Maia Chao's 'Being Moved' Debuts at 2026 Whitney Biennial

Artist Maia Chao will activate the seventh-floor galleries of the Whitney Museum of American Art with her performance 'Being Moved' on May 14, 2026, as part of the 2026 Whitney Biennial. The work explores the choreography of museum spectatorship, exaggerating unconscious gestures like leaning and slowing pace to denaturalize them. It includes a scripted sequence where 'tour guides' speak about Gaza before being ushered away by 'museum administrators,' a sanctioned performance of censorship. Chao's practice draws on institutional critique, referencing Adrian Piper's 'Calling Cards' and Mierle Laderman Ukeles's Maintenance Art. Her earlier project 'Look at Art, Get Paid' (2015–20) invited non-museum-goers as paid critics and led to policy changes at the RISD Museum. Also in the Biennial is Chao's 'Scores for the Museum Visitor' (2026), an empty rectangle on the wall with instructions to touch it as if touching a forbidden artwork. Chao grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, with artist parents and studied cultural anthropology at Brown University. She describes her position as 'collaborating with the institution and antagonizing it,' acknowledging the complicity required. The performance runs at the Whitney Museum, 99 Gansevoort Street, West Village, Manhattan.