The Performa Mission: A Platform for Live Art
Founded in 2004 by art historian RoseLee Goldberg, Performa was a radical experiment born from a critical need. At the turn of the 21st century, performance art—despite its rich history—was still largely marginalized by major museums and the art market. It was often treated as an ephemeral, uncollectible, or secondary practice to "serious" object-making like painting or sculpture.
Goldberg, whose 1979 book *Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present* had literally written the history of the medium, created Performa to correct this omission. The mission was twofold:
- 1. To champion performance by *visual artists*, framing it as a vital and central part of their practice, not a peripheral curiosity.
- 2. To create an institutional framework—a biennial—that could commission, produce, and present new, ambitious live works with the same seriousness and resources as a major museum exhibition.
The first biennial, Performa 05, proved the concept with resounding success. Its centerpiece, Marina Abramović's *Seven Easy Pieces* at the Guggenheim, became an instant art-historical landmark, demonstrating the immense public appetite for live, durational, and challenging work. For 20 years, Performa has continued this mission, transforming New York City into a laboratory for live art and launching some of the most significant performance works of the 21st century.
The Historical Anchors: Looking Back to Look Forward
A unique feature of Performa is its use of a historical reference point to frame each biennial. This scholarly approach creates a dialogue between contemporary artists and their avant-garde predecessors. The 2025 biennial, for example, looks to the **1920s** to explore the dialogue between that era's media revolutions (film, radio) and our own digital age.
This is part of a larger intellectual project. Past biennials have used other key moments in 20th-century art history as their conceptual anchors:
Exploring the anxieties and excitements of new media (film, radio) in parallel with our own digital age, AI, and social media landscape.
The 100th anniversary of the German art school, focusing on its experimental stagecraft, "total theater," and the integration of art, craft, and life.
Rooted in the 100th anniversary of the Cabaret Voltaire, this biennial explored Dada's radical, anti-art, and political spirit in a contemporary context.
The 100th anniversary of the Futurist Manifesto. Performa's curators and artists re-examined the Italian movement's embrace of speed, technology, and spectacle, often reconstructing lost Futurist "sintesi" (short plays).
Landmark Commissions: A Selected Archive
Performa's most enduring legacy is its commissioning program. These are some of the major works from the past 20 years that have defined the biennial and entered the performance art canon.
Marina Abramović
For *Seven Easy Pieces* at the Guggenheim, Abramović re-performed seminal (and punishing) works from the 1960s and 70s by artists like Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconci, and Joseph Beuys, plus her own. It was a monumental act of historical revival that cemented her status and the biennial's importance.
Ragnar Kjartansson
The Icelandic artist staged a 12-hour continuous performance of the final, cathartic aria from Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro". With a live orchestra and costumed singers, this epic work of endurance and repetition explored joy, beauty, and absurdity.
Julie Mehretu & Jason Moran
The 2025 honoree's first live performance, *MASS (HOWL, eon)*, was a collaboration with composer Jason Moran. It merged Mehretu's monumental painting style with Moran's powerful music, exploring themes of protest and social space in a deeply immersive event.
Barbara Kruger
Kruger, known for her text-based critiques, transformed a public skate park with her iconic slogans. The "performance" was not by actors, but by the skaters themselves, whose movements activated the space, blending visual art, public art, and community engagement.