THE NOGUCHI MUSEUM ANNOUNCES A SPECIAL
SITE-SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE
LABOR OF LOVE
ERNESTO PUJOL & LESLEY DILL
May 3, 2014
WHAT: Labor of Love is a new site-specific performance created for The Noguchi Museum by artists
Ernesto Pujol and Lesley Dill. Taking place on Saturday, May 3, 2014, over a six-hour period and
entirely in silence, the performers – both long-time visitors to the Museum – will sit facing each other at two
identical industrial worktables next to windows overlooking the Museum’s sculpture garden. In the spirit of
Noguchi’s reverence for all creation, the duo will draw on twelve rice paper scrolls, pausing every half hour to
ring a Noguchi obsidian Sounding Stone – used here for the first time – after which they will slowly switch
places to add to each other’s scrolls. Working with the Museum’s palpable stillness, Pujol and Dill will engage
in an unpredictable exchange, punctuated by the passing of time.
The performance is free with Museum admission.
WHEN: Saturday, May 3, 2014, 11:30AM–5:30PM
WHERE: The Noguchi Museum, 9-01 33rd Road (between Vernon Boulevard and 10th Street),
Long Island City, New York; Information: 718-204-7088, or www.noguchi.org
About the Artists
Ernesto Pujol
Born in Cuba in 1957, Ernesto Pujol is a site-specific public performance artist and social choreographer.
During the 1990s, Pujol became known for site-specific ephemeral installation projects addressing individual
and collective memory and gender. More recently, his performance work has addressed pressing ecological
issues, war, loss, and mourning.
Recent performance commissions include: Time After Us, a 24-hour walking meditation at St. Paul’s Chapel
in New York City, with 23 artists creating a solitary yet connected community (selected by Holland Cotter of
The New York Times as one of his ten favorite art events of 2013); Visitation, a solo 6-hour performance at the
Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, as an intervention throughout the institution by the embodied gaze of the
artist; and Speaking in Silence, a sunrise-to-sunset performance for the Contemporary Museum throughout
the city of Honolulu, with 18 performers as public orators.
Pujol has an MFA in interdisciplinary art studio practice from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago,
and has taught at Cooper Union, NY, La Escuela de Artes Plasticas de Puerto Rico, San Juan, and the Rhode
Island School of Design, Providence, among others. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the Mid-
Atlantic Arts Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, among others, and has served with the New York
State Council on the Arts, the Academy for Educational Development, and the National Endowment for the
Arts, Washington, DC. He lives and works between New York and the Midwest/West. For more
information: www.ernestopujol.org.
Lesley Dill
Born in Bronxville, New York, in 1950, Lesley Dill works in sculpture, photography, and performance using
a variety of media and techniques to explore themes of language, the body, and transformational experience.
Her work has been widely exhibited and collected and can be found in the collections of the Albright-Knox
Art Gallery, Buffalo; Cleveland Museum of Art; Kemper Museum, Kansas City; Metropolitan Museum of
Art; Museum of Modern Art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among many others.
Dill has been the recipient of awards and grants from such institutions as the Joan Mitchell Foundation, New
York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation, and
received an Anonymous Was A Woman award in 2008. She is represented by George Adams Gallery, New
York and Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans. For more information: www.lesleydill.net.
About the Noguchi Museum
Designed by Isamu Noguchi and occupying a renovated industrial building dating from the 1920s, The
Noguchi Museum exhibits a comprehensive selection of the artist’s works in all mediums, displayed in a series
of indoor galleries and the sculpture garden. Together, this installation and the Museum’s special exhibitions
expand the context for Noguchi’s work and illuminate his influential legacy of innovation. Currently on view
at the Museum: Noguchi’s Early Drawings: 1927–1932, an exhibition examining a critical time in the artist’s
development of his own singular style (through May 25, 2014); and Collection Highlights: Noguchi
Archaic/Noguchi Modern, an exhibition exploring how the simplicity of form in Noguchi’s work
simultaneously links his sculptures to both the ancient past and the distant future (through August 31, 2014).
MEDIA CONTACTS:
FITZ & CO:
Stephanie Markovic, 347.628.4688; [email protected]
Liza Eliano, 212.627.1455 x0921; [email protected]
Images: Ernesto Pujol and Lesley Dill preparing for Labor of Love
