“No Aesthetic Outside My Freedom: Mourning, Militancy, and Performance,” a piece by artists Noel Maghathe, Fadl Fakhouri, and Fargo Tbakhi about Palestinian mourning, was scheduled to take place Wednesday evening, May 14, as part of programming for the Independent Study Program’s (ISP) curatorial exhibition a grammar of attention. The work, which typically runs for an hour and a half at most, involves performers interpreting a series of “scores” written by Natalie Diaz, Christina Sharpe, and Brandon Shimoda, conveying grief through various physical and verbal gestures.
But two days earlier, on May 12, ISP’s Associate Director Sara Nadal-Melsió learned that the Whitney Museum of American Art, the institution that supports the prestigious nine-month fellowship, was canceling the performance. In a meeting, the museum’s Director Scott Rothkopf said they had come across a YouTube video from the work’s initial presentation with The Poetry Project and Jewish Currents last fall in which Tbakhi introduced the piece with a short address to attendees: “You may only remain in this audience if you love Palestinians wholly and completely, you may only remain if you love us while we are alive and when we are dead, when we are fighting for survival, dignity, land, return, real and sustainable life using any and all methods available to us.”
“You may not remain in this audience if you believe in Israel in any incarnation, given its ontological structure as a continual process of extermination, disposition, and daily cruelty,” Tbakhi continued. When no one leaves the room, Tbakhi goes on to provide an additional brief about “No Aesthetic Outside My Freedom” before the performance officially begins.
Rothkopf told Nadal-Melsió that the museum’s concerns were not with the contents of the work but with Tbakhi’s prelude, which he claimed went against the institution’s “community guidelines.” Nadal-Melsió insisted that a different introduction could be prepared for the ISP’s iteration, but the museum would not consider this.
In response to Hyperallergic’s request for comment, a Whitney museum spokesperson said that “canceling this performance was not a decision the museum took lightly, but it was clear and necessary.”
“While we were working on the ISP exhibitions’ final promotional text and materials, we reviewed a video of a previous performance of ‘No Aesthetic Outside My Freedom,’” the spokesperson’s statement continued. “At the beginning of the performance, one of the artists called for anyone who believes in Israel or America in any incarnation to leave the audience. Later, the artist valorized specific acts of violence and imagery of violence.”
It is unclear what the museum is referring to by “acts of and imagery of violence.” The Whitney’s statement continues:
There are other works in this year’s ISP exhibitions that address the war in Gaza, as have previous pieces in the museum. The Whitney will continue to support difficult and provocative discussion of important events and social issues. This decision was not about the topics discussed, but because their presentation violated the standards agreed to by all members of our community, including ISP participants.
In a statement shared with Hyperallergic, Tbakhi, Fakhouri, and Maghathe stressed the relative inconsequence of their museum’s actions.
“In the time since our performance was cancelled by the Whitney, Israel has brutally murdered more than 600 Palestinians, all while continuing to enforce mass starvation and famine as a method of genocide in Gaza,” the artists said.
“In the face of this ongoing and escalating brutality, the decision to cancel our performance — a performance whose purpose is to mourn Palestinians martyred in the long struggle for liberation — matters very little,” Tbakhi, Fakhouri, and Maghathe continued. “It is an act of anti-Palestinian censorship, yes; an act of cowardice by an institution materially complicit in the genocide, whose board members profit from the bombs and jets committing the genocide, yes; it is also a distraction.”
Fellows in the ISP’s three cohorts echoed this sentiment in conversations with Hyperallergic and in public statements issued over the last few days. They also responded in kind. Leaflets printed with the cancelled performance scores were strewn across the two exhibitions organized by the fellows at the Westbeth building in Manhattan — a grammar of attention, the curatorial cohort’s project; and Prototype, the studio art show. The last page of the packet includes a QR code and the words: “DO SOMETHING.” Some artists decided to remove their work altogether, leaving empty space, dark monitors, or a pushed-aside pile of materials where their finished works once stood. And the critical studies cohort canceled its symposium, slated to be held yesterday, May 18.
One of the few works still on view in Prototype at Wesbeth Gallery is Ash Moniz’s “[Inaudible]” (2025), a 17-minute video that follows members of Osprey V, a Palestinian rock band from Gaza. Some of the musicians were able to escape to Cairo — among them Moniz, the band’s drummer — while others are still trapped on the strip, relying on intermittent internet connection to share audio files with their fellow band members.
“I want to withdraw, I would like to take that action,” Moniz told Hyperallergic. “But the film is titled ‘[Inaudible]’ and it’s about the fact that [Palestinians] are completely silenced — it’s about the fact that no matter how loud they scream, no one is listening.” Ultimately, Moniz said, she and fellow artists decided that the work should remain on view.
Moniz also told Hyperallergic that she was initially unsure whether her work would be shown at all, as museum staff exercised what fellows described to Hyperallergic as an unusual level of overreach. During a meeting with upper management, a line in Muniz’s artist statement that described “a genocide unfolding in real time” was flagged as a “question of opinion,” Nadal-Melsió said.
“We’re almost two years into this genocide,” Moniz noted to Hyperallergic. “The fact that the Whitney can still pretend that this is still a controversial matter … I mean, every single humanitarian organization in the world had said this is a genocide.”
Nadal-Melsió noted that the Whitney never added a sign-up link on its website for visitors to attend “No Aesthetic Outside My Freedom,” which was meant to be a public performance, as it did with other scheduled events. This raised a flag, as did the fact that members of the museum’s curatorial and communications staff asked to review artworks and descriptions, Nadal-Melsió said, requests she felt undermined the very pillars on which the famously exploratory program was founded.
“The ISP is an experimental study community,” she said. “The idea that everything has to be prepackaged and totally sealed goes against everything. We are not a biennial — we are a pedagogical study community.”
Founded in 1968 by Ron Clark, the ISP program is known for helping propel the careers of artists, critics, and curators including LaToya Ruby Frazier, Jenny Holzer, Andrea Fraser, and Roberta Smith, among others. Approximately 15 participants are chosen each year. In 2023, when Clark retired, Gregg Bordowitz assumed the role of director. But Bordowitz transitioned into the role of director-at-large earlier this year, and with Nadal-Melsió in an associate director position, the ISP has essentially been without a leader, even as the program continues to settle into its first permanent home in artist Roy Lichtenstein’s Manhattan studio.
This lacuna, explained Adrienne Oliver, a fellow in the ISP’s critical studies cohort, left participants feeling at sea when Whitney leaders intervened to review works and content.
“At any time someone could request something and we had no leg to stand on to ask, ‘Why, or for whom, or to what end will this be used?’” Edwards told Hyperallergic. “That kind of sense of vulnerability left us feeling quite open.”
But the performance’s abrupt cancellation finally made moving forward with the planned symposium “unbearable.”
“Our works were not distant from the very questions at the heart of this matter, which were questions around institutions and labor, and death and race and colonial power,” Edwards said. “As the week unfolded, it became clearer and clearer that leadership was not going to let us speak. The only way was to cancel, and to ensure that our opposition to the cancellation for the performance was known.”
Studio fellows Tbakhi, Fakhouri, and Maghathe, the artists whose performance was cancelled, said in their statement to Hyperallergic that they stand by the previous staging’s introduction, which so alarmed museum leadership.
“The only purpose of continuing to make art in this moment is to galvanize audiences towards acting to stop the machinery of genocide. If this cancellation does that, then we have succeeded,” Tbakhi, Fakhouri, and Maghathe continued. “We, the artists, do not need support. The people of Gaza do.”