At the Whitney Biennial, entitled “Even Better Than the Real Thing” and comprising more than 70 artists, cocurators and organizers Chrissie Iles and Meg Onli brought together what they have described as a “dissonant chorus.”
Among the voices is JJJJJerome Ellis, whose practices—music, performance, writing—explore time, dysfluency, and the inclusive futures of disability justice. Ellis has two site-specific works in the survey: a score written following the show’s opening and a text-based billboard in Mandarin, Spanish, and English, in which symbols represent the pauses and repetitions of stuttering.
To design the billboard, Ellis formed a collective with doctoral student Jia Bin, poet Delicia Daniels, designer Conor Foran, and speech therapist Kristel Kubart. “Because the biennial is—for me—it’s so much about, about the plural,” Ellis says, “about, about, about the multiple,…
