This installation from Phoenix Lindsey-Hall is homage to the victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting.
Opening January 6, 2016, Never Stop Dancing is a new installation from Phoenix Lindsey-Hall featuring 49 illuminated, slip cast porcelain disco balls. Presented by VICTORI + MO, the installation is homage to the victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando in June 2016.
Extending from Lindsey-Hall’s ongoing practice examining violence in queer communities through the medium of cast porcelain objects, the 49 porcelain disco balls that make up Never Stop Dancing will each be illuminated with light and suspended at various heights from the ceiling of the darkened gallery, casting shadows and invoking reflection.
The disco ball is a firmly-rooted signifier of nightclubs and celebration. By matting the ball’s traditionally mirrored panels, its reflective quality becomes muted, turning the viewer’s gaze inwards. More heavenly body than corporeal presence, more lamentation than party the clay acts as a surrogate for the body in the way it can be at once fragile and strong.
The immediately noticeable lack of music in the space—an otherwise expected presence, again anticipated by the disco ball signifier—manifests a sober, atmospheric commentary on loss—where both the disco balls and the lives they represent once gave light, now they are extinguished.
A queer rights lobbyist in Kentucky, Lindsey-Hall’s practice refocuses her advocacy. Never Stop Dancing focuses the conversations concerning queer personhood in the aftermath of the shooting into a deeply humanistic manifestation.
Never Stop Dancing looks at how queer nightclubs and bars existed as places of safe harbor while attracting danger just outside. In a post-Pulse reality, Lindsey-Hall asks viewers how we move forward after a harbor has been compromised.
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When: January 6, 2017 – February 12, 2017
Where: Victoria + Mo 56 Bogart Street, Brooklyn, NY 11206