E.J. Hill, Los Angeles 1985.
1.
“I guess I’ve always sort of been interested in extraordinary experiences or circumstances but I didn’t really come to understand those as art until I found myself hanging out with other weirdos at Columbia College in Chicago. I thought I was going to learn to draw and paint when I got to art school, which, you know, was definitely there, but once I figured out that other things could be art, that experiences could be art, I hit the ground running in a different direction.”
“When I was about 6 or 7 years old, my only neighborhood friend was the kid who lived next door. He was about a year or two older than me and his family pretty much gave him free reign. My family was the exact opposite; I was so coddled and sheltered growing up that I wasn’t even allowed to go past our driveway onto the sidewalk alone. So I never really got to venture out and play with the other kids. Because of that, my friend knew a whole lot more about things than I did but he was always getting into trouble for one thing or another. So one day we were playing in my backyard and he told me that if I put my mouth on his penis that it would feel good. So not knowing what any of this was about but curious to try it, he pulled out his penis, put it in front of my face and I did what I always did when things entered my mouth… I bit down. Hard.” (from The Present Tense, July 2012)
It’s not me, it’s you, 2013.
2.
EJ Hill’s performances don’t wait for something to happen. Hill’s works engage with the supposed boundaries we place on ourselves, focusing on the possibility of transcendence. There’s a lightness and magical quality to Hill’s deep brown eyes, which revel in self-awareness and an energetic spirit. Fit and always dressed his best, Hill seems to asks audiences to look at him and trust his desire to communicate this story. His performances invite the viewer into an emotional, painful, yet ultimately fulfilling experience that is an open, honest, and highly personal investigation into the cultural and social implications of his body as art.
Fence mechanisms, 2014.
EJ Hill’s performances don’t wait for something to happen. Hill’s works engage with the supposed boundaries we place on ourselves, focusing on the possibility of transcendence. There’s a lightness and magical quality to Hill’s deep brown eyes, which revel in self-awareness and an energetic spirit. Fit and always dressed his best, Hill seems to asks audiences to look at him and trust his desire to communicate this story. His performances invite the viewer into an emotional, painful, yet ultimately fulfilling experience that is an open, honest, and highly personal investigation into the cultural and social implications of his body as art.
These eming dynamism of being on top, 2013.
At Columbia College, Hill found himself immersed in contemporary issues in new media. But it wasn’t until he watched documentation of Chris Burden’s “Selected Works” from 1970s when he realized that this was what he’d been looking for.”I was like ‘Oh my God, who is this crazy person?! I want to know everything about what is happening in these videos,'” says Hill. “I just remember being in this jaw-dropping moment, of thinking ‘if this is art, I want this so bad,’ and I just went for it. I had no idea that this [type of performance] could be art as well — I was just used to watercolors at my dentists’ office, and desert landscapes in the living room.” (E.J. Hill and the Art of Endurance, by Alicia Eler, Artbound, November 13, 2014)
O Captor, My Captor, 2014
Collaborative performance with David Bell
Grace Exhibition Space, Brooklyn
Darkness, but not for everyone, two figures, sit opposite one another, blind to the room, in search of contact, everyone looking, except one. Except one. The tie that binds has been severed and fused again. The umbilical cord is quite intact but only temporarily. When outsiders come to rescue one, he will fight them off to defend the other. Because all contact is contact. And after all, what they share together, only they know. Only they can touch it. Only they can feel it. And as the reins fall untethered, the Captive then says to the Captor, “Thank you.”
Inspired by the psychology of Stockholm Syndrome, tenets of Attachment Theory, and the “clinch” embrace between two boxers in a ring, David Bell and EJ Hill will engage ideas of dependency, support, and other complexities of human relationships.
Signaling through the flames, 2014.
“I know what it feels like to have my body policed,” E.J. Hill crooned into a grated, vintage microphone, wearing an impeccable tuxedo and standing next to a piano player busy massaging a Steinway. On occasion of the opening of Art Los Angeles Contemporary, a ’50s jazz singer scene emerged in the middle of the fair lounge. As fairgoers hovered around the bar, immersed in conversation and the business of the fair, Hill was asking if he, a queer black man, could be a feminist.
The wall of stillness in the room struck me as I entered E.J. Hill’s performance, Complicit and Tacit, 30 minutes into the approximately 120 which would pass. The collective gaze of the audience shot a hundred arrows toward the target of his isolated body. I moved through the silent room toward the front row. Audience heads fallen away, his full stance came into view. A dry circle stained his groin; a faded puddle ran down his right leg. Had he peed himself? Had he lost control, that is? He stood in a face off—his body versus the social expectations of the audience, the structure of the white box stage and his own middle-class khaki and loafer uniform. He fought all resistance in order to remain stuck to his box.
Frameworks, 2012.
On the opening night of the UCLA MFA 2013 Preview Exhibition, a private preview was held for donors, collectors, and other special guests just prior to a public reception. The performance began just as the private reception was ending, which entailed my holding the doors shut from the inside, preventing the private party from exiting and the public from entering.
Drawn, 2011
performance intervention
UCLA Graduate Open Studios
I licked my way along every wall of the exhibition space. After only a few minutes, my tongue was rubbed raw and began to bleed.
http://www.ejhill.info