New York's groundbreaking performance art biennial transforms the city into an immersive stage where visual artists experiment with live art, challenging disciplinary boundaries and redefining the possibilities of artistic expression since 2004.
Performa Biennial Critical Conversations
How to look, what to ask, and who to watch.
Performance art isn't passive. It demands a different way of looking. Before you go, arm yourself with this critical toolkit. Instead of asking "What does it mean?" start by asking "How does it work?"
The Critical Toolkit
Is the artist's body the subject (like a character) or the material (like paint)? Is it an athletic body, an exhausted body, a political body, or an absent body? How is it presented, costumed, or stressed?
How is time used as a tool? Is the work based on duration and endurance? Is it fast and chaotic? Is it built on loops and repetition? How does the performance's length change your relationship to it?
Why here? Is the performance in a "neutral" black box, a white cube gallery, or a loaded public site (like Federal Hall)? How does the space control you, the audience? Are you free to move, or fixed in a seat?
What is your role? Are you a passive voyeur, a witness to a private act, or an active participant? Does the work acknowledge you? Does it need you to be complete? How does your presence (or your phone) change the work?
The 2025 Commissions
Performa has commissioned eight major new works for 2025. Here is our guide to the key artists and the critical questions their work raises before you've even seen it.
The Context: Dean is a formidable artist and theorist focused on how digital networks, race, and power are structured. Her work is often cool, conceptual, and rooted in sculpture and video.
The Context: A 2019 Venice Golden Lion winner, Lapelytė uses music and song to create witty, incisive critiques of modern life. She is staging this new work at Federal Hall, a monument to American democracy and capitalism.
The Context: Henrot is known for her sprawling, associative work that connects anthropology, digital culture, and personal history (like the 2013 video "Grosse Fatigue"). Her move into live performance is a major event.
The Context: Fleury's work has famously used the language of fashion, luxury, and pop culture to critique consumerism and gender. Her work is slick, beautiful, and sharp.
The Context: Nguyen's photography is known for its intense, theatrical, and almost chemical relationship to its subjects. This first major live work promises to be visually saturated and emotionally complex.
The Context: Lewis is a sculptor who creates powerful, totemic figures from salvaged textiles and found objects. Her work is deeply invested in material history, diaspora, and myth-making.
The Context: Kim is a tech-savvy artist who builds intricate, speculative worlds based on data, algorithms, and history. Her work challenges our sense of linear time and stable identity.
The Context: This artist duo (Neringa Černiauskaitė and Ugnius Gelguda) creates sleek, post-human installations that blend synthetic and organic forms. Their work often feels like a sterile, futuristic operating theater.
10 Topics
You've seen the show. Now, what to talk about? Use our guide to start the right conversations—from the queue at the Performa Hub to the post-performance dinner.
Performa 2025
Aria Dean
The Color Scheme — Abrons Arts Center, Nov 21
Sylvie Fleury
Instructions for Twilight — Nov 22
Camille Henrot
Title TBA — In Conversation Nov 8
Ayoung Kim
Body^n — 'Canyon', Nov 13
Lina Lapelytė
The Speech (NYC) — Federal Hall, Nov 13
Tau Lewis
No one ascends from the underworld unmarked — Harlem Parish, Nov 6
Diane Severin Nguyen
WAR SONGS — BRIC, Nov 2
Pakui Hardware
Spores — Connelly Theater, Nov 15
Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present
The foundational text on performance art history, establishing the medium's lineage from the avant-garde to the present.
Performance Now: Live Art in the 21st Century
A comprehensive survey of contemporary performance practice from one of its most authoritative chroniclers.
Walk Through Walls
The landmark memoir from the artist whose Seven Easy Pieces at the Guggenheim defined Performa 05.
As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.