“No Aesthetic Outside My Freedom: Mourning, Militancy, and Performance,” a piece by artists Noel Maghathe, Fadl Fakhouri, and Fargo Tbakhi about Palestinian mourning, was scheduled to take place Wednesday evening, May 14, as part of programming for the Independent Study Program’s (ISP) Curatorial Exhibition A grammar of attention. The work, which usually runs for an hour and a half, means that artists interpret a series of ‘scores’, written by Natalie Diaz, Christina Sharpe and Brandon Shimoda, causing sadness to be transmitted by various physical and verbal gestures.
But two days earlier, on 11 May, ISP’s Associate Director Sara Nadal-Melsió heard that the performance was canceled by the Whitney Museum of American Art, the institution that supports the prestigious nine-month Fellowship. In a meeting, the director Scott Rothkopf of Whitney admitted that the museum had encountered a YouTube video of the first presentation of the work with the poetry project and Jewish currents Last fall in which TBAKHi introduced the piece with a short address for attendees: “You can only stay in this audience if you love Palestinians entirely and completely of Palestinians, you can only stay if you love us while we live and when we are dead, when we fight to survive, dignity, land, return, real and sustainable life that one and all methods are available for us.”
“You should not stay in this audience if you believe in an incarnation in Israel, given the ontological structure as a constant process of extermination, disposition and daily cruelty,” Tbakhi continued. When nobody from the audience leaves the room, Tbakhi also gives an extra discount about “no aesthetics outside of my freedom” before the performance starts officially.
Rothkopf said Nadal-Melsió that the museum’s concern was not with the content of the work, but with the prelude to Tbakhi, which he claimed were against the ‘community guidelines’ of the institution. Nadal-Melsió insisted that a different introduction could be prepared for the iteration of the ISP, but the museum would not consider this, she said.
In response to HyperallergicThe request for comments, a spokesperson for the Whitney Museum said that “Canceling this execution was not a decision that took the museum lightly, but it was clear and necessary.”
“While we worked on the latest promotion text and materials of the ISP exhibitions, we rated a video of an earlier performance of ‘No Aesthetic Outside My Freedom’,” the spokesperson’s explanation continued. “At the start of the performance, one of the artists called on everyone who believes in an incarnation in Israel or America to leave the audience. Later the artist later valorized specific acts of violence and images of violence.”
It is unclear what the museum refers to “deeds of and images of violence.” The Whitney statement continues:
There are other works in this year’s ISP exhibitions that tackle the war in Gaza, just like earlier pieces in the museum. The Whitney will continue to support the difficult and provocative discussion about important events and social issues. This decision was not about the topics discussed, but because their presentation has violated the standards agreed by all members of our community, including ISP participants.
In a statement shared with HyperallergicTbakhi, Fakhourri and Maghathe emphasized the relative inconsistency of the actions of the museum. “In the time since our performance was canceled by the Whitney, Israel has brutally murdered more than 600 Palestinians, while he all continues to maintain mass hunger and famine as a method of genocide in Gaza,” the artists said.
“In the light of this continuous and escalating brutality, the decision to cancel our performance is a performance whose goal is to mourn Palestinians in the long battle for liberation – very little,” Tbakhi, Fakhouri and Maghathe continued. “It is an act of anti-Palestinian censorship, yes; an act of cowardice by an institution that is material complicit in the genocide, whose board members benefit from the bombs and jets who commit the genocide, yes; it is also a distraction.”
Fellows in the three cohorts of the ISP repeated this sentiment in conversations with Hyperallergic and in public pronouncement Published online in recent days. Together with Nadal-Melsió, that one rack Today they also responded in protest against the decision of leadership. Leaflets printed with the canceled performance scores were littered over the two exhibitions organized by the fellows in the Westbeth building in Manhattan – A grammar of attentionthe project of the curatorial cohort; And PrototypeThe show of the studio cohort. The last page of the package contains a QR code and the words: “Do something.” Some artists decided to completely remove their work, leaving empty space, dark monitors or a pushed stack of materials where their completed works once stood. And the Critical Studies Cohort has canceled its symposium, planned to be held yesterday 18 May.
One of the few works that can still be seen Prototype In Wesbeth Gallery is Ash Moniz’s ”[Inaudible](2025), A video of 17 minutes that follows on members of Osprey V, a Palestinian rock band from Gaza. Some musicians could escape to Cairo, while others are still trapped on the comic, depending on intermittent internet connection to share audio files with their fellow band members.
“I want to withdraw, I would like to take that action,” Moniz said Hyperallergic. “But the film is titled ‘[Inaudible]And it’s about the fact that [Palestinians] are completely silent – it is about not matter how loud they scream, nobody listens. “In the end, Moniz said, she and fellow artists decided that the work should be seen.
Moniz also told Hyperallergic that she was initially not sure if her work would be shown, while the museum staff performed for which Fellows described Hyperallergic As an unusual level of influence. During a meeting with the higher management, a line in the status of Moniz’s artists in which “a genocide that unfolded in real time was” described, marked as a “question of opinion,” said Nadal-Melsió.
“We are in this genocide for almost two years,” Moniz noted Hyperallergic. “The fact that the Whitney can still pretend that this is still a controversial issue … I mean, every humanitarian organization in the world said that this is a genocide.”
Nadal-Melsió noted that the Whitney never added a registration on its website for visitors to “not aesthetics outside my freedom”, which was intended as a public version, as at other planned events. This raised a flag, just like the fact that members of the curatorial and communication staff of the museum asked to assess artworks and descriptions, said Nadal-Melsió, requests that they felt undermined the pillars on which the famous exploratory program was established.
“The ISP is an experimental study community,” she said. “The idea that everything must be pre -packed and fully sealed against everything. We are not biennial – we are an alternative study community.”
The ISP program, founded in 1968 by Ron Clark, is known for the career of artists, critics and carators, including Latoya Ruby Frazier, Jenny Holzer, Andrea Fraser and Roberta Smith, among others. About 15 participants are chosen every year. In 2023, when Clark retired, Gregg Bordowitz took on the role of director. But Bordowitz switched to the role of director-in-sized earlier this year, and with Nadal-Melsió in an associated director, the ISP is essentially without an official leader, even while the program continues to settle in his first permanent house in artist Roy Lichtenste’s Studio.
This gap, Adrienne Oliver explained, a fellow in the critical studies -cohort of the ISP, left participants In touch at sea when Whitney leaders intervened to assess works and content.
“At any time someone could ask something and we had no leg to get up to ask:” Why, or for whom, or what purpose will this be used? “” Oliver said Hyperallergic. “That kind of vulnerability made us feel fairly open.”
But the abrupt cancellation of the performance finally made ahead with the planned symposium ‘unbearable’.
“Our works were not far from the questions in the heart of this issue, who were questions about institutions and labor, and death and race and colonial power,” Oliver said. “As the week unfolded, it became clearer and clearer that leadership would not let us speak. The only way was to cancel and ensure that our opposition was known to the cancellation for performance.”
Tbakhi, Fakhourri and Maghathe, the artists whose performance were canceled, said in their statement Hyperallergic That they are at the introduction of the previous staging- the address to the public that alerted the leadership of the museum so much.
“The only goal to continue to make art at the moment is to encourage the public to act to stop the machines of genocide. If this cancellation does, we were successful,” we went on, “Tbakhi, Fakhourri and Maghathe went further.” We, the artists, do not need support. The people of Gaza do. “
