This Is Not A Drill

On Hollywood sets or at the Whitney Biennial, artist and choreographer Madeline Hollander stages performances with an urgent undercurrent.

- Laura Regensdorf

When the curators behind the 2019 Whitney Biennial selected Madeline Hollander as one of the participating artists, her mind turned to the museum’s home since 2015, a hulking gray structure on the western edge of lower Manhattan. “Every time I’m at the building, I find myself looking into the Hudson,” she says. “The river is the biggest moving body I could imagine working with.” Unorthodox performers are a recurring feature in Hollander’s work. Last year, she choreographed the colorful A.I.-programmed office chairs rolling around Chelsea’s Gagosian Gallery in Urs Fischer’s Play and pitted dancers against airconditioning units in a piece called New Max, about ever-rising temperatures.