Sophia Giovannitti: Contract (2026)

As part of the exhibition Performing Conditions: Artistic Labor and Dependency as Form, Sophia Giovannitti presents a new iteration of her performance Contract.

Contract (2022–ongoing) attempts to antagonize entrenched power dynamics between artists and those who collect, curate, patronize, exploit, and visit them. Its first study—the score of which is exhibited in Performing Conditions—took place at DUPLEX, a commercial gallery in New York. The gallery was closed to the public save for visitors who paid $1,000 to enter and undergo a choreographed conversation with the artist, gradually surfacing the visitor’s desires and the artist’s material needs. This encounter is “related to but uncannily dislocated from” art-world rituals like a studio visit, an interview, a drink, or a date. The performance, as Giovannitti put it, embarked “on a fool’s errand: making transparent and concrete the opaque systems of eroticized exchange facilitating value extraction from artists.” While it attempted to make plain the transactional terms that are usually left implicit, she found that these still managed to evade everyone, even her.

From May 5–10, Giovannitti presents a new study of Contract. The artist will occupy the List Center’s Bakalar Gallery for six days, working within it on her forthcoming book. The gallery will be closed to the public, save for those who pay slightly above $1,000—the original sum adjusted for inflation—to enter a new choreography with her. With this version, Giovannitti reconsiders her original aims. No longer interested in proving anything—“Revealing exploitation is as popular as it is impotent,” she argues—she instead focuses on her own desire for power, undercut by the things she needs. She pursues a legal transfer of risk and an affective experience of “something else.” A twenty percent discount is offered to those affiliated with art institutions, subject to the artist’s discretion, and to lawyers. The artist’s private sphere, de facto a site of extraction, becomes a site of negotiation. Debts are incurred and traded. Nothing is forgiven.

To sign up for the performance, visit choreography.info