Sharon Hayes, Women of the World Unite! they said., 2014 Photo: Liz Ligon © Sharon Hayes, Liz Ligon, and Friends of the High Line. Commissioned and produced by Friends of the High Line

Sharon Hayes

Echo

13.4 2019 – 11.8 2019

Stockholm

From street protest to art spaces – Sharon Hayes highlights activism on the art scene, and is currently a seminal voice in American contemporary political art. This exhibition is her first in Stockholm and features both early and completely new works.

Sharon Hayes mines the power of the spoken word in works ranging from entirely personal address to agitation on urgent social issues. By using individual voices she intentionally prevents us from relating to preconceived perspectives, be they universal or specific. In her performances, photographs and sound and video pieces, she relocates private speech to the public sphere. A central aspect of her work is the relationship between language, history, and politics.

“Echo” explores the idea of the exhibition as an echo chamber, where Hayes lets voices and materials reverberate between different historic events. It also references a feminist interpretation of the classical myth of Echo, the nymph who is cursed for her conversational skills. She is condemned to only repeat fragments said by others, sounds devoid of meaning.

Video: Sharon Hayes talks about the exhibition

Follow Sharon Hayes on a walk through the exhibition ”Echo”. She talks about the works ”Join us”, ”In My Little Corner of the World, Anyone Would Love You”, ”Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA)”, and ”Ricerche”, among others.

Voices lifted from one time into another

The echo resonates through Hayes’s work on several levels, as both material and form. Texts and acts of speech with a specific historical charge are replicated in “oral translations” for a contemporary audience. Hayes calls these anachronisms, instances when an unresolved issue or conflict is broached by a different temporal moment – as in the video work “Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA)” (2003), where Hayes reads messages to a live audience from the kidnapped Patty Hearst to her parents that were aired on the radio in 1974.

In several works the private address is transferred to a public space, as in “Everything Else Has Failed! Don’t You Think it’s Time for Love?” (2007), a daily performance of anonymous love letters in the street outside a bank in New York, at a time when the US military presence in Iraq was escalating and the worst financial crisis since the Depression was rapidly becoming a fact.

Sharon Hayes, Everything Else Has Failed! Don’t You Think It’s Time For Love?, 2007 Performance still. Photo: Hans Kuzmich. Courtesy of the Artist and Tanya Leighton Gallery © Sharon Hayes

Feminist and queer activism

Hayes investigates how political intention and longing can manifest concretely, in a movement from the individual or the protective community of groups to larger forums. The video installation “In My Little Corner of the World, Anyone Would Love You” (2016) enacts a pivotal work in the feminist and queer grass roots movement of the 1950s-1970s, of putting words to experiences and dreams that could not previously be voiced. This piece belongs to the Moderna Museet collection and forms the starting point for this exhibition, which is Hayes’ first in Stockholm.

New work for the exhibition

A completely new work will be presented as part of Hayes’s evolving “Ricerche” project  – made in dialogue with “Comizi d’amore” (1965), Pier Paolo Pasolini’s interview film on sex and relations. Hayes’s interviews with different groups map out a contemporary situation, but also build a living archive of voices on the challenges of owning one’s identity – conversations with a radical, transformative potential.

Sharon Hayes, Ricerche: three, 2013 HD video still. Courtesy of the Artist and Tanya Leighton Gallery
Pictured (l to r): Jasmine Brown, Laakan McHardy, Pavel Lopez, Anarkalee Perera, Zehra Ali Khan, Alyssa Simari, Lyla Eaton and Sara Amjad © Sharon Hayes

A seminal politically and socially committed contemporary artist

Sharon Hayes was born in 1970 in Baltimore and is now based in Philadelphia. With a background in journalism and anthropology, she came to New York’s experimental theatre scene in the early 1990s. This was a time and a place marked by the polarised political climate of the Reagan era, with its denial of the AIDS crisis. With her “Lesbian Love Tour” in 1996, which visited forty-five “lesbian living rooms” in nearly as many cities, Sharon Hayes brought activism to the art scene.

Hayes is currently one of the most influential politically and socially committed artists in the USA and has been featured in retrospectives at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. Her works have been shown internationally, including at the 55th Venice Biennale in Italy, where she received a special mention, and at the 10th Gwangju Biennale in Korea.

Video: artist talk Sharon Hayes and Every Ocean Hughes

Meet Sharon Hayes and Every Ocean Hughes in a personal conversation about love, a friendship rooted in New York’s artistic queer community in the 1990s, about artistic practices and strategies, and about the experience of acting on different “scenes”. The conversation took place at Moderna Museet in Stockholm on April 12, 2019

Curator: Lena Essling

Admissions

Free admission to the exhibition.

Guided Tours

Curator tours (in Swedish)

Saturday 13 April at 14, with Ylva Hillström, curator Learning
Tuesday 7 May at 17.30, with Lena Essling, curator

Baby tours (in Swedish)

Thursday 30 Maj at 15–17
Thursday 6 June at 15–17

More information and booking information baby tours

Tours for visually impaired (in Swedish)

Thursday 18 April at 17

Tours for group living facilities (in Swedish)

Thursday 9 May at 16–18

School visit

Welcome to visit the exhibition with you school class! To avoid double bookings for guided tours, please contact our booking office in good time and notify us of the date of your visit. E-mail: booking office

Free admission for everyone.

Book a guided tour or workshop

Combine your museum visit with a guided tour or an inspiring workshop session. We have different workshops for pupils 13 years and older, and 4–12 years old.

Book a guided tour and/or workshop

Read more about school visits: School

Exhibition catalogue

The exhibition catalogue “Sharon Hayes: Echo” includes contributions by Sharon Hayes and Lena Essling. The catalogue is published by Moderna Museet in collaboration with Koenig Books, London. Buy the catalogue at the museum or in the Webshop: Moderna Museet Webshop

The exhibition is on the 2nd floor

Map of Moderna Museet

Images

Installation view ”Sharon Hayes: Echo”, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, 2019 Photo: Åsa Lundén/Moderna Museet
Sharon Hayes, Join Us, 2012 Installation detail, Tanya Leighton Gallery. Courtesy of the Artist and Tanya Leighton Gallery © Sharon Hayes with Angela Beallor
Installation view ”Sharon Hayes: Echo”, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, 2019 Photo: Åsa Lundén/Moderna Museet
Sharon Hayes, Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), 2003 4-channel video (colour, sound). Courtesy of the Artist and Tanya Leighton Gallery © Sharon Hayes

More about this exhibition