b. 1970, Baltimore, Maryland. Lives and works in New York City.

Sharon Hayes describes her interdisciplinary art practice as being informed by “theater, film, anthropology, linguistics, and journalism.” With icons and other references drawn from political or current events, Hayes’s works point to the private and collective construction of memory. Previous performative acts by the artist have included reciting Presidential addresses or other historical political statements, as well as holding apparently displaced, solitary protest signs in public places.

Recently, Hayes’s work has incorporated seemingly personal acts of memorializing into highly public presentations. Her 2007 performance Everything Else Has Failed! Don’t You think It’s Time for Love? saw Hayes, standing before a microphone in downtown Manhattan, reading aloud from a different love letter at lunchtime each day for one week. On Procession presents Hayes’s new piece I march in the parade of liberty, but as long as I love you I'm not free. The work, originally commissioned by the New Museum in New York, is conceived as both an installation and a performance. Weekly, broadcasting over a megaphone on the streets of the Lower East Side, Hayes read a statement to an ex-lover, lamenting both the demise of the relationship and feelings about the futility of public protest. The script was also broadcast continuously in the gallery over a freestanding PA system, taking on an anthropomorphic quality as a stand-in for the person delivering this message.

Image Credit:
I march in the parade of liberty, but as long as I love you I'm not free, 2008
Courtesy of the Artist.