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 Archive & History
How RoseLee Goldberg built the world's first biennial dedicated to visual artists working in performance.
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:
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.
Historical Framework
A unique feature of Performa is its use of a historical reference point to frame each biennial.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:
Performa Through the Years
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).
The 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Founder
Founding Director & Chief Curator
RoseLee Goldberg is the seminal art historian who literally wrote the book on performance art (Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present, 1979). She founded Performa in 2004 to create a dedicated platform for visual artists working live, cementing the medium's critical importance. Her founding vision—commissioning ambitious new works and framing them within art history—has shaped the biennial for two decades.
Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present
The foundational text on performance art history that literally defined the field. Essential before and after any Performa visit.
Performance Now: Live Art in the 21st Century
Goldberg's comprehensive survey of contemporary performance, spanning the past two decades of Performa commissions and beyond.
Walk Through Walls
The memoir from the artist whose Seven Easy Pieces at the Guggenheim in 2005 defined the inaugural Performa biennial and shaped its subsequent history.
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