Always, Already, Haunting, "disss-co," Haunt explores the affective and political potential of haunting against a backdrop of cultural institutions that are ever more eager to represent certain types of "fugitive" bodies. The exhibition understands haunting as a representational illogic, or a way of rejecting the production of convenient and easily read linear narratives that are too often ghosted by particular omissions, absences, and historic violences. Through a focus on collective memory, and alternative archival practices, Always, Already, Haunting, "disss-co," Haunt lingers alongside those events or bodies who continue to demand attention, foregrounding the inevitability of returns and the necessity of redress. The artists, writers, and curators in this show engage notions of embodiment that complicate the assumed clarity of mourning and rejoicing, presence and absence, and posit the importance of desire and pleasure.

The exhibition features works by Julie Dash, Minnie Evans, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Green-Wood Cemetery, shawné michaelain holloway, Nina Howell Starr, Asif Mian, Guadalupe Rosales, Mariana Valencia, Julie Tolentino, The Whitney Archives, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar.

Curated by Nia Nottage, Gwyneth Shanks, and Simon Wu, Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellows in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program (ISP).

Opening Reception: May 24, 5–8pm
May 24–June 15
Gallery hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 11–6pm

PERFORMANCE AND PUBLIC PROGRAMS:

Performance by Guadalupe Rosales and Mariana Valencia: All That Can Happen 
The Kitchen during the opening reception on Friday, May 24, 7:30pm. Free. 

Site Activation at Green-Wood Cemetery
Green-Wood Cemetery, 500 25th Street, Brooklyn, NY
Saturday, June 1, 6:30–8:30pm
The Green-Wood Cemetery is famous for its elaborate private burial lots and architecturally significant monuments. However, its lesser expensive public lots comprise about half of all burials at the cemetery. Green-Wood’s Manager of Preservation and Restoration, Neela Wickremesinghe, and Director of Programs and Special Projects, Harry Weil, lead a guided exploration of these sites. The tour will highlight the “Colored Lots,” seven burial lots on the cemetery’s southern border, including one for The Colored Orphans Asylum. Over 1,300 are laid to rest here, making it one of the largest existing burial grounds for African Americans who lived in New York City in the last two centuries. This program is ticketed. Click here to purchase tickets.

Screening and Conversation: Praise House (1991)
Whitney Museum, Floor 3, Susan and John Hess Family Theater
Monday, June 3, 7–8:30pm
Praise House (1991) is a film collaboration between director Julie Dash and choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar that combines theater, dance, and music to pay tribute to the work and biography of visionary artist Minnie Evans. “Draw or Die” is the divine imperative received by the film’s fictional protagonist, Hannah, who is being nurtured by her grandmother but controlled by her pragmatic mother. Dash and Zollar take viewers on a poetic, visually rich interpellation of Evans’s continued creative lineage. A conversation will follow the screening. This program is ticketed. Click here to purchase tickets.