Statement by ISP Associate Director Sara Nadal-Melsió Regarding the Whitney’s Cancellation of “No Aesthetics Outside My Freedom: Mourning, Militancy, and Performance” and the ISP Cohort’s Response

The Whitney Independent Study Program has been a space promoting the work of the arts for more than half a century. It stands by the rights of artists to express themselves and embodies the duties of artists to think and discuss freely. Its foundational premises are that it is independent—free from outside influences that would dictate what to think or discuss—and a place for study—to learn with and from others.

This work has always been unapologetically engaged with the politics of its times. The ISP began amid the revolutionary energies of May 68, the movement against the Vietnam War, the state violence of the Kent State massacre and fully coalesced around AIDS activism two decades later. Today, this means participants in the Program continue to think for themselves and provoke thought in others about contexts including but not limited to fascism at home and the relentless genocide being carried out in Gaza. And sadly today, this means that we also face unprecedented censorship and a threat to our foundational independence because of our pursuit of the very dialogue that make the ISP what it is.

Since joining the ISP, my highest priority has been to sustain and nurture a collective and independent study community of artists, curators, and writers based on care, trust, and a political commitment to the experimentalism of artmaking, thinking, and writing. Our shared medium is conversation, one that is thoughtful, open, caring, and courageous.

The members of the ISP remain committed to the collective practice of artworkers, many of whom belong to demographics that are more vulnerable than ever—among them, gender dissidents, political refugees, visa holders, and survivors of armed conflict, racism, and assault. It takes a lot of work and care to build a community, but only a moment of thoughtless violence to destroy, compromise, or instrumentalize it.

The Whitney Museum, which for more than half a century supported this work, has disappointed us in the past weeks. This was particularly painful for our community when, on Wednesday May 7, one of the cohort’s artists, Ash Moniz, was assaulted on the NYC subway for being a trans woman wearing a Palestinian scarf. Rather than put out a statement in her support or reaching out expressing solidarity and concern to Ash, the museum chose to ignore the issue and instead continue to put the ISP under scrutiny. This scrutiny was carried out under the pretense of “security” for Whitney Museum audiences and the need to screen for “offensive” content. We needed protection, instead we got surveillance.

For the past three weeks, all ISP capstone projects—traditionally culminating in two exhibitions and a critical studies Symposium—have been subjected to an unprecedented level of scrutiny from the senior administration at the Whitney Museum. The announcement of the ISP capstone events on e-flux was cancelled, and the museum delayed the release of online content as long as possible to deny the shows normal visibility. Additionally, the admissions process for next year’s ISP cohort has also been halted by the museum administration until further notice.

On Wednesday May 12, the director of the Whitney Museum, Scott Rothkopf, decided to cancel a performance by artists Fadl Fakhouri, Noel Maghathe, and Fargo Tbakhi interpreting a score of texts by Brandon Shimoda, Christina Sharpe, and Natalie Diaz. The performance was called “No Aesthetics Outside My Freedom: Mourning, Militancy, and Performance.” The title is borrowed from a line in Palestinian writer Mahmoud Darwish’s poem “State of Siege,” and the piece was originally commissioned by Jewish Currents. The performance was integrated in a nuanced and poetic statement of transnational political solidarity and an examination of entangled colonial, capitalist and anti-Black violence that, as the curators write in their ISP exhibition text “unfolds as a resonant chamber through a program of performances, installations, and workshops.” The exhibition, titled “a grammar of attention” is, they continue, “both an invitation and an offering: to bear and build witness to that which is fraught, incomplete, unauthorized, unsettled yet tethered to our present.” Rothkopf did not visit the exhibition and every single of my requests to upper management to engage the curatorial cohort in conversation was rejected.

The ostensible reason given by the Whitney for the cancellation was something unrelated to the show itself. One of the artists, Fargo Tbakhi, had introduced a first iteration of this piece at The Poetry Project in admittedly provocative language. But the point of artistic freedom has never been that it shies away from controversy or anger. And the point of defending it has never been that we agree with everything an individual says. The point is that we must refuse the right-wing extremism that seek to dictate what everyone is allowed to believe and express. The point is to insist on a free society and to stand in solidarity with other individuals and educational institutions under attack by this newly amplified right-wing extremism.

And furthermore, the logic of banning the performance based on what one person said is flawed, because the choral clamor that constitutes the “No Aesthetics” performance is bigger than any individual. Fargo had every right to his political rage, but this was not about him alone. It was about the collective voices gathered in “a grammar of attention.” I disagree with and regret the museum’s cancellation of this performance and stand with all the artists in the exhibition and with the Palestinian people. I remain proud and fully supportive of “a grammar of attention”—a show that, sadly, may no longer be possible in the US’s current context of policing, suppression, deliberate ignorance, and fear.

I stand wholeheartedly in solidarity with all the ISP participants and the study community we have become, even in the most challenging political climate. I am honored to be part of this community, and our work together continues to give me hope, even now. I believe this year’s capstone events represents the best the ISP has to offer. The independence of the ISP has been seriously compromised. I call on everyone who believes that art has a place in the struggle for free speech to support the survival of this extraordinary and urgently necessary experimental study community, and not only this one.

—Sara Nadal-Melsió, Associate Director of the Whitney Independent Study Program