Slow Dance arrives at MCA Chicago with a deceptively simple proposition: what happens when the body refuses to keep up? Opening on 12 September, the exhibition brings together six artists who use performance, sculpture, painting and video to examine slowness not as passivity but as a conscious response to the contemporary pressure to be endlessly productive, visible and available.
Curated by Jadine Collingwood, Pamela Alper Associate Curator at the MCA, with Curatorial Assistant Korina Hernandez, the exhibition considers performance in two ways: as an artistic medium dependent on the live body and as something demanded of us economically and socially. We perform at work, online and in public; we compete, produce and maintain ourselves. Slow Dance asks what may be revealed when that momentum falters through hesitation, waiting, exhaustion or stillness.
Collingwood is particularly well placed to explore these questions. Her curatorial interests span performance, feminist theory, new media and the pressures of contemporary life, while previous MCA projects include exhibitions with Caroline Kent, Martine Syms and Gary Simmons. Earlier this year, in I-M Magazine’s interview Jadine Collingwood: A Curator in Motion, she spoke about institutional leadership as a way to reshape the values and priorities of the art world. Her selection for The Studio Museum in Harlem’s 2026 Arts Leadership Praxis adds another layer to a career increasingly concerned with how institutions can support artists and new ways of thinking.
Gordon Hall, Hands and Knees, The Kitchen, New York, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and DOCUMENT, Chicago | Lisbon.
Performer: Justin Cabrillos. Photo: Jackie Furtado.
The six-artist line-up makes that thinking tangible. Melanie McLain’s Peripersonal turns the architecture of the corporate workplace into a structure for bodily encounter, while Carolyn Lazard’s LONG TAKE considers dependency, care and disability through altered rhythms of movement and perception. Gordon Hall’s Hands and Knees places bodies on sculptural supports, exploring vulnerability, waiting and dependence. Elsewhere, Brendan Fernandes draws on his background in ballet to investigate discipline, endurance and bodily labour; Geumhyung Jeong blurs the boundaries between human bodies, objects and machines; and Cally Spooner has long scrutinised management culture, outsourcing and the body treated as a productive resource.
Slow Dance is a compelling, thought provoking exhibition that deals with one of the biggest threats brought to humanity by progress: the inability to slow down, to stay still. The artists look at bodies that tire, fail, recover and depend on others. In doing so, the exhibition proposes slowness as a space for reciprocity and intimacy, and perhaps even resistance. Presented in the Sylvia Neil and Daniel Fischel Galleries until 21 March 2027 with live activations throughout the run, inviting visitors to encounter these ideas with a physical pressence.
Slow Dance
MCA Chicago
12 September 2026 – 21 March 2027
More information and tickets, HERE.
Author: Lina Ress
Lead image: Melanie McLain, Peripersonal, 2020. OTRXS MUNDXS, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, 2020–21. Courtesy of the artist.
If you found this preview interesting, you may also enjoy reading about Amar Kanwar’s exhibition at Serpentine North, London.
Show Comments +