MCA Chicago Announces “On Stage: Lineages,” A Showcase of Four Performance Works Moving Toward Canon Correction
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago announced the return of the On Stage performance series. Since 2022, the On Stage series has focused on a curatorial theme that rotates annually. This spring, On Stage takes Lineages as its guiding concept, featuring four separate artist works that explore notions of identity and shared history from both inside and outside of the art world.
Running from January to April 2025, Lineages seeks to interrogate mainstream, Western ideas about what is considered “contemporary” in performance art, especially when non-Western art forms have historically been categorized as “traditional” or “cultural” despite developing synchronously and at times appropriated by Western artists as foundation for the new. In doing so, Lineages examines the plurality and multiplicities of timelines and artistic developments, reshaping what we consider to be new.
Performances include Elisa Harkins’s Wampum / ᎠᏕᎳ ᏗᎦᎫᏗ, (Jan 31–Feb 1, 2025) a music and dance performance combining disco and Indigenous language; Anne Collod’s Moving Alter-natives, (Feb 13–15, 2025) a dance examining modern dance history through the lenses of gender, post-colonialism, and cultural appropriation; Miguel Gutierrez’s Super Nothing, (Mar 28–30, 2025) a dance that works with his personal performance archive to examine how our past can provide a blueprint for honesty in the present; and Kaneza Schaal’s KLII, (Apr 17–19, 2025) a theater-based performance that considers present-day remnants of colonialism through an avatar of King Leopold II’s ghost.
Lineages is organized by Laura Paige Kyber, Assistant Curator of Performance. Tickets for Lineages will be on sale starting December 11, 2024. Visit experience.mcachicago.org or call 312-397-4010.
