In Conversation: Performativity & Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s “Untitled” (Go-Go Dancing Platform) with Joshua Chambers-Letson, Tess Dworman, Malik Gaines & Nile Harris
Marking the closing week of 'Felix Gonzalez-Torres. “Untitled” (Go-Go Dancing Platform),’ at Hauser & Wirth 22nd Street, we invite you to join us for a lively conversation, conceived in collaboration with The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, exploring the mutable meanings and ideas of performativity that one of Gonzalez‑Torres’s most significant works sparks. Thinking about the broader landscapes of performance and queer art, the panel will explore complex questions such as: Which aspects of this work can be ascribed to performance, if any? Is an audience required to constitute a performance?
The discussion will feature scholar, writer and Chair of Performance Studies at Northwestern University Joshua Chambers-Letson, performer and choreographer Tess Dworman, artist and writer Malik Gaines, performer and director Nile Harris and will be moderated by Director of Public Programming Russell Salmon.
“Untitled” (Go-Go Dancing Platform) consists of a painted blue stage edged with 48 glowing lightbulbs. When empty, the platform rests as a minimalist form, shaped by the possibility of activation and gently pressing against its own art-historical lineage. At undisclosed moments, a dancer may step up, dressed in silver lamé, moving briefly to music only they can hear. Their unchoreographed dance is intended to not be in relation to a public—performed solely for themselves—yet it invites surprise, desire, and projection, while quietly asking what constitutes a performance, and for whom.
Born of a time marked by loss, the work nonetheless pulses with joy, embodied presence, and emotional openness—qualities that course through the delicate complexities of Gonzalez‑Torres’s practice. Its urgency endures because its questions are timeless. Gonzalez‑Torres gives us art without conclusions—works that begin again with each encounter, leaving space not only to look, but to contemplate, feel and to remember.
This program is free; however, reservations are required.
Installation View, ‘Felix Gonzalez-Torres. “Untitled” (Go-Go Dancing Platform),’ Hauser & Wirth New York, 22nd Street, 2026 © Estate Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Courtesy Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation. Photo: Matt Grubb, Object Studies
About Felix-Gonzalez Torres
Felix Gonzalez-Torres (American, born 1957 in Guáimaro, Cuba; died 1996 in Miami) was one of the most influential artists to emerge from the vibrant New York art scene of the 1980s and1990s. He developed his profoundly personal, deeply political, and conceptually rigorous practice under the shadow of the AIDS epidemic and in the aftermath of Minimalism andConceptualism.
About Joshua Chambers-Letson
Joshua Chambers-Letson is the Chair of Performance Studies and Professor of PerformanceStudies and Asian American Studies at Northwestern University. With expertise in performance theory, queer of color critique, and race and ethnic studies, JCL is the author of ‘UnfinishedGrief: Queer Love and Loss’ (forthcoming NYU Press June 2026) and is the author of ‘After theParty: A Manifesto for Queer of Color Life’ (winner of the 2019 Outstanding Book Award from the Association of Theatre in Higher Education and the 2019 Erroll Hill Award from the American Society for Theatre Research) and ‘A Race So Different: Law and Performance inAsian America’ (winner of the 2014 Outstanding Book Award from ATHE). JCL is also the co-editor of José Esteban Muñoz’s ‘The Sense of Brown’ with Tavia Nyong’o, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s ‘China Trilogy: Three Parables of Global Capital’ with Christine Mok, and series co-editor of NYU Press’s ‘Sexual Cultures’ series with Tavia Nyong’o and Ann Pellegrini. In addition to a host of publications in scholarly journals, art writing appears in exhibition catalogues for the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Museum, the Whitney Museum of Art, MoMA, the 57th Venice Biennale, Boston ICA, SCHUNCK, the Haus der Kulturen der Velt, and SAVVY Contemporary.
About Tess Dworman
Originally from Chicago, Tess Dworman moved to New York in 2009. Since then, her work has been presented by Roulette Intermedium, New York Live Arts, the Chocolate Factory Theater, Abrons Art Center and Pageant. In 2020, she was honored by the Bessie’s New York Dance and Performance Awards as an ‘Outstanding Breakout Choreographer.’ As a performer, she appeared in 4 works by Tere O’Connor from 2012 to 2023. She performed in the work of Juliana F. May from 2015 to 2024. She’s worked with several other choreographers including Kim Brandt, Yanira Castro, Moriah Evans, Sam Kim, Julie Mayo, Ryan McNamara and Mariana Valencia. In 2020, Tess began her career as an audio describer. She has since written and voiced audio description for several venues including The Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center and The Whitney Museum of American Art. In 2024, she began working at International Digital Centre, a post-production company that provides audio description for film and television. She works at IDC as an audio description writer, narrator and quality control specialist. She is currently on faculty at the New School and a 2025-26 Movement Research Artist in Residence.
About Malik Gaines
Malik Gaines uses performance as a premise for writing, events and exhibitions, music composition, scholarly research and collaboration. Since 2000, he has worked with Jade Gordon and Alexandro Segade as the group My Barbarian, the subject of an exhibition and performance survey at the Whitney Museum, New York and the ICA Los Angeles in 2021-22. Gaines recently served as artistic co-director of The Industry opera company in Los Angeles, which presented his opera Star Choir, about future humans who attempt to colonize a distant planet. Current work includes a piano-bar act at San Diego's Clark Cabaret. He is the author of ‘Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left: A History of the Impossible’ (2017, NYU Press) and many essays and articles about art and performance. Gaines is Professor of Visual Arts at UC San Diego, where he serves as PhD director.
About Nile Harris
Nile Harris is a performer and director of live art. He has done a few things and hopes to do a few more, God willing.
Forthcoming Events: New York
