
The exhibition will seek to answer this question by tracing the “geopolitical imprint of the U.S. since 1945”—a moment that, according to Mohebbi, signals both the birth of contemporary art and the country’s ascension to global hegemonic power. 
The exhibition’s global framing is mirrored by its expansive list of participants, a lineup that includes artists both living and dead, as well as several creative collectives and institutional collections. Altogether, there are 150 names from 40 territories around the world, including Claes Oldenburg, Diane Severin Nguyen, Susan Meiselas, and Trương Công Tùng. 
Trương Công Tùng, the state of absence–voices from outside (2020). Courtesy of the artist.
That’s a huge grouping, even for a historically scopious show like the International, which is the longest-running exhibition series in the U.S. (The previous edition, in 2018, for instance, boasted 32 collectives.) 
“The show is, by design, different in almost every way,” said Eric Crosby, director of the Carnegie Museum. Among the themes animating it are “issues of artistic solidarity, reconstitution, and responding to traumatic world events.” 
Special focus will be given to “thinking historically,” the director went on, “to looking not just at the present moment but at practices that have been overlooked by art history. We want to bring those practices into the museum alongside the [Carnegie’s] own collection in a way that prompts new reconsiderations of our history through the lens of the contemporary.”
Edgar Calel, Pa ru tun che ́ (From the Treetop) (2021). Courtesy of the artist.
Édgar Calel, a Kaqchikel artist, was responsible for the show’s title: “Is it morning for you yet?” Calel was visiting Mohebbi in Pittsburgh when he explained that, for his people in the Mayan Kaqchikel community of Guatemala, it is customary not to say “good morning” but to ask, “Is it morning for you yet?”
“This really kept resonating in many ways,” Mohebbi recalled, referring again to the relativity of the exhibition’s conceit. The title, he said, “was a way for us to acknowledge this question around what is contemporary. Are we together? Are we on the same clock? Let’s check our times together.”

See the full list of the participating collectives, institutions, estates, and artists below:  
Abdul Hay Mosallam Zarara 
Ali Eyal 
Võ An Khánh 
Andy Robert 
Angel Velasco Shaw 
Anh Trần 
Antonio Martorell with poetry by Ernesto Cardenal 
Aziz Hazara 
Banu Cennetoğlu 
Carlos Cañas 
Carlos Motta 
Christian Nyampeta 
Claes Oldenburg 
Colectivo 3 (Aarón Flores, Araceli Zúñiga, Blanca Noval Vilar, and César Espinosa) Dala Nasser 
Daniel Lie 
Denzil Forrester 
Dia al-Azzawi
Diane Severin Nguyen 
Doan Ket 
Dogma Collection 
Édgar Calel 
Felix Gonzalez-Torres 
Fereydoun Ave 
Giana De Dier 
Hiromi Tsuchida 
Hyphen— (Akmalia Rizqita “Chita,” Grace Samboh, Ratna Mufida), presenting works by: Kustiyah alongside Edhi Sunarso, Gregorius Sidharta Soegijo, Kartika, Rustamadji, Siti Ruliyati,  Sriyani Hudyonoto, Sudarso, Trubus Soedarsono, Zaini 
I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih 
Isabel De Obaldía 
James “Yaya” Hough 
Joong Seop Lee 
Julian Abraham “Togar” 
Tith Kanitha 
Karen Tei Yamashita 
Kate Millett 
Krista Belle Stewart 
Laal Collection 
Laila Shawa 
LaToya Ruby Frazier 
Let’s Get Free: The Women and Trans Prisoner Defense Committee 
Los Angeles Poverty Department 
Louise E. Jefferson 
Malcolm Peacock 
Margarita Azurdia 
Melike Kara 
Michael Zinzun 
Mire Lee 
Mohammed Sami 
Monira Al Qadiri 
Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende Collection presenting works by: Alberto Pérez, Alfredo Portillos, Anders Åberg, Anonymous women, Bat T. Tchouloun, Carol Law,  Derek Boshier, Eduardo Terrazas, Ernest Pignon-Ernest, Francisco Brugnoli, Gontran Guanaes  Netto, Hanns Karlewski, Hugo Rivera-Scott, Leonilda González, Lilo Salberg, Luis Felipe Noé, Luis  Tomasello, Maryse Eloy, Myra Landau, N. Bavoujav, Öyvind Fahlström, Patricia Israel, Paul Peter  Piech, Ricardo Mesa, Ryszard Winiarski, Sambuungiin Mashbat, SANALBAT (S. Natsagdorj, N.  Sandagdorj, N. Sukhbat), Valentina Cruz, Ximena Armas 
Nancy Buchanan 
Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa 
Nikki Arai 
Pacita Abad 
Patricia Belli 
Philomé Obin 
Pio Abad 
Rafa Nasiri and Etel Adnan 
Rafael Domenech 
Vandy Rattana 
Park Rehyun 
Rini Templeton 
Roberto Cabrera 
Rosa Mena Valenzuela
Sanaa Gateja 
Soun-Gui Kim 
Susan Meiselas 
Svay Ken 
Tei Carpenter / Agency—Agency 
terra0 
Thu Van Tran 
Thuraya Al-Baqsami 
Tishan Hsu 
Tony Cokes 
Trương Công Tùng  
Yolanda Lopez 
Yooyun Yang 
Zahia Rahmani
“Is it morning for you yet?” will run from September 24, 2022 through April 2, 2023 at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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Three centuries ago, sweetgum trees blanketed the island of Manhattan. Next month, a grove of those same trees will pop up in Times Square, albeit upside down—a symbol of all the cultures that have been uprooted and erased by racial capitalism’s merciless march. 
The installation is just one component of a hugely ambitious—and rigorously conceptual—project by Charles Gaines. It also marks the first time the venerable artist has created public art in his five-decade-long career.
Presented by Creative Time, Times Square Arts, and Governors Island Arts, the project will move from Manhattan to Governors Island and then all the way to Cincinnati, Ohio, actualizing the route that enslaved African Americans once took along the Ohio River, seeking freedom in the North. 
Capitalism and the institution of slavery are at the heart of Gaines’s target here, but the artwork, called The American Manifest, also interrogates issues of colonization, environmental exploitation, and how the country’s unique topography, legal history, and property laws fed a system of subjugation that continues today.
“The installation,” Gaines told Artnet News, “is intended to unpack these things and show the relationship they have to each other.” 
“The entire narrative isn’t exposed in one location,” he continued. “It takes a consideration of all three locations to see the entanglement of how connected these practices have been in shaping the American institute.” 
Gaines’s installation of sweetgums, called Roots, will open in Times Square, the de facto capital of American commerce, on July 13. Inaugurating the event will be a two-night performance of an operatic piece the artist composed based on the 1857 Dred Scott decision, which held that Black people were not conferred citizenship under the U.S. Constitution. During the performances, the text of Justice Roger Taney’s decision, which Gaines calls “unbelievable” still today, will scroll down a screen mounted before the iconic Times Square billboards.
Charles Gaines in his Los Angeles studio, 2020. © Charles Gaines. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Fredrik Nilsen.
In October, Gaines will open the second “chapter” of his project on Governors Island: a 100-foot-long immersive sculpture meant to recall the hull of an old ship, perhaps one transporting slaves. Inside, eight motor-operated chains will rotate along at the pace of the current in New York’s harbor (roughly 2.5 knots, the artist said), while a ninth, central chain will churn at a quicker clip—the average speed (7 knots) of ships and barges.
“The middle chain points to the speed of commerce,” Gaines explained, “while the other chains reflect the flow of the river.” 
Visitors can climb atop the imposing structure to watch the chains from above or enter to view them from below. “The sound,” according to the artist, “will be massive.” He hopes the “challenging” piece, called Moving Chains, will engender a visceral response.
Come Summer 2023, Moving Chains will open on the banks of the Ohio River in Cincinnati, completing The American Manifest’s path. 
Though it may be unlikely that many viewers will experience all three stages of Gaines’s vision, Creative Time executive director Justine Ludwig said the project was “conceived so that individual elements could stand on their own as singular experiences.”
“Part of the power of public art is that visitors sometimes just happen upon the work,” she added. “It provides a truly unexpected experience that intersects with the rhythms of daily life.”
Many will have that experience, it seems. Times Square Arts director Jean Cooney expects 20 million people to encounter the first part of The American Manifest this summer alone.
“Charles [is an artist who] approaches critical and monumental topics in a way that requires meditation and attention,” Cooney said. “My hope is that even if a small portion of that audience is able to either conceptually link these narratives, or even better, experience Gaines’s installation on Governors Island or head home to Ohio and see his work there, we’ve fulfilled our responsibility as a public art organization to provide new access points for discovery and engagement.”
Chapter One of Charles Gaines’s The American Manifest will be on view from July 13 – September 23, 2022 in Times Square in New York. Chapters Two and Three will open in October 2022 and the Summer of 2023, respectively.
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Last month, New York City removed its last payphone kiosk, a relic of an analog age that in 2022 is more of a museum piece than a functional object. So it’s fitting that the phone immediately made its way into the collection of the Museum of the City of New York, where it is now on view in an exhibition celebrating the city’s pre-digital era.
Originally located at Seventh Avenue and 50th Street, the pay phone was ripped from the sidewalk following a ceremony attended by a crowd of journalists and curious onlookers on May 23.
There had always been maintenance issues with payphones, and vandalism and theft meant they were often broken, especially in the 1970s. But these coin-operated telephones were an essential utility for busy New Yorkers for decades.
“In terms of New York City history, payphones were an incredibly important for communicating and staying connected in a really fast-paced city of pedestrians and dynamic street life,” MCNY curator Lilly Tuttle told Artnet News. “You were able to make a call on every corner.”
A man poses with the last payphone kiosk in New York City. Photo courtesy of LinkNYC.
In the early 2000s, New York City had around 30,000 payphones, but that number has rapidly dwindled over the past seven years as they’ve been replaced with LinkNYC kiosks.
The payphone may have the edge when it comes to nostalgia, but LinkNYC is the clear winner when it comes to utility.
The kiosks offer free WiFi and free calls throughout the U.S. (no need to dig up a quarter from the bottom of your wallet), as well as screens featuring rotating displays of ads, artworks, New York city history, and current news. And you can even use them to charge your cell phone.
It was actually thanks to LinkNYC that MCNY was able to acquire the last payphone. The company, which had worked with the museum on some of its on-screen content, reached out to ask if the phone might be a good fit for the collection.
The last payphone kiosk in New York City is now on view at the Museum of the City of New York. Photo courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.
“It was being uninstalled with great fanfare just as we were opening this show about pre-digital analog technology,” Tuttle said. “It was a convenient and fortuitous coincidence.”
The phone was installed last week at the entrance to the exhibition, titled “Analog City: NYC B.C. (Before Computers).”
“We spend months and months planning and designing exhibitions, and it just so happened that we had the perfect spot for it right outside the main gallery,” Tuttle added.
The museum exhibition memorializes this bygone era, and the role of technologies such as typewriters, pneumatic tubes, and even note cards and slide rules in the city’s finance, news, and real estate industries.
A Linotype machine on view in “Analog City: NYC B.C. (Before Computers)” at the Museum of the City of New York. Photo courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.
One artifact on view is a Linotype machine like the ones used by the New York Times, starting in the 1870s, to set type for its newspaper pages, one line at a time, melting down the lead metal type after each issue was printed.
“Prior to this, all printed materials had to be laid out by hand using individual letters. It was incredibly labor intensive,” Tuttle said. “With the Linotype, the paper could print more pages and more frequent editions. It allowed for an incredible boom in the amount of printed materials that were available around the world, and for expansion of the news media as well as literacy.”
Press room of the New York Times. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photgraphs Division.
The show may also cause visitors to consider the importance of items they’ve never given a second thought to, like the humble filing cabinet—which was actually groundbreaking in its time.
In something of a ripple effect, the adoption of the typewriter led to the production of paper in standardized sizes that could be used in the machine. That, in turn, made it possible to store paper in a standardized way.
“We have a photograph an office where paper is stored horizontally, it’s rolled up, it’s placed into a million little cubby holes in a giant desk—and then we have an example of a file cabinet, which allows you to not only store copious amounts of paper, but also to organize and access that paper,” Tuttle said.
And while the revolutionary nature of the filing cabinet may be lost on us today, the way it changed our world can still be seen in the terminology used for computer storage, in files and folders.
A paperwork crisis at the New York Stock Exchange. Photo courtesy of the NYSE Group Inc.
“The icons on your computer literally look like file folders from vertical filing cabinets,” Tuttle said. “This basic tool for storage and access, that informs subsequent forms of technology.”
“Analog City” is also interactive, giving children and members of Gen Z the chance to test out technology they may have only read about in books or seen in tv or movies.
The payphone, therefore, represents a key addition to the display.
“It was in the heart of Midtown and represents the apex of payphone use,” Tuttle said. “It was probably a real warhorse. That it went away was a symbolic moment representing the end of the era.”
The removal of the last payphone kiosk in New York City. Photo courtesy of LinkNYC.
Though this was the city’s last payphone kiosk left standing, New Yorkers with a dead cell phone battery can still make phone calls at four phone booths that dot the Upper West Side. (Thanks to a strong local fondness for the payphones in the community, the plan is to keep those booths, on West End Avenue at 101st, 100th, 90th and 66th Streets, in operation in perpetuity.)
But the ubiquity of the payphone, once a fixture of the city, is gone forever.
“It’s important to remember how much payphones were part of the urban fabric and the visual landscape of the city up until very recently,” Tuttle said. “The reality is, we didn’t carry around little tiny telephones with us for most of history. In the exhibition, we’re really hoping to remind people that communication used to be very very different in this city. We didn’t have quite the connectivity that cellphones give us, but we were still able to achieve amazing things.”
“Analog City: NYC B.C. (Before Computers)” is on view at the Museum of the City of New York, 1220 5th Avenue, New York, through December 31, 2022.
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This year’s edition of Documenta, which involves some 1,500 artists, includes a special presentation by Tania Bruguera and the Cuban collective Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt (Instar) that highlights the difficulties Cuban artists are facing at home.
Among the participants is Hamlet Lavastida, the Cuban artist who was jailed in 2020 before being exiled into Poland last September. He’s showing work at this year’s Documenta as part of a collective of anti-government Cuban artists. 
Lavastida’s is not the only recognizable face. The installation also includes a drawing of rapper and activist Maykel Castillo Osorbo, who’s still in prison in Havana, alongside a multimedia timeline that charts recent events in Cuba and its ongoing political crackdown. An adjoining room has a list of artists who were or are political prisoners in the country, plus printed face masks depicting the artists on spikes.
“The political gesture with our Instar is to bring all the people who have been erased from Cuban culture, because the Cuban government says they’re not artists,” Bruguera told Artnet News, standing barefoot on a carpet installation showing a map of Cuba. “But they’re here [at Documenta], so of course they are.”
Another of Instar’s projects is a to-scale fascimile of the home used by the Espacio Aglutinador collective for alternative art exhibitions that were censored by the government. The important space in Cuba has been active since the 1990s despite attempts to shut it down.
These works, which were made collaboratively, are all on view at Documenta Halle, one of the main venues for Documenta 15, which opens to the public on June 18.
Instar was founded in May 2015 by Bruguera in Havana after a marathon 100-hour collective reading of Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), which artists say is relevant to Cuban conditions today.
“Freedom is the main tool of artists,” Bruguera said. She was initially invited by Ruangrupa, the curatorial collective behind the show, and, as per this year’s collectivity concept, she’s invited scores of artists to work together.
Two of the three Instar exhibition rooms will change over every ten days throughout 100 days to maximize the platform for Cuba’s political artists. Independent theater groups and publishers are also partaking in events.
“When you’re [fighting] an oppressive state, you’re proud to be an ex-convict,” Lavastida said. “They claim we’re trying to overthrow the government, and that I was a lead part of it. It’s true.” His contribution is a large wall mural that depicts the floor plan of the political prison in Villa Marista, where he was jailed.
Bruguera praised Ruangrupa and the efforts around the exhibition.
“Everybody is working towards a common goal. It’s not that foreign to us as a concept, but it’s great to see at such a scale,” she said.
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