Sharon Hayes (artist)

In the Near Future was created through four iterations staged in London, New York, Vienna, and Warsaw, with additional performances in Brussels and Paris. In each iteration, Hayes stood on the street each day for a number of days with a different protest sign. The slogans were mostly culled from past protests, although a few speak to the possibility of a future demonstration.

New York, 2005: Commissioned by Art in General, curated by Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy.

Vienna, 2006: Presented as part of Wieder und Wider: Performance Appropriated, MUMOK, curated by Barbara Clausen and Achim Hochdorfer.

Warsaw, 2008: Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, curated by Monika Szczukowska.

London, 2008: Presented as part of Perplexed in Public, curated by Elena Crippa and Silvia Sgualdini.

Presented by Art in General for their 25th anniversary exhibition, in downtown Manhattan, Everything Else Has Failed! Don’t You Think It’s Time for Love? Hayes performed a series of works in front of the UBS Building.[18] Dressed up as a queer office temp, she recited a love letter to an through a microphone and speaker on the street, expressing that "I didn't want the love to be read as heteronormative. Yet I want to be clear that queerness is not some kind of idealized space of politics."[19] The speeches were also recorded and played in the lobby of the UBS building alongside a series of silk-screened works inspired by political posters from the 1960s and 70s.[15]

For Revolutionary Love 1 & 2, Hayes asked about 100 queer volunteers to recite a text she wrote on gay power and liberation at the 2008 presidential conventions as part of a two-part commission for Creative Time’s public art initiative, “Democracy in America: The National Campaign”, curated by Nato Thompson.[20] Subtitled, I Am Your Worst Fear for the Democratic National Convention in Denver, CO and I Am Your Best Fantasy, the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN, the participants recited each ten to twenty minutes long text three times over the course of two hours. Using the charged atmosphere of the conventions as a backdrop for a more personal reflection on love and politics, the piece drew upon the history of the gay liberation movements of the 1970s.[15]

Parole is a four-channel video installation composed of semi-autonomous video “scenes” that string together to form a narrative without a story. Focused on a central character who records sound but never speaks, Parole teases out multiple relationships between politics and desire, intimacy and estrangement, speaking and listening, voice and body. The installation is composed of footage of performed events in New York, London, Frankfurt, and Istanbul, Turkey, as well as staged footage of this sound recorder in various private and semi-public locations.

Fingernails on a blackboard: Bella investigates how voice acts as the embodied medium of speech and addresses the political consequences of gender and the specific limitations of power, communication, and relatability in the specter of public speech. The work takes the 1977 National Women's Conference in Houston, TX, as a historical point of departure, which was a result of an executive order to assess the status of women, in light of the United Nations proclaiming 1975 as International Women's Year. Following the well-attended, highly publicized event, an extension was granted for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. But having only been ratified by 35 states by the 1982 deadline, the amendment never passed. The video work uses the transcript of a meeting between politician Bella Abzug – the New York Congresswoman head of the National Women's Conference – and her vocal coach. During their meeting, the pair work at neutralizing Abzug's regional accent and softening her tone – strategically altering her voice to something more universal and soothing.[21]

In In My Little Corner of the World, Anyone Would Love You, Hayes investigates queer and feminist archives in the US and the UK documenting gay liberation, women's liberation, as well as the pre-lesbian liberation movements: Daughters of Bilitis (US) and Minorities Research Group (UK). Hayes explores the specific limits of gender, the anti-racist work done by lesbian, queer, and transpeople of color to combat racism in white lesbian feminist groups and the historic and contemporary ways in which feminist, lesbian, and queer political collectivities have expanded and constrained gender expression.[22] The work was exhibited at The Common Guild in Glasgow and Studio Voltaire in London in 2016.

If They Should Ask was a temporary monument located in Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square addressing the lack of monuments dedicated to the women who have contributed to the social, cultural, political and economic life of Philadelphia. Of the hundreds of sculptures in the city that honor historic figures, only two are dedicated to women. If They Should Ask is a collection of concrete pedestals of existing monuments in the city cast at half-scale and engraved with the names of Philadelphia-area women who have contributed to the city's civic and public life from the mid-1600s to the present day.[23] The piece was created as a part of Monument Lab, a Philadelphia-wide public art and history initiative.[24]