Growing Sideways: Performing Childhood

“Growing Sideways: Performing Childhood” explores how artists use aspects of childhood to challenge inherited beliefs, identities, and cultural memories in the public sphere.

Children, with their vulnerability and charm, evoke connection and compassion, but also disrupt order. Artists in the exhibition harness this energy to question social values taught through childhood objects like dolls, fables, and lullabies. Others use the concept of the child to explore new understandings of the self and early perceptions.

Through varied installations, performances, and photographic works, “Growing Sideways” invites audiences to see how artists defamiliarize conventional materials. From Lorna Simpson’s hand game inversion to Aura Rosenberg’s novel superhero, Ghislaine Leung’s toy appliances to Joan Jonas’s kites, the exhibition showcases how artists, inspired by childhood, challenge norms and present new ways of connecting and growing.