“No Aesthetic Outside My Freedom: Mourning, Militancy, and Performance,” a chunk by artists Noel Maghathe, Fadl Fakhouri, and Fargo Tbakhi about Palestinian mourning, was scheduled to happen Wednesday night, Could 14, as a part of programming for the Impartial Research Program’s (ISP) curatorial exhibition a grammar of consideration. The work, which generally runs for an hour and a half at most, entails performers decoding a collection of “scores” written by Natalie Diaz, Christina Sharpe, and Brandon Shimoda, conveying grief by way of varied bodily and verbal gestures.
However two days earlier, on Could 11, ISP’s Affiliate Director Sara Nadal-Melsió discovered that the efficiency had been canceled by the Whitney Museum of American Artwork, the establishment that helps the celebrated nine-month fellowship. In a gathering, the Whitney’s Director Scott Rothkopf relayed that the museum had come throughout a YouTube video from the work’s preliminary presentation with The Poetry Undertaking and Jewish Currents final fall by which Tbakhi launched the piece with a brief tackle to attendees: “You may only remain in this audience if you love Palestinians wholly and completely, you may only remain if you love us while we are alive and when we are dead, when we are fighting for survival, dignity, land, return, real and sustainable life using any and all methods available to us.”
“You may not remain in this audience if you believe in Israel in any incarnation, given its ontological structure as a continual process of extermination, disposition, and daily cruelty,” Tbakhi continued. When nobody from the viewers leaves the room, Tbakhi goes on to offer an extra temporary about “No Aesthetic Outside My Freedom” earlier than the efficiency formally begins.
Rothkopf informed Nadal-Melsió that the museum’s considerations weren’t with the contents of the work however with Tbakhi’s prelude, which he claimed went in opposition to the establishment’s “community guidelines.” Nadal-Melsió insisted {that a} completely different introduction may very well be ready for the ISP’s iteration, however the museum wouldn’t think about this, she mentioned.
In response to Hyperallergic’s request for remark, a Whitney museum spokesperson mentioned that “canceling this performance was not a decision the museum took lightly, but it was clear and necessary.”
“While we were working on the ISP exhibitions’ final promotional text and materials, we reviewed a video of a previous performance of ‘No Aesthetic Outside My Freedom,’” the spokesperson’s assertion continued. “At the beginning of the performance, one of the artists called for anyone who believes in Israel or America in any incarnation to leave the audience. Later, the artist valorized specific acts of violence and imagery of violence.”
It’s unclear what the museum is referring to by “acts of and imagery of violence.” The Whitney’s assertion continues:
There are different works on this yr’s ISP exhibitions that tackle the conflict in Gaza, as have earlier items within the museum. The Whitney will proceed to assist troublesome and provocative dialogue of essential occasions and social points. This choice was not in regards to the subjects mentioned, however as a result of their presentation violated the requirements agreed to by all members of our group, together with ISP individuals.
In a press release shared with Hyperallergic, Tbakhi, Fakhouri, and Maghathe pressured the relative inconsequence of the museum’s actions. “In the time since our performance was cancelled by the Whitney, Israel has brutally murdered more than 600 Palestinians, all while continuing to enforce mass starvation and famine as a method of genocide in Gaza,” the artists mentioned.
“In the face of this ongoing and escalating brutality, the decision to cancel our performance — a performance whose purpose is to mourn Palestinians martyred in the long struggle for liberation — matters very little,” Tbakhi, Fakhouri, and Maghathe continued. “It is an act of anti-Palestinian censorship, yes; an act of cowardice by an institution materially complicit in the genocide, whose board members profit from the bombs and jets committing the genocide, yes; it is also a distraction.”
Studio Fellow Dahlia Bloomstone turned off the screens in her work “MORALLY NEGATIVE UNIVERSE” (2025) within the Prototype exhibition
Fellows within the ISP’s three cohorts echoed this sentiment in conversations with Hyperallergic and in public statements revealed on-line over the previous few days. Together with Nadal-Melsió, who issued a press release immediately, they’ve additionally responded in protest in opposition to management’s choice. Leaflets printed with the cancelled efficiency scores have been strewn throughout the 2 exhibitions organized by the fellows on the Westbeth constructing in Manhattan — a grammar of consideration, the Curatorial cohort’s undertaking; and Prototype, the Studio cohort’s present. The final web page of the packet features a QR code and the phrases: “DO SOMETHING.” Some artists determined to take away their work altogether, leaving empty house, darkish screens, or a pushed-aside pile of supplies the place their accomplished works as soon as stood. And the Important Research cohort canceled its symposium, slated to be held yesterday, Could 18.
One of many few works nonetheless on view in Prototype at Wesbeth Gallery is Ash Moniz’s “[Inaudible]” (2025), a 17-minute video that follows members of Osprey V, a Palestinian rock band from Gaza. Among the musicians have been in a position to escape to Cairo, whereas others are nonetheless trapped on the strip, counting on intermittent web connection to share audio information with their fellow band members.
“I want to withdraw, I would like to take that action,” Moniz informed Hyperallergic. “But the film is titled ‘[Inaudible]’ and it’s about the fact that [Palestinians] are completely silenced — it’s about the fact that no matter how loud they scream, no one is listening.” Finally, Moniz mentioned, she and fellow artists determined that the work ought to stay on view.
Ash Moniz’s “[Inaudible]” (2025), on view within the Prototype exhibition
Moniz additionally informed Hyperallergic that she was initially not sure whether or not her work could be proven in any respect, as museum workers exercised what fellows described to Hyperallergic as an uncommon degree of affect. Throughout a gathering with higher administration, a line in Moniz’s artist assertion by which she described “a genocide unfolding in real time” was flagged as a “question of opinion,” Nadal-Melsió mentioned.
“We’re almost two years into this genocide,” Moniz famous to Hyperallergic. “The fact that the Whitney can still pretend that this is still a controversial matter … I mean, every single humanitarian organization in the world had said this is a genocide.”
Nadal-Melsió famous that the Whitney by no means added a sign-up hyperlink on its web site for guests to attend “No Aesthetic Outside My Freedom,” which was meant to be a public efficiency, because it did with different scheduled occasions. This raised a flag, as did the truth that members of the museum’s curatorial and communications workers requested to evaluate artworks and descriptions, Nadal-Melsió mentioned, requests she felt undermined the very pillars on which the famously exploratory program was based.
“The ISP is an experimental study community,” she mentioned. “The idea that everything has to be prepackaged and totally sealed goes against everything. We are not a biennial — we are an alternative study community.”
An paintings in Prototype was eliminated and changed with a printed rating of the cancelled efficiency.
Based in 1968 by Ron Clark, the ISP program is thought for serving to propel the careers of artists, critics, and curators together with LaToya Ruby Frazier, Jenny Holzer, Andrea Fraser, and Roberta Smith, amongst others. Roughly 15 individuals are chosen every year. In 2023, when Clark retired, Gregg Bordowitz assumed the position of director. However Bordowitz transitioned into the position of director-at-large earlier this yr, and with Nadal-Melsió in an affiliate director place, the ISP has primarily been with out an official chief, at the same time as this system continues to settle into its first everlasting residence in artist Roy Lichtenstein’s Manhattan studio.
This lacuna, defined Adrienne Oliver, a fellow within the ISP’s important research cohort, left individuals feeling at sea when Whitney leaders intervened to evaluate works and content material.
“At any time someone could request something and we had no leg to stand on to ask, ‘Why, or for whom, or to what end will this be used?’” Oliver informed Hyperallergic. “That kind of sense of vulnerability left us feeling quite open.”
Julia Taszycka, “11215 – 10014” (2025)
However the efficiency’s abrupt cancellation lastly made shifting ahead with the deliberate symposium “unbearable.”
“Our works were not distant from the very questions at the heart of this matter, which were questions around institutions and labor, and death and race and colonial power,” Oliver mentioned. “As the week unfolded, it became clearer and clearer that leadership was not going to let us speak. The only way was to cancel, and to ensure that our opposition to the cancellation for the performance was known.”
Tbakhi, Fakhouri, and Maghathe, the artists whose efficiency was cancelled, mentioned of their assertion to Hyperallergic that they stand by the earlier staging’s introduction — the tackle to the viewers which so alarmed museum management.
“The only purpose of continuing to make art in this moment is to galvanize audiences towards acting to stop the machinery of genocide. If this cancellation does that, then we have succeeded,” Tbakhi, Fakhouri, and Maghathe continued. “We, the artists, do not need support. The people of Gaza do.”
