Image: MCA Chicago
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago will open ‘Slow Dance’ on September 12, bringing together six artists whose work examines how slowness, stillness and exhaustion can resist the pressure to remain constantly productive. The multidisciplinary exhibition will run through March 21, 2027, in the Sylvia Neil and Daniel Fischel Galleries at MCA Chicago.
Featuring Brendan Fernandes, Gordon Hall, Geumhyung Jeong, Carolyn Lazard, Melanie McLain and Cally Spooner, the exhibition includes painting, sculpture, video and live performance. Across these forms, the artists consider performance both as a medium grounded in the live presence of bodies and as an economic demand shaped by productivity, speed and efficiency.
According to the museum, ‘Slow Dance’ focuses on the ways bodies “wear away and how they endure.” Its themes include waiting, competition in labor markets, fatigue, failure, breakdown and exhaustion. The exhibition frames gestures of suspension, inaction and stillness as ways of investigating bodily labor and maintenance under conditions of incessant pressure.
The participating artists approach those questions through distinct practices. The exhibition documentation includes Melanie McLain’s ‘Peripersonal’ (2020), presented as part of ‘OTRXS MUNDXS’ at Museo Tamayo in Mexico City in 2020–21; Carolyn Lazard’s ‘LONG TAKE’ (2022); and Gordon Hall’s ‘Hands and Knees,’ presented at The Kitchen in New York in 2025 with performer Justin Cabrillos. These works form part of a broader presentation that combines recorded, material and live approaches to performance.
The museum says the exhibition also considers how artists can model “new modes of reciprocity, intimacy, and connection” while addressing the effects of contemporary demands to perform in public life, on social media and in the workplace. In this account, slowness is not presented simply as a change of pace, but as a way of attending to the body’s limits, relationships and capacity to continue.
‘Slow Dance’ is curated by Jadine Collingwood, Pamela Alper Associate Curator, with Korina Hernandez, Curatorial Assistant. In-gallery performance activations will take place throughout the exhibition’s run. A related Family Day, ‘Take Your Time,’ is scheduled for January 9, 2027, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Lead support is provided by the Harris Family Foundation in memory of Bette and Neison Harris, the Zell Family Foundation, Cari and Michael Sacks, and R. H. Defares, with additional support from the museum’s Women Artists Initiative.
