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Honor, starring Lili Taylor and directed by Geoff Sobelle, is based on a 16th-century tapestry at the Metropolitan Museum of Art titled “Honor,” which depicts 69 historical and allegorical figures who offer personal stories as moral lessons in honor and in dishonor.  Bocanegra’s very close reading of the tapestry leads her to weave together such diverse topics as Carole King’s Tapestry album, tableau vivant, the founding of the Girl Scouts of America, Anni Albers, the Monkees, and the history of theater.

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February 22–24, 2024

“Of the many lecture-performances I’ve seen over the past twenty years, few have been as exhilarating. … The finale was breathtaking and euphoric.” —Claire Bishop, Artforum (Best of 2022)

ASL interpretation is planned for Friday, February 23. 

Part of Out There 2024.

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The third lecture in a four-part series taking the stage at NYU Skirball this season, Bodycast is inspired by the two teenage years Bocanegra spent in a body cast due to scoliosis. Bodycast mines specific details of Bocanegra’s life to create a more general meditation on art-making and shifting ideals of feminine beauty.

Starring Ruth Negga (Oscar, Golden Globe, and Tony nominee) and directed by Paul Lazar.

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The second lecture in a four-part series taking the stage at NYU Skirball this season, When a Priest Marries a Witch tells a spellbinding tale set in the 1960s about a priest, an artist, and a young girl in Pasadena, Texas.

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Oct 30: Farmhouse/Whorehouse
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Nov 27: When A Priest Marries a Witch
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Jan 29: Bodycast
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Apr 8: Honor
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Farmhouse/Whorehouse is the first of four lectures by Suzanne Bocanegra taking place throughout NYU Skirball’s 2023-24 Season.

Tickets here

Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 8 PM

$15 for members + students / $25 for nonmembers

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This subversive performance by conceptual artist Suzanne Bocanegra masquerades as an artist talk but reveals her current fixation—and aesthetic engagement with—one of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s greatest tapestries, the colossal Honor (from the series The Honors), measuring almost 19 by 25 feet. Weaving Bocanegra’s personal narrative with an artist’s interpretation of the 16th century tapestry which reveals a multitude of different characters and narratives, Honor features celebrated film and theater actor Lili Taylor in the title role of “The Artist.”

Friday, January 27, 2023 | 8:00pm-9:00pm

Moody Center for the Arts | Lois Chiles Studio Theater

Register here

Houston-born artist Suzanne Bocanegra presents an original "artist talk" performed by film and television actor Lili Taylor, with vocalists from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. Centered on a sixteenth-century tapestry of the same name in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Honor weaves Bocanegra’s personal narrative with her interpretation of the historic tapestry, in turn revealing a multitude of different characters and stories.

July 12–December 11, 2022

Gund Gallery at Kenyon College, Gambier OH

Link here

In 1967 Judy Garland was cast in the film Valley of the Dolls, a story of three women undone by drugs and stardom on Broadway in the 1950s. An amazingly gifted performer, Garland had been exploited since she was a girl by the entertainment industry. At this point in her career she was known to be unpredictable and painfully fragile. She was fired soon after work on the film began.

Some of the only footage that remains of Garland’s participation in the film are her wardrobe tests, in which she models her costumes for the film. These wardrobe tests have no script, no scenario, no song. The movement and nervous chatter are her own. Garland had performed professionally from the age of 2, yet in this footage she appears awkward and uncomfortable, and that awkwardness makes her feel authentic and vulnerable. With the help of The Fabric Workshop and Museum, I recreated this footage, casting eight strong women artists that I admire in the role of Garland. Performers include poet Anne Carson, choreographer and dancer Deborah Hay, artist Joan Jonas, singer Alicia Hall Moran, author and actor Tanya Selvaratnam, actor Kate Valk, artist Carrie Mae Weems, and ballerina Wendy Whelan.

After Judy Garland was fired from the film, she took her wardrobe with her. She wore them in her concerts until her death of a barbiturate overdose two years later, bringing long-lasting notoriety to the iconic late-1960s costumes.

— Suzanne Bocanegra

April 29–30, 2022 at 7pm
MOCA members ticket release: Monday, April 18
General ticket release: Tuesday, April 19

This subversive performance by conceptual artist Suzanne Bocanegra masquerades as an artist talk but reveals her current obsession—and aesthetic engagement with—one of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s greatest tapestries, the colossal Honor (from the series The Honors), measuring almost 19 by 25 feet. Weaving Bocanegra’s personal narrative with an artist’s interpretation of the 16th century tapestry which reveals a multitude of different characters and narratives, Honor features celebrated film and theater actor Lili Taylor in the title role of The Artist.

Saturday, February 19, 2022
7 pm
The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Starring Lili Taylor
Directed by Geoff Sobelle

This subversive work by conceptual artist Suzanne Bocanegra masquerades as an artist talk about one of The Met’s most important 16th-century tapestries. Featuring celebrated actor Lili Taylor in the role of the Artist, Honor weaves together Bocanegra’s personal narrative and her obsession with the colossal tapestry, revealing a multitude of different characters and stories as rich and complex as the work of art itself.

Tickets start at $25 (includes Museum admission).

Buy tickets now

Tuesday, August 10, 2021
5:00 p.m. CT

Register here: blantonmuseum.org/witch

In Suzanne Bocanegra’s theatrical takes on the standard “artist lecture,” an actor appears as Bocanegra, recounting significant moments in her artistic development. Part artist’s talk, part performance, part cultural history, this filmed version of Bocanegra’s 2010 lecture features actor Paul Lazar of New York’s legendary Wooster Group and Big Dance Theater. Lazar channels Bocanegra, describing her early life in Pasadena, Texas, in a tale incorporating Elvis, Abstract Expressionism, the pope, astronauts, the singing nun, and (obviously!) a witch. This one-time virtual screening is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Suzanne Bocanegra: Valley. A livestream Q&A with Bocanegra will follow the screening, moderated by Claire Howard, Blanton Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art

The American Academy of Arts and Letters announced the 18 artists who will receive its 2021 awards in art. The art prizes and purchases honor both established and emerging artists. The award winners were chosen from a group of 125 artists who had been invited to submit work. The members of this year’s award committee were: Catherine Murphy (Chair), Nicole Eisenman, Ann Hamilton, Philip Pearlstein, Judy Pfaff, Joel Shapiro, Amy Sillman, Kiki Smith, and Terry Winters.

Suzanne Bocanegra: Valley

June 27, 2021 - September 19, 2021

Suzanne Bocanegra: Valley is organized by the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin.

Organized by Claire Howard, Assistant Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, Blanton Museum of Art

May 12, 2020

Multimedia and performance artist Suzanne Bocanegra joins The Brooklyn Rail for New Social Environment #39, with host and Artseen editor Amanda Gluibizzi. They discuss the theatrics of religion, honor groups (and when theater is honorable), fashion, performing Beckett in quarantine, and much more. The New Social Environments provide a place to have vibrant conversations in a time of great physical distancing.

On April 8, 2020, the Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation approved the awarding of Guggenheim Fellowships to a diverse group of 175 scholars, artists, and writers. Appointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise, the successful candidates were chosen from a group of almost 3,000 applicants in the Foundation’s ninety-sixth competition.

This award was established in 2013 with an endowment gift from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation to honor Mr. Rauschenberg, who was one of FCA's founding artists, and his legacy of innovation, risk-taking, and experimentation. A $40,000 award is made annually through Grants to Artists to an individual visual or performing artist in recognition of outstanding achievement that reflects the spirit of its namesake.

UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance’s Artist Residency Program provides local and national artists creative time and necessary space for the development of new work. Each year CAP UCLA welcomes a new cohort and offers resources, time, connections and more to their process of bringing an idea to the stage. Suzanne Bocanegra, one of this season’s Artists In Residence, will workshop and develop her piece, Honor: An Artist Lecture the week of November 18. The week will conclude with an invited work-in-progress showing on Friday, November 22. The completed work will appear in an upcoming CAP UCLA season.

November 24, 2019
5PM

Suzanne Bocanegra and Annie-B Parson host a book signing of their respective books:

SUZANNE BOCANEGRA: POORLY WATCHED GIRLS

and

DRAWING THE SURFACE OF DANCE: A BIOGRAPHY IN CHARTS
BY ANNIE-B PARSON

November 10, 2019
2PM

Susan Talbott and Suzanne Bocanegra do a joint walkthrough and tour of Suzanne Bocanegra: Wardrobe Test at Art Cake.